Causation and Ontic Indeterminacy

Res Philosophica 98 (1):43-61 (2021)
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Abstract

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.

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Chien-hsing Ho
Academia Sinica, Taiwan

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References found in this work

A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.
Can there be vague objects?Gareth Evans - 1978 - Analysis 38 (4):208.
A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 6. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 103-148.
A determinable-based account of metaphysical indeterminacy.Jessica M. Wilson - 2013 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 56 (4):359-385.
Vagueness in the world.Ken Akiba - 2004 - Noûs 38 (3):407–429.

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