Theories of Causation, Misc

In her 1824 monograph An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE), Lady Mary Shepherd presents a rich theory of causation that radically departs from the standard mechanistic causal model of the Early Modern period. I argue that there are significant philosophical and contextual connections between Shepherd’s causal theory in ERCE and the British Emergentist tradition that is said to begin with John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic (1843). By comparing the two we can find a meaningful (...) emergentist strand in Shepherd's conception of the causal relation. Noticing the emergentist aspects of her causal theory can help us understand certain commitments about the nature of causation that may otherwise seem disconnected from her overall metaphysical project. An emergentist reading of Shepherd can also illuminate a new way of understanding the relation of metaphysical emergence, as the central relation of determination and dependence discovered both in scientific investigation and in ordinary empirical reasoning. (shrink)

Structures without time and dynamics are considered. The principle is proposed how to build space-time in a structure without time and dynamics. It is found what can be objects in such a space-time, and what can be an interaction between such objects.Within the framework of the considered class of structures, answers were found to the following problems of philosophy and physics: the nature of consciousness and the connection between the body and consciousness (mind-body problem), nature of time, anthropic principle and (...) the problem of fine-tuning the universe, the effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical phenomena, limits of knowledge.The considered class of structures makes it possible to find answers to questions that cannot be answered for our Universe. This shows the fundamental possibility of finding answers to these questions for our Universe as well. (shrink)

Physical systems without time and dynamics have been considered. The principle of how to construct spacetime in a physical system without time and dynamics has been proposed. It has been found what can be objects in such a spacetime, and what can be an interaction between such objects. Within the framework of the considered class of systems, answers to the following problems of philosophy and physics have been found: the nature of consciousness and the connection of body and consciousness (mind-body (...) problem), the nature of time, the anthropic principle and the problem of fine-tuning the universe, the effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical phenomena, the limits of knowledge. There are a number of indications that our Universe is not based on one of the systems of the class considered. The considered class of systems makes it possible to find answers to questions that cannot be answered for our Universe. This shows that it is fundamentally possible to find answers to these questions for our Universe as well. (shrink)

Temporal models of causality are at the core of any scientific methodical explanation; these collected papers do point to the hidden curriculum of research methodology.

Philosophers of mind tend to take it for granted that causal relations are part of the mind-independent, objective fabric of the physical world. In fact, their status has been hotly contested since Russell famously observed that the closest thing to causal relations in physics are timesymmetric dynamical laws relating global time slices of world-history. 1 These bear a distant relationship to the local, asymmetric relations that form the core of the folk notion of cause. Nancy Cartwright, in an influential response, (...) agreed about the absence of causal relations from physics, but argued that Russell’s position was not viable because agents choosing among potential actions need specifically causal information to distinguish effective from ineffective strategies for bringing about ends. 2 Causal beliefs play an ineliminable role in practical deliberation In recent years, there has been a great deal of progress in understanding the relationship between causal concepts and the dynamical laws that appear in advanced physics, together with a proliferation of new tools for representing and discovering causal structure. (shrink)

This paper argues that causal idealism, the view that causation is a product of mental activity, should be considered a competetitor to contemporary views that incorporate human thought and agency into the causal relation. Weighing contextualism, contrastivism, or pragmatism about causation against causal idealism results in at least a tie with respect to the virtues of these theories.

I propose a new formalist account of legal (/proximate) causation—one that holds legal causation to be a matter of amoral, descriptive fact. The account starts with a metaphysical relation, akin to but distinct from common-sense causation, and it argues that legal causation aligns exactly with that relation; it is unified and principled.

As far as treatments of causation are concerned, the pre-Kantian 18th century German context has long been dismissed as a period of uniform and unrepentant Leibnizian dogmatism. While there is no question that discussions of issues relating to causation in this period inevitably took Leibniz as their point of departure, it is certainly not the case that the resulting positions were in most cases dogmatically, or in some cases even recognizably, Leibnizian. Instead, German theorists explored a range of positions regarding (...) the nature of causal powers, the appropriate systems to explain the observed agreement between the states of substances, and the ground of free actions, or so I will argue in this chapter. Focusing on these three issues, I will here sketch the development of the debates relating to causation and trace the evolution of positions among the philosophers within the so-called Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy as well as among its many opponents. (shrink)

