In order to enhance the “structural competency” of medicine—the capability of clinicians to address social and institutional determinants of their patients’ health—physicians need a theoretical lens to see how social conditions influence health and how they might address them. We consider one such theoretical lens, fundamental cause theory, and propose how it might contribute to a more structurally competent medical profession. We first describe fundamental cause theory and how it makes the social causes of disease and (...) health visible. We then outline the sorts of “fundamental interventions” that physicians might make in order to address the fundamental causes. (shrink)

The goal of research in social epidemiology is not simply conceptual clarification or theoretical understanding, but more importantly it is to contribute to, and enhance the health of populations (and so, too, the people who constitute those populations). Undoubtedly, understanding how various individual risk factors such as smoking and obesity affect the health of people does contribute to this goal. However, what is distinctive of much on-going work in social epidemiology is the view that analyses making use of individual-level variables (...) is not enough. In the spirit of Durkheim and Weber, S. Leonard Syme makes this point by writing that just “as bad water and food may be harmful to our health, unhealthful forces in our society may be detrimental to our capacity to make choices and to form opinions” conducive to health and well-being. Advocates of upstream (distal) causes of adverse health outcomes propose to identify the most important of these “unhealthful forces” as the fundamental causes of adverse health outcomes. However, without a clear, theoretically precise and well-grounded understanding of the characteristics of fundamental causes, there is little hope in applying the statistical tools of the health sciences to hypotheses about fundamental causes, their outcomes, and policies intended to enhance the health of populations. This paper begins the process of characterizing the social epidemiological concept of fundamental cause in a theoretically respectable and robust way. (shrink)

“Nobody had ever seen anything like this before.”“Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened.”There is a lot at stake in the current and forthcoming debates over what/why/how the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the US were unpredictable. These debates are crucial to both our assessments of backward-looking culpability and in the related but even more socially important task of guiding decisions about how to rebuild society after the pandemic subsides. The more we treat the harm as (...) unexpected—a fluke—the more we bolster the argument that no major structural changes need to be made to the US health system. I come to this question as one of... (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a critique of (actual and possible) causal theories of parenthood. I do not offer a competing account of who incurs parental obligations and why; rather, I aim to show that there are fundamental problems for any account of who acquires parental obligations and why by appeal to causal responsibility for a child’s existence. I outline and justify three criteria that any plausible causal account of parental obligation must meet, and demonstrate that attempting to fulfil (...) all three criteria simultaneously will give rise to one or both of two potentially insurmountable dilemmas. (shrink)

What does it mean to ‘calculate’—today? The pause introduced by the dash in this question marks the inescapable necessity of historicizing the problem of calculation. In his provocative essay, ‘Toward a Critique of the Ineffectual: Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle and the Construction of an Action without Ends’, Dimitris Vardoulakis proposes a philosophical and political programme in order to counter the negative effects of ‘Heidegger’s mistake’ (the conflation of causality and instrumentality through a mistranslation of Aristotle) that has led to the (...) theoretical fetishization of the ‘ineffectual’ (action without ends) in continental philosophy. In his conclusion, Vardoulakis advocates for a return to a politics and ethics of practical judgment that avoids the twin pitfalls of asserting either the impossibility or the absolute possibility of calculation. As he puts it, we need to acknowledge today ‘the exigency to calculate in the face of the provisional ends of instrumentality, or to perform the judgment that the Greeks called phronesis’ [2022: 244]. This is why we should keep in mind that Heidegger’s critique of technology in the 1950s was articulated in the context of the early Cold War, atomic warfare, and the rise of cybernetics. But, as many have recently argued, in the age of so-called ‘Big Data’, neoliberal rationality has increasingly replaced the epistemology of ‘causality’ with epistemologies of ‘correlation’: the algorithmic calculation of probabilistic relations between clusters of variables (based on information harvested by digital technologies designed for the total surveillance of human life). As Chris Anderson notoriously announced in his 2008 editorial, ‘The End of Theory’, ‘correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all’. He calls this epistemology ‘dimensionally agnostic statistics’ (the amount of data available can no longer be visualized in its totality). This worldview, however, functions as a basic attack on one of the fundamental (and still often repeated) ground-truths of modern science: correlation is not causation. As Anderson puts it: ‘There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough”’. In other words, the stakes of Vardoulakis’s argument must be tested against the rise of this neoliberal elimination of causality from corporate epistemologies that has led to an inversion of the terms of the Heideggerian critique of technology: as it turns out, technology has produced an ideology of pure instrumentality without causation. Today, there are only ends without causes. (shrink)

Essence and causation are fundamental in metaphysics, but little is said about their relations. Some essential properties are of course causal, as it is essential to footprints to have been caused by feet. But I am interested less in causation's role in essence than the reverse: the bearing a thing's essence has on its causal powers. That essencemight make a causal contribution is hinted already by the counterfactual element in causation; and the hint is confirmed by the explanation essence (...) offers of something otherwise mysterious, namely, how events exactly alike in every ordinary respect, like the bolt'ssuddenly snapping and its snapping per se, manage to disagree in what they cause. Some prior difference must exist between these events to make their causal powers unlike. Paradoxically, though, it can only be in point of a property, suddenness, which both events possess in common. Only by postulating a difference in themanner — essential or accidental — of the property's possession is the paradox resolved. Next we need an account of causation in which essence plays an explicit determinative role. That account, based on the idea that causes should becommensurate with their effects, is thatx