The standard objection to dualist theories of mind is that they seemingly cannot account for the obvious fact that mental phenomena cause our behaviour. On the plausible assumption that all our behaviour is physically necessitated by entirely physical phenomena, there appears to be no room for dualist mental causation. Some argue that dualists can address this problem by making minimal adjustments in their ontology. I argue that no such adjustments are required. Given recent developments in philosophy of causation, it is (...) plausible that mental phenomena cause behaviour in standard dualist ontologies. (shrink)

Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...) by proposing the etiological stance as a comprehensive approach to identify modifiable causes of illness. (shrink)

The ‘no-difference problem’ challenges us to explain in which way the occurrence of an aggregate effect gives us reason to act in a specific way, although our individual actions make no difference to the effect’s occurrence. When discussing this problem, philosophers usually distinguish between so-called ‘triggering cases’, where the aggregate effect in question is brought about upon reaching a precise threshold, and ‘non-triggering cases’, in which no such precise threshold exists. However, despite their relevant differences, it is widely assumed not (...) only that both categories of cases confront us with the same moral problem, but also that this problem should be solved in the same way no matter which category we are considering. In this paper, I argue that this assumption is mistaken by showing that non-triggering cases pose very different moral problems than triggering cases unless very specific and, arguably, unlikely assumptions in neighbouring debates about causation and decision-making under indeterminacy hold. (shrink)

Can Contemporary Science Inspire Philosophical and Theological Reflection on Causality? The cooperation between natural science, philosophy, and theology in an analysis of the causal structure and co-dependency of entities in the universe seems to be both legitimate and expected. It turns out, however, that in practice it oftentimes raises some tensions, questions and difficulties, leading to the development of alternative and in a sense competitive models of causality and of God’s action in the world. What is more, the attitude of (...) natural sciences since modernity, concentrated on gaining knowledge about natural phenomena to predict and control them, without trying to determine the nature of their ultimate causes, Humean criticism and rejection of the concept of causality as such, and concentration of analytic philosophers on the description of what accompanies phenomena classified as causal, leaving aside the question of the metaphysical status of causes and effects – they all seem to make impossible an interaction and mutual reference of contemporary science, philosophy, and theology in their reflection on the topic of causation. The main goal of this article is to defend the thesis about the possible and actual influence of scientific analysis of cause and effect relationships on the philosophical and theological reflection on causation, not only in the Middle Ages and Modernity, but also in contemporary thought. The presentation of the latest positions in the debate on divine action in the natural world will be followed by an argument in favor of the relevance of the model developed by philosophers and theologians representing the Thomistic school. (shrink)

Philosophers discussing causation take on, as one of their responsibilities, the task of specifying an ontology of causation. Both standard and non-standard accounts of that ontology make two assumptions: that the ontological category of causal relata admits a unique specification, and that cause and effect are of the same ontological type. These assumptions are rarely made explicit, but there is in fact little reason to think them true. It is argued here that, if the question has any interest, there are (...) some considerations in favor of rejecting Uniqueness and Uniformity, no good reasons in favor of them, but good reason to think that we are not in a position to make a decisive pronouncement, since some of the information needed to make a judgement on the matter is empirical in character. Philosophers have therefore made two mistakes about the relata of causation: one is to have accepted unwarranted restrictions on the categories pertinent to causation; the other is to have wrongly assumed that we are in a position to name them. (shrink)

In this essay we show that some thesis -contended by some authors searching on physical causation- about causal pseudoprocesses, processes of which the most salient aspect seems to be travelling faster than the speed of light, must be rejected o seriously modified. Secondly, we will argue that there is just one non causal entities category and that special relativity does not provide any particular motivation to appeal to an ontological distinction based on identity over time. In addition, this conclusion we (...) will enable us to offer a more accurate definition of a pseudoprocess than that found in the relevant literature. In third place, we will show in some detail how such processes, understood the way that we suggest here, are and have been valuable methodological tools when studying –through usual measurement procedures- effective causal relations holding in the physical world. Finally, we will connect our conclusions with R. Torretti’s criticism on the relation between ordinary causation and governed-by-differential-equations physical processes and we will show that, although neutral on his anthropocentric background, the account here argued provides, against what Torretti claims, a natural explanation to the physical connection between ordinary causation and causal processes such as studied by physics. (shrink)