Eric Watkins argues that according to Kant, causation is not a relation between two events, but a relation between the “causality” of a substance and an event. It is shown that his arguments are partly based on a confusion between causation and interaction. Further, Watkins claims that for Kant, causes cannot be temporally determined. If this were true, it would follow that there can be no causal chains, and that all factors that determine the time when an effect occurs do (...) not belong to its cause. However, it is not true. In order to understand Kant, one must distinguish between causation, action, and interaction. When two substances interact, each of them does something (an event), which causes something to happen to the other one. (shrink)

A new series entitled Oxford Philosophical Concepts (OPC) made its debut in November 2014. As the series’ Editor Christia Mercer notes, this series is an attempt to respond to the call for and the tendency of many philosophers to invigorate the discipline. To that end each volume will rethink a central concept in the history of philosophy, e.g. efficient causation, health, evil, eternity, etc. “Each OPC volume is a history of its concept in that it tells a story about changing (...) solutions to specific philosophical problems” (xiii). The series presents itself as innovative along three main lines: its reexamination of the so-called “canon,” its reconsidering the value of interdisciplinary exchanges, and its encouraging philosophers to move beyond the current borders of philosophy. By engaging with non-Western traditions and carefully considering topics and materials which are not strictly philosophical, the collections from this series aim to render the history of philosophy accessible to a wide audience. -/- The first OPC volume to appear in print is “Efficient Causation – A History” edited by Tad Schmaltz. Using careful historical and philosophical analysis as well as interdisciplinary reflections this anthology proposes to tell the story of how efficient causation, equated nowadays with “causation” tout court, came to play its prominent role in our philosophical and scientific vocabulary. Eleven contributions cover the period from Ancient times (Aristotle and the Stoics), through the Middle Ages (both the Western and the Islamic traditions), passing through the Early Modern times (represented here by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Berkeley and Hume), all the way to Kant and finally contemporary philosophers (classified into two opposing camps: Humean and Neo-Aristotelian). There are also four reflections which explore the applications of the notion of efficient causation to areas different from philosophy, especially the arts (literature, music, painting, etc.). (shrink)

This volume contends that Evidential Pluralism - an account of the epistemology of causation, which maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one needs to establish the existence of a correlation and the existence of a mechanism - can be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. Through case studies in sociology, economics, political science and law, it advances new philosophical foundations for causal enquiry in the social sciences. The book provides an account of how to establish and evaluate (...) causal claims and it offers a new way of thinking about evidence-based policy, basic social science research and mixed methods research. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social science research and methodology, the philosophy of science and evidence-based policy. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) was a fierce and brilliant critic of Berkeley and Hume, who moreover offered strikingly original positive views about the nature of reality and our access to it which deserve much more attention (and credit, since she anticipates many prominent views) than they have received thus far. By way of illustration, I focus on Shepherd's 1824 Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of that Relation (ERCE). After a (...) brief setup, I canvas certain of her trenchant objections to Hume’s argumentation; I then present the positive core of her response to Hume, which consists in providing novel accounts of how reason alone or reason coupled with experience can justify, first, that every effect must have a cause, and second, that it is necessary that like causes produce like effects. Among other contributions here, Shepherd provides a distinctively metaphysical argument for the claim that nothing can begin to exist 'of itself' (going beyond an appeal to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, in particular), and leverages difference-making considerations to make the case that a single 'experimentum crucis' can justify causal belief (anticipating Mill's 'method of difference'). I close by highlighting salient features of Shepherd's metaphysics of causation, whereby causation is singularist and local (anticipating Ducasse and Anscombe) and involves synchronic interactions (anticipating Mill's and certain contemporary accounts), and according to which objects are essentially characterized by their causes and effects (anticipating contemporary causal or dispositional essentialist positions). (shrink)

I shall present in this article a double negation account of the distinction between causes and background conditions. Such an account will be based on the idea that, unlike causes, background conditions allow for certain effects by way of double prevention. In Section 1 I shall introduce objective and non-objective theories of the causes-background conditions distinction and I shall discuss and reject some non-objective theories. In Section 2 I shall examine some existing objective theories and argue that they need to (...) be supplemented in two relevant respects. In Section 3 I shall present my double negation account. Background conditions will be taken to allow for their effects by acting as early double preventers, late double preventers or effect double preventers. In Section 4 I shall deal with two main problems, i.e., the possibility of interpreting background conditions as purely indirect causes and the introduction of negative entities in my account, and with further issues. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Lewtas [2017] recently articulated an argument claiming that emergent conscious causal powers are impossible. In developing his argument, Lewtas makes several assumptions about emergence, phenomenal consciousness, categorical properties, and causation. We argue that there are plausible alternatives to these assumptions. Thus, the proponent of emergent conscious causal powers can escape Lewtas’s challenge.

Causal pluralists hold that that there is not just one determinate kind of causation. Some causal pluralists hold that ‘cause’ is ambiguous among these different kinds. For example, Hall (2004) argues that ‘cause’ is ambiguous between two causal relations, which he labels dependence and production. The view that ‘cause’ is ambiguous, however, wrongly predicts zeugmatic conjunction reduction, and wrongly predicts the behaviour of ellipsis in causal discourse. So ‘cause’ is not ambiguous. If we are to disentangle causal pluralism from the (...) ambiguity claim, we need to consider what other linguistic approaches are available to the causal pluralist. I consider and reject proposals that ‘cause’ is a general term, that the term is an indexical, and that the term conveys different kinds of causation through implicature or presupposition. Finally, I argue that causal pluralism is better handled by treating ‘cause’ as a univocal term within a dynamic interpretation framework. (shrink)

One of Stuart Glennan's most prominent contributions to the new mechanist debate consists in his reductive analysis of higher-level causation in terms of mechanisms (Glennan, 1996). In this paper I employ the causal Bayes net framework to reconstruct his analysis. This allows for specifying general assumptions which have to be satis ed to get Glennan's approach working. I show that once these assumptions are in place, they imply (against the background of the causal Bayes net machinery) that higher-level causation indeed (...) reduces to interactions between component parts of mechanisms. I also briefly discuss the plausibility of these assumptions and some consequences for the mechanism debate. (shrink)

Setting off from a familiar distinction in the philosophy of properties, this paper introduces a tripartite distinction between sparse causation, abundant causation and mere abundant causation. It is argued that the contrast between sparse and mere abundant causation allows us to resolve notorious philosophical issues having to do with negative causation, causation involving institutional properties and physical macro-causation in a way that is unified, intuitive and in line with scientific doctrines and practices.

The growing interest in fragmentalism is one of the most exciting trends in philosophy of time and is gradually reshaping the contemporary debate. Providing an extensive interpretation of this view, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo articulate a novel theory of the passage of time and argue that it is the most effective in vindicating the inherent dynamism of reality. Iaquinto and Torrengo offer the first full-range application of fragmentalism to a number of metaphysical topics, including the open future, causation, the (...) A-theoretic interpretation of special relativity and time travel. The resulting picture, they argue, conveys the potential of a radically new understanding of time. (shrink)

Imaginez une table de billard, sur laquelle se trouvent plusieurs boules de billard rouges. Supposons que l’une d’entre elles en percute une autre. On pourrait prétendre que la première boule de billard, la cause, est en contact direct avec la seconde, l’effet. Si nous devions généraliser cela pour toutes choses, pas seulement pour les boules de billard, nous dirions que « la chose A cause la chose B ». Comme nous le verrons, Bunge et Harman rejettent tous deux la conception (...) précédente de la causalité. Ils s’entendent pour dire que l’affirmation « la chose A cause la chose B » est fausse, parce que les choses n’entrent pas en contact causal direct ; il doit y avoir un troisième élément qui les relie. Dans le cas de Bunge, deux choses sont liées par des événements. Dans le cas d’Harman, deux objets réels sont liés par un objet sensuel. (shrink)

Buddhism is a tradition that set itself decidedly against theism, with the development of complex arguments against the existence of God. I propose that the metaphysical conclusions reached by some schools in the Mahayana tradition present a vision of reality that, with some apparently small modification, would ground an argument for the existence of God. This argument involves explanation in terms of natures rather than causal agency. Yet I conclude not only that the Buddhist becomes a theist in embracing such (...) explanations as legitimate, but also ipso facto abandons their metaphysical project and ceases to be a Buddhist. (shrink)