Amalgamating evidence from heterogeneous sources and across levels of inquiry is becoming increasingly important in many pure and applied sciences. This special issue provides a forum for researchers from diverse scientific and philosophical perspectives to discuss evidence amalgamation, its methodologies, its history, its pitfalls, and its potential. We situate the contributions therein within six themes from the broad literature on this subject: the variety-of-evidence thesis, the philosophy of meta-analysis, the role of robustness/sensitivity analysis for evidence amalgamation, its bearing on questions (...) of extrapolation and external validity of experiments, its connection with theory development, and its interface with causal inference, especially regarding causal theories of cancer. (shrink)

The creators of equilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics developed a conception of processes which bears on metaphysical discussions of change, occurrents, and continuants and merits the attention of contemporary analytic metaphysicians. It concerns the macroscopic domain, from which metaphysicians normally take their examples, and is unjustly ignored on the grounds that it is not ‘fundamental science’. Why this often-voiced view should disqualify just thermodynamics, and not the broad range of considerations normally raised, is a moot point. But even if there were (...) an adequate reductive argument, that wouldn’t eliminate the ontological claims. It is argued that processes cannot be defined as changes in the state of enduring objects, but should be considered autonomous entities. The relational character of processes involving several continuants is developed, alongside their mereological features and their relation to space and time. Some aspects of the historical development of the notions of reversible and irreversible processes in thermodynamics are taken up in the course of the discussion, but the paper is not concerned with the mathematical foundations of equilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics. 1 Introduction2 Change3 Distinguishing Processes from States4 Causings5 The Relational Character and Mereological Structure of Processes6 Concluding Comments. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that what makes our ordinary judgements about token causation true can be explicated in terms of interferences into quasi-inertial processes. These interferences and quasi-inertial processes can in turn be fully explicated in scientific terms. In this sense the account presented here is reductive. I will furthermore argue that this version of a process-theory of causation can deal with the traditional problems that process theories have to face, such as the problem of misconnection and the (...) problem of disconnection as well as with a problem concerning the mis-classification of pre-emption cases. (shrink)

In the following paper, I review and critically assess the four standard routes commonly taken to establish that gravitational waves possess energy-momentum: the increase in kinetic energy a GW confers on a ring of test particles, Bondi/Feynman’s Sticky Bead Argument of a GW heating up a detector, nonlinearities within perturbation theory, taken to reflect the fact that gravity contributes to its own source, and the Noether Theorems, linking symmetries and conserved quantities. Each argument is found to either to presuppose controversial (...) assumptions or to be outright spurious. I finally examine the standard interpretation of binary systems, according to which orbital decay is explained in terms of the system’s energy being via GW energy- momentum transport. I contend that a better interpretation, drawing only on the general-relativistic Equations of Motions and the Einstein Equations, is available - and in fact preferable; thereby also an inference to the best explanation for the vindication of GW energy-momentum is blocked. (shrink)

The idea that causation involves the production of changes due to the exertion of influence of something on something else—the core idea of causal realism—used to be the default view. Today this idea is at the heart of (i) transmission/causal process accounts, (ii) mechanistic accounts, and (iii) powers-based accounts. However, as I have previously argued (Ingthorsson 2021) the above-mentioned approaches are based—to varying degree—on the very problematic assumption that causal influence is essentially unidirectional; that it passes from whatever is the (...) cause to the effect. As first pointed out be Mario Bunge (1959), the idea that causal influence is unidirectional is incompatible with what is today considered a scientific fact, notably that all interactions are perfectly reciprocal; whenever any object exerts an influence on any other object, the latter simultaneously exerts the same kind of influence, of the same magnitude, on the former. Drawing on Bunge’s result, I have developed a fourth approach to efficient causation that accepts the reciprocity of interactions (Ingthorsson 2002 & 2021). According to this view a cause is not the action of something on something else that receives the influence, but the reciprocal action between powerful particulars which results in a modification of both sides, producing a new state of affairs. In this paper, I present the core ideas of the four different approaches to causal efficacy, what I think is problematic with the first three and finally attempt to compare how well the four approaches fare in explaining two often discussed types of causal interactions: (i) collisions between billiard balls, and (ii) how water dissolves salt. I argue that only reciprocal actions between powerful particulars can plausibly claim to fully account for these phenomena, in a manner compatible with the theories and findings of the natural sciences. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to make a case for the singularist view from the perspective of a mechanical theory of causation, and to explain what, from this perspective, causal generalizations mean, and what role they play within the mechanical theory.