This paper aims to resolve an unremarked-upon tension between Anne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of created beings, or creatures, and her commitment to emanative, constant creation. Emanation causation has an atemporal aspect according to which God’s act of will coexists with its effect. There is no before or after, or past or future in God’s causal contribution. Additionally, Conway’s constant creation picture has it that all times are determined via divine emanation. Creaturely agency, by contrast, is fundamentally temporal, (...) occurring successively over time. It is unclear how creatures can count as emanative causes, which coexists with its effect, given that their agency is limited by time, proceeding from before to after, or past to future. Conway’s account of divine justice in the progress of time, however, requires that creatures are causally responsible. That is, moral responsibility requires causal responsibility. I propose that Conway’s distinction between vital motion and local motion enables a resolution of the tension. Vital motion contributes an atemporal aspect to creaturely agency so that creatures can count as secondary emanative causes. (shrink)

The Minimal Theory of Causation, presented in Graßhoff and May, 2001, aspires to be a version of a regularity analysis of causation able to correctly predict our causal intuitions. In my article, I will argue that it is unsuccessful in this respect. The second aim of the paper will be to defend Hitchcock’s proposal concerning divisions of causal relations against criticism made, in Jakob, 2006 on the basis of the Minimal Theory of Causation.

A cause is proportional to its effect when, roughly speaking, it is at the right level of detail. There is a lively debate about whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. One of the main arguments against a proportionality constraint on causation is that many ordinary and seemingly perfectly acceptable causal claims cite causes that are not proportional to their effects. In this paper, I suggest that proponents of a proportionality constraint can respond to this objection by developing an (...) idea that is present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality, but which has strangely been ignored by both Yablo and others in the subsequent debate. My suggestion is that proportionality—and, indeed, causation itself—is relative to a domain of events. At the metaphysical level, this means that the causal relation has an extra relatum—namely, a domain of events. At the level of language, it introduces a new way in which causal claims are context-sensitive: what is expressed by a causal claim depends on the contextually relevant domain of events. As I argue, this suggestion allows us to accommodate the truth of ordinary causal claims while extending the explanatory benefits of a proportionality constraint. (shrink)

Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-021-09632-6.

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine substantial essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories on these subjects, ranging historically from Aristotle followed by the Epicureans, the early Stoics, several later Stoics, and up to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. -/- The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human agency and their compatibility with a large range of important philosophical issues, including their compatibility (...) with divine predetermination and other theological questions; with atomism and continuum theory and with the physical sciences more generally; with the determination of character and its development from childhood through nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with theories of necessity, possibility and contingency; with external or internal preceding causes and impediments; and with folk theories of fatalism. Room is also given to the questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, and to blame and praise. -/- Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien’s essays show that in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to a free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later. The volume will be of interest both to philosophers and to historians of philosophy, with more than half of the essays accessible to advanced undergraduates. (shrink)

"The first book that provides a systematic and rigorous logical theory of causality"--.

According to the causal theory of photography (CTP), photographs acquire their depictive content from the world, whereas handmade pictures acquire their depictive content from their makers’ intentional states about the world. CTP suffers from what I call the Problem of the Missing Agent: it seemingly leaves no room for the photographer to occupy a causal role in the production of their pictures and so is inconsistent with an aesthetics of photography. In this paper, I do three things. First, I amend (...) CTP with Fred Dretske’s distinction between triggering and structuring causes, thereby overcoming the Problem of the Missing Agent. Second, I argue that CTP so amended in fact illuminates two aesthetic interests that we may take in photographs, focussing on photographic portraiture and street photography. Third, I show how reflection on the aesthetics of photography serves to support aesthetic anti-empiricism: the view that the aesthetic value of artworks consists, at least in part, in achievement rather than sensory pleasure. (shrink)

I provide a theory of causation within the causal modeling framework. In contrast to most of its predecessors, this theory is model-invariant in the following sense: if the theory says that C caused (didn't cause) E in a causal model, M, then it will continue to say that C caused (didn't cause) E once we've removed an inessential variable from M. I suggest that, if this theory is true, then we should understand a cause as something which transmits deviant or (...) non-inertial behavior to its effect. (shrink)

_Nicolai Hartmann and Alexius Meinong on Apriority and Causality. Notes on the Correspondence_ The article offers a critical reading of the nine letters composing the correspondence exchanged by Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) and Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950) in 1915 and 1918-1920. The author explores the main contents of the correspondence, through a chronological-thematic analysis. The letters of 1915 are eminently dedicated to a discussion of the gnoseology-ontology relationship. Here, the author focuses (1.1) on the relationship between reality and knowledge and (1.2) on (...) that between a priori and cognitive principles. The analysis (2) of the 1918-1920 correspondence concludes the article, engaging in the theme of the law of causality. Different in the philosophical background and argumentative style, the late Meinong and the young Hartmann find a field of dialogue that appears not lacking in consequences on the philosophical evolution of the latter. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)

In this article, I first introduce an Indian Madhyamaka Buddhist critique of causality and discuss critically a contemporary Humean interpretation of the critique. After presenting a Chinese Madhyamaka interpretation, I resort to an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which draws on Chinese Madhyamaka thought together with Jessica Wilson’s account of metaphysical indeterminacy, to show that the conception is well equipped to unravel two puzzling issues that arise from the critique. I suggest that a world that consists of things (...) that are indeterminate with respect to certain ways they are is sufficient for it to embody causal phenomena. (shrink)

Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford have recently defended a new kind of modality, which they call ‘dispositional modality’. The key reason to adopt dispositional modality, according to them, is that causes never necessitate their effects. Anjum and Mumford’s chief argument against causal necessitation makes use of what they call the ‘antecedent-strengthening test’ : C causally necessitates E iff C & φ causes E, for any possible φ. This test, they claim, fails in all cases of alleged causal necessitation. In (...) this paper we argue that the AS-test is not the mark of causal necessitation. First, we show that if the AS-test is taken as the mark of causal necessitation it leads to either an absurdity or to circularity. Second, we argue that, given the Mill/Mackie framework of causes as INUS conditions, apparent counterexamples to causal necessitation fail. (shrink)

Introducing formal causation / Ludger Jansen and Petter Sandstad -- Form, intention, information : from scholastic logic to artificial intelligence / Gyula Klima -- Formal causation : accidental and substantial / David S. Oderberg -- A non-hylomorphic account of formal causation / Petter Sandstad and Ludger Jansen -- Formal causes for powers theorists / Giacomo Giannini and Stephen Mumford -- Away with dispositional essences in trope theory / Jani Hakkarainen and Markku Keinänen -- Functional powers / Michele Paolini Paoletti -- (...) An Aristotelian approach to existential dependence / Benjamin Schnieder and Jonas Werner -- Finean feature dependence and the Aristotelian alternative / Wolfgang Sattler -- A problem for natural-kind essentialism and formal causes / José Tomás Alvarado and Matthew Tugby -- Form as cause and the formal cause : Aristotle's answer / James G. Lennox -- Form, cause, and explanation in biology : a neo-Aristotelian perspective / Christopher J. Austin -- Formal explanation and mechanisms of conceptual representation / Sandeep Prasada. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

In his “Bridging mainstream and formal ontology”, Augusto (2021) gives an excellent analysis of Dietrich von Freiberg’s idea of using causality as a partitioning principle for upper ontologies. For this Dietrich’s notion of extrinsic principles is crucial. The question whether causation can and indeed should be used as a partitioning principle for ontologies is discussed using mathematics and physics as examples.

The very first line of Spinoza’s magnum opus, the Ethics, states the following surprising definition: By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing [Per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura non potest concipi, nisi existens]. As we shall shortly see, for many of Spinoza’s contemporaries and predecessors the very notion of causa sui was utterly absurd, akin to a Baron Munchausen attempting (...) to lift himself above a river by pulling his hair up. How can a thing cause itself into existence, if before the causal activity, the cause did not exist at all? Indeed, in one of his earliest works, Spinoza himself claimed: “No thing, considered in itself, has in itself a cause enabling it to destroy itself (if it exists), or to make itself [te konnen maaken] (if it does not exist)” (KV II 26|I/110/14-16). Moreover, in other early works, Spinoza refers to God as an “uncreated thing” (TIE §97) or “uncreated substance” (CM II 1|I/237/20), and not as a cause-of-itself as in the Ethics. What made Spinoza desert the common, traditional, view of God as the uncaused first cause, or uncreated substance, and adopt instead the apparently chimerical notion of God as causa sui? A very likely explanation for this development suggests that Spinoza’s rationalism, his commitment to the principle that everything must have a reason both for its existence and for its non-existence – a commitment stated clearly both in the Ethics (see, for example, E1p8s2 and E1p11d2), and in Spinoza’s other writings (see, for example, Ep. 34 (IV/179/29)) – made him realize that the notion of an uncreated, or uncaused, thing is of no use for him: if everything must have a cause, then the first cause, or the most fundamental being, must be a cause-of-itself. All this is well and good, but we should not let Spinoza off the hook so easily, for the immediate question which arises now is whether Spinoza is not simply cheating his readers. Does Spinoza have a reason – i.e., argument – that could convince us that causa sui is indeed a more adequate characterization of God and not merely an opportunistic and ad hoc façade for the good old uncaused cause? While there are many important questions surrounding Spinoza’s notion of causa sui, it is the last question which will be the focus of this short chapter. In the first part of this chapter, we study, briefly, Descartes’ engagement with the notion of causa sui. In the second part, I show that Spinoza understood the causation of causa sui as efficient, and not formal, causation. The third and final part will attempt to locate precisely the alleged problem with the notion of causa sui, and consider how could Spinoza defend the intelligibility of this notion. Regrettably, limitations of space will force us to leave the examination of Spinoza’s closely related notion of being-conceived. (shrink)

It has long been thought that Augustine holds that corporeal objects cannot act upon incorporeal souls. However, precisely how and why Augustine imposes limitations upon the causal powers of corporeal objects remains obscure. In this paper, the author clarifies Augustine’s views about the causal and dependence relations between body and soul. He argues that, contrary to what is often thought, Augustine allows that corporeal objects do act upon souls and merely rules out that corporeal objects exercise a particular kind of (...) causal power (that of efficient or sustaining causes). He clarifies how Augustine conceives of the kind of causal influence exercised by souls and bodies. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction on the Causal Theory of Memory, one of the most discussed theories in philosophy of memory in the present days. We begin with Martin & Deutscher’s formulation of the theory, in which the authors present three criteria in order for a given mental state to be considered an instance of memory, amongst them, the famous causal criterion, which stipulates that a memory must be causally connected to the past experience. Subsequently, we discuss if these criteria (...) are necessary and sufficient for memory and we present two theories that complement these criteria with an epistemic and a phenomenological criterion, i.e., the Causal Epistemic Theory and the Causal Autonoetic Theory. We then introduce the concept of memory traces, which are, according to Martin & Deutscher, the causal link between the memory and the past experience which created this memory; we present the model of traces as structural analogues and the model of distributed traces and discuss the problems which arise for each of these models of traces. Afterwards we focus on the concept of causality and present the Causal Procedural Theory, which offers a different conception of causality that does not focus on the memory traces, but on causal process itself. Lastly, we present the theory called Discontinuism, a theory about the relation between memory and imagination, which follows directly from the Causal Theory of Memory. (shrink)

Evidential Pluralism maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one normally needs to establish the existence of an appropriate conditional correlation and the existence of an appropriate mechanism complex, so when assessing a causal claim one ought to consider both association studies and mechanistic studies. Hitherto, Evidential Pluralism has been applied to medicine, leading to the EBM+ programme, which recommends that evidence-based medicine should systematically evaluate mechanistic studies alongside clinical studies. This paper argues that Evidential Pluralism can also (...) be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. In particular, Evidential Pluralism provides (i) a new approach to evidence-based policy; (ii) an account of the evidential relationships in more theoretical research; and (iii) new philosophical motivation for mixed methods research. The application of Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences is also defended against two objections. (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces allow agents to control computers without moving their bodies. The agents imagine certain things and the brain-computer interfaces read the concomitant neural activity and operate the computer accordingly. But the use of brain-computer interfaces is problematic for criminal law, which requires that someone can only be found criminally responsible if they have satisfied the actus reus requirement: that the agent has performed some (suitably specified) conduct. Agents who affect the world using brain-computer interfaces do not obviously perform any (...) conduct, so when they commit crimes using brain-computer interfaces it is unclear how they have satisfied actus reus. Drawing on a forthcoming paper by Allan McCay, I suggest three potential accounts of the conduct that satisfies actus reus: the agent’s neural firings, his mental states, and the electronic activity in his brain-computer interface. I then present two accounts which determine how actus reus may be satisfied – one a counterfactual and the other a minimal sufficiency account. These accounts are lent plausibility because they are analogous to the but-for and NESS (Necessary Element in a Sufficient Set) tests for causation which are generally accepted tests for causation in legal theory. I argue that due to the determinations of these accounts and considerations regarding the relationship between the mind and brain, actus reus is satisfied by either the agent’s neural activity or brain-computer interface electrical activity. Which of these satisfies actus reus is determined by how well the brain-computer interface is functionally integrated with the agent. (shrink)

Some non-reductionists claim that so-called ‘exclusion arguments’ against their position rely on a notion of causal sufficiency that is particularly problematic. I argue that such concerns about the role of causal sufficiency in exclusion arguments are relatively superficial since exclusionists can address them by reformulating exclusion arguments in terms of physical sufficiency. The resulting exclusion arguments still face familiar problems, but these are not related to the choice between causal sufficiency and physical sufficiency. The upshot is that objections to the (...) notion of causal sufficiency can be answered in a straightforward fashion and that such objections therefore do not pose a serious threat to exclusion arguments. (shrink)

The life-long correspondence of David K. Lewis, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, reveals the development, breadth, and depth of his philosophy in its historical context. The first of this two volume collection of letters focuses on his contributions to metaphysics, arguably where he made his greatest impact.

On Berkeley’s immaterialist ontology, there are only two kinds of created entities: finite spirits and ideas. Ideas are passive, and so there is no genuine idea-idea causation. Finite spirits, by contrast, are truly causally active on Berkeley’s view, in that they can produce ideas through their volitional activity. Some commentators have argued that this account of causation is inconsistent. On their view, the unequal treatment of spirits and ideas is unfounded, for all that can be observed in either case are (...) mere patterns of regularity; Berkeley should therefore adopt a full-blown occasionalism and follow Malebranche in holding that God is the only true cause. Other commentators have argued that Berkeley denies the tenet that causes necessitate their effects – that is, the idea that causation involves necessary connection – and that in this way he can avoid inconsistency. This paper argues that Berkeley can subscribe to the thesis that finite spirits are truly causally active without falling into inconsistency, even if it is granted that Berkeleyan causes necessitate their effects. His differing treatment of spirits and of ideas is well founded, since ideas are transparent in a way our notions of spirits are not. (shrink)

Leibniz accepts causal independence, the claim that no created substance can causally interact with any other. And Leibniz needs causal independence to be true, since his well-known pre-established harmony is premised upon it. So, what is Leibniz’s argument for causal independence? Sometimes he claims that causal interaction between substances is superfluous. Sometimes he claims that it would require the transfer of accidents, and that this is impossible. But when Leibniz finds himself under sustained pressure to defend causal independence, those are (...) not the reasons that he marshals in its defense. Instead, deep into his long correspondence with Burchard de Volder, he gives a different sort of argument, one that has gone nearly unnoticed by commentators and has not yet been properly understood. In part, this is because the argument develops slowly over four years of correspondence. It emerges in early 1704, but it is formulated tersely and appears murky unless understood in light of Leibniz and De Volder’s tangled exchanges. There Leibniz argues that, on his distinctive ontology of an infinity of created substances, no two created substances could possibly causally interact, for roughly the same reasons that some Cartesians like De Volder deny interaction between minds and bodies on their substance dualist ontology. In this paper I draw out this lost argument, explain it and the metaphysics on which Leibniz builds it, and untangle Leibniz and De Volder’s exchanges concerning causation from which this argument results. (shrink)

The widespread mistrust of metaphysics-the main obstacle to the unification of physics and philosophy-is based on the myth that metaphysical claims cannot be falsified or verified, because they are supposedly true independently of empirical knowledge. This is not true of metaphysical naturalism, whose approach is to critically reflect on the theories and findings of all the empirical disciplines and abstract from them a theory about such general features of reality that no single empirical discipline can be the authority on. Causation (...) is such a feature, since its instances include anything from planetary motions to particle interactions, chemical reactions, biological functions, and closing a door. Consequently, a general account of causation is beyond any particular empirical discipline. Metaphysical naturalism takes a meta-perspective on the results of the empirical sciences and attempts to figure out how it fits together in a coherent whole, e.g. by offering a general account of causation. General accounts of this kind are falsifiable in so far as the theories are falsifiable from which they are generalizations. The paper also discusses some fundamental metaphysical principles implicitly assumed by the sciences generally, and why they imply that unification is methodologically virtuous. (shrink)

Ever since the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996, 1995) first entered the scene in the debate over consciousness many have taken it to show the limitations of a scientific or naturalist explanation of consciousness. The hard problem is the problem of explaining why there is any experience associated with certain physical processes, that is, why there is anything it is like associated with such physical processes? The character of one’s experience doesn’t seem to be entailed by physical processes and (...) so an explanation which can overcome such a worry must (1) explain how physical processes give rise to experience (explain the entailment), (2) give an explanation which doesn’t rely on such physical processes, or (3) show why the hard problem is misguided in some sense. Recently, a rather ambitious and novel theory of consciousness has entered the scene – Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi, 2008; Tononi et al., 2016) – and proposes that consciousness is the result of a specific type of information processing, what those developing the theory call integrated information. The central aim of this dissertation is to philosophically investigate IIT and see whether it has the ability to overcome the hard problem and related worries. I then aim to use this philosophical investigation to answer a set of related questions which guide this dissertation, which are the following: Is it possible to give an information-theoretic explanation of consciousness? What would the nature of such an explanation be and would it result in a novel metaphysics of consciousness? In this dissertation, I begin in chapter one by first setting up the hard problem and related arguments against the backdrop of IIT (Mindt, 2017). I show that given a certain understanding of structural and dynamical properties IIT fails to overcome the hard problem of consciousness. I go on in chapter two to argue that a deflationary account of causation is the best view for IIT to overcome the causal exclusion problem (Baxendale and Mindt, 2018). In chapter three, I explain IIT’s account of how the qualitative character of our experience arises (qualia) and what view of intentionality (the directedness of our mental states) IIT advocates. I then move on in chapter four to show why the hard problem mischaracterizes structural and dynamical properties and misses important nuances that may shed light on giving a naturalized explanation of consciousness. In the last and fifth chapter, I outline a sketch of a novel metaphysics of consciousness that takes the conjunction of Neutral Monism and Information-Theoretic Structural Realism to give what I call Information-Theoretic Neutral-Structuralism. (shrink)

This article presents a new approach to Japanese Zen Buddhism, alternative to its traditional views, which lack exact definitions of the relation between the meditator and the Buddha’s ultimate cause, dharma. To this end, I offer a comparative analysis between Zen Buddhist and Christian views of causality from the medieval to early modern periods. Through this, human causation with dharma in the Zen Buddhist meditations can be better defined and understood. Despite differences between religious traditions in deliberating human causal accounts, (...) there are parallel ways of thinking and practicing between Christian and Buddhist meditators. Firstly, I reconstruct three sorts of Christian scholastic theories of creaturely causality: conservationism, occasionalism, and concurrentism. Secondly, Zen Buddhist doctrines are introduced by placing particular emphasis on dharma as causal agency. Focusing on the Japanese Zen practice of meditation, finally I expound two theories of human causality: Sōtō Zen quasi-occasionalism following Master Dōgen’s teaching of enlightenment, and Rinzai Zen quasi-concurrentism given the meditator’s interactive kōan practice. Hence, my comparative analysis explains why religious beings are causally active, passive, or interactive in relation to the first agency, God or dharma, whereby systematically establishing alternative definitions of human causality in Zen Buddhism. (shrink)

This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many early modern thinkers did not (...) unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. -/- In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: -/- What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? -/- The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics. (shrink)

This book seeks to offer original answers to all the major open questions in epistemology—as indicated by the book’s title. These questions and answers arise organically in the course of a validation of the entire corpus of human knowledge. The book explains how we know what we know, and how well we know it. The author presents a positive theory, motivated and directed at every step not by a need to reply to skeptics or subjectivists, but by the need of (...) a rational individual to know the world. -/- The author draws heavily from Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts as presented in her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but departs from her epistemology—especially as explicated by leading exponents of her philosophy—in important ways. Areas of departure include the perception of entities and the role of probability theory in epistemology. -/- A main idea in the book is to begin the validation of the law of causality by identifying that existence causes our consciousness of it. Another key idea is this: The very fact that we perceive entities is the most basic and most extensive evidence that causal forces and causal interactions are regular. -/- Applying Ayn Rand’s principle that characteristics are ranges of measurement, the book offers a philosophical validation of “nonparametric predictive inference,” in turn providing an objective basis for prior probabilities in Bayesian analysis. -/- This book is primarily for a specialized readership—familiar with epistemological ideas and with Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts in particular. The last third of the book uses probability theory and mathematics somewhat beyond basic calculus, but less mathematical explanations are also included to make the general ideas accessible to lay readers. (shrink)