In this dissertation, I develop and defend a model of causation that allows for dualist mental causation in worlds where the physical domain is physically complete. In Part I, I present the dualist ontology that will be assumed throughout the thesis and identify two challenges for models of mental causation within such an ontology: the exclusion worry and the common cause worry. I also argue that a proper response to these challenges requires a thoroughly lightweight account of causation, i.e. an (...) account that allows for causes to be metaphysically distinct from the phenomena that produce or physically necessitate their effects. In Part II, I critically evaluate contemporary responses to these challenges from the philosophical literature. In particular, I discuss List and Stoljar’s criticism of exclusion worries, Kroedel’s alternative dualist ontology, concerns about the notion of causal sufficiency, and Lowe’s models of dualist mental causation. I argue that none of these proposals provide independent motivation for a thoroughly lightweight account of causation and therefore leave room for improvement. In the first four chapters of Part III, I develop a thoroughly lightweight model of causation, which builds on interventionist approaches to causation. First, I explain how so-called ‘holding fixed’-requirements in standard interventionist accounts stand in the way of dualist mental causation. I then argue that interventionist accounts should impose a robustness condition on causal correlations and that, with this condition in place, the ‘holding fixed’-requirements can be weakened such that they do allow for dualist mental causation. I dub the interventionist model with such weakened ‘holding fixed’-requirements ‘insensitive interventionism’, argue that it can counter the exclusion worry as well as the common cause worry, and explain under which circumstances it would predict there to be dualist mental causation. Importantly, these circumstances might, for all we know, hold in the actual world. In the final three chapters of Part III, I defend insensitive interventionism against some objections. I consider the objection that causation must be productive, the objection that causes must physically necessitate their effects, and the objection that insensitive interventionism is too permissive. I respond by drawing from the literature on causation by absences and on the relation between causation and fundamental physics. Overall, insensitive interventionism performs as well as standard interventionist accounts. I conclude that insensitive interventionism is a credible model of causation. (shrink)

Concrete Causation centers about theories of causation, their interpretation, and their embedding in metaphysical-ontological questions, as well as the application of such theories in the context of science and decision theory. The dissertation is divided into four chapters, that firstly undertake the historical-systematic localization of central problems (chapter 1) to then give a rendition of the concepts and the formalisms underlying David Lewis' and Judea Pearl's theories (chapter 2). After philosophically motivated conceptual deliberations Pearl's mathematical-technical framework is drawn on for (...) an epistemic interpretation and for emphasizing the knowledge-organizing aspect of causality in an extension of the interventionist Bayes net account of causation (chapter 3). Integrating causal and non-causal knowledge in unified structures ultimately leads to an approach towards solving problems of (causal) decision theory and at the same time facilitates the representation of logical-mathematical, synonymical, as well as reductive relationships in efficiently structured, operational nets of belief propagation (chapter 4). (shrink)

This essay was completed in January 2016 and accepted for publication in a collection on occasionalism by Nazif Muhtaroglu. It attempts to update the doctrine of occasionalism to make it independent of theism and fit better with contemporary physics and a modern understanding of causation. We find that modern physics provides an avenue to support the essential core of occasionalism.

The thesis explores and suggests a solution to a problem that I identify in John McDowell’s and Lynne Rudder Baker’s approaches to mental and intention-dependent (ID) causation in the physical world. I begin (chapter 1) with a brief discussion of McDowell’s non-reductive and anti-scientistic account of mind and world, which I believe offers, through its vision of the unbounded conceptual and the world as within the space of reasons, to liberate and renew philosophy. However, I find an inconsistency in McDowell’s (...) criticism of Davidson’s anomalous monism (chapter 2), stemming from a tension between McDowell’s naïve common sense view of mental causation and an understanding of ordinary physical causation which I think McDowell ought to embrace, which portrays it as both objective, in the sense of being recognition- independent, and as belonging within the space of reasons. The question of the relation between these two concepts of causation is an aspect of the more general question of the relation between the space of reasons and the realm of law. In chapter 3 I begin examining the possibility that Baker’s account of material and property constitution could form the basis of a bridge between the two spaces, and find it generally promising. However, I find that her defence of her version of non-reductive monism against Kim’s causal arguments also runs into problems, which I attribute to the fact that she holds a view of causation as secondary to causal explanation. 2 3 In chapter 4 I develop an account of what I call manifest physical causation – of objective causal relations in the world of Sellars’s manifest image. Based upon McDowell’s transcendental empiricism, which takes the existence of the ordinary perceived world as a condition of the possibility of our possession of conceptual capacities, I contend that it is this picture of reality, rather than that of fundamental physics, that should be the starting point of our theorizing. Causation in the manifest image, I argue, covers the behaviour of the familiar physical world as well as that of its well-understood extensions into the special sciences and engineering. Manifest physical causation, on my account, is productive, acts through mechanisms which are almost entirely mechanical, electromagnetic, and/ or chemical, and is causally closed. In my view, normative, semantic, contentful property-instances are not part of the manifest physical causal nexus. In my final chapter I suggest a modification of Baker’s constitution account, which I call Constituted Causation, whereby higher-level – mental and other ID – causal relations are constituted, in favourable circumstances, by lower-level ones. ID causal relations belong in their own causal nexus but are connected to the manifest physical world through constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Causation and constitution are, respectively, intra- and inter-level relations, and they are non-overlapping. The constituted network of rational and normative relations bears, I believe, striking parallels with McDowell’s view of reality. According to Baker’s view of constitution, the essential properties of constituted entities subsume those of their constituters; extending this to my account enables us to say that the real cause and explanation of someone’s action is that they consciously performed it 4 rather than that certain manifest causal processes occurred at the lower level. (shrink)

I offer a novel defence of radically externalist theories of perception, via a strikingly spare and broadly physicalist metaphysics. The core, motivating claim is what I call a natural view of perception, according to which perception involves direct awareness of our environment, such that the phenomenology of experience consists of the worldly things perceived, as they appear to the perspective of the subject. To underpin this natural view, I propose a simple metaphysical picture of perception, which identifies the perceptual experience (...) with the relation of awareness holding between subject and object, a relation that can be described in familiar physical terms as a causal process involving the thing perceived and the perceiver. Distinctively, the simple metaphysical picture has no place for the notion of ‘experiences’ understood as distinctively ‘mental’ states or events internal or otherwise belonging to the subject. Although there is some limited precedent for the simple metaphysical picture of perception, I offer the first detailed argument for its role in underpinning the natural view. The thesis offers new and detailed arguments to show that the simple metaphysical picture can not only account for normal perceptual experiences, but can also accommodate and explain other forms of sensory experience that have widely been considered to undermine the natural view of perception. These ‘problem’ cases include perceptual illusion, hallucination, and the role of memory and beliefs in influencing how things appear perceptually. In all of these cases, the simple metaphysical picture accounts for the phenomenology of the experience purely in terms of awareness of worldly objects, albeit in some cases objects that are not currently present in the subject’s environment. The simple metaphysical picture thus promises to explain not just perceptual experience but phenomenal consciousness more generally. The natural view is explicitly a commitment of some varieties of naïve realism, but I argue that the two theses come apart. For one thing, the simple metaphysical picture offers a solution to hallucination and other ‘problem’ cases quite different to the solutions offered by naïve realists. However, the most striking and novel claim advanced here is that the natural view can be defended without a commitment to realism. In this regard, I cite evidence for the subject-relativity or experience-dependence of certain perceived qualities, notably colour, and show the simple metaphysical picture allows us to square this with the natural view that colours are ‘out there’ in the environment. I discuss the metaphysical implications of rejecting realism while adhering to the simple metaphysical picture, and outline a radical – and radically simple – metaphysics of the world in general that might preserve the natural view and accommodate the simple metaphysical picture of phenomenal consciousness more generally. This metaphysics takes the form of a process monism in which the governing metaphysical structuring principle is one of top-down determination, such that whole processes determine the nature of their constituent parts. (shrink)

Whether there exist causal relations between guns firing and people dying, between pedals pressed and cars accelerating, or between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, is typically taken to be a mind-independent, objective, matter of fact. However, recent contributions to the literature on causation, in particular theories of contrastive causation and causal modelling, have undermined this central causal platitude by relativising causal facts to models or to interests. This thesis flies against the prevailing wind by arguing that we must pay (...) greater attention to which elements of our causal talk vary with context and which elements track genuine features of the world around us. I will argue that once these elements are teased apart we will be in a position to better understand some of the most persistent problems in the philosophy of causation: pre-emption cases, absence causation, failures of transitivity and overdetermination. The result is a naturalist account of causation, concordant with the contextual variability we find in our ordinary causal talk, and parsimonious with respect to the theoretical entities posited. (shrink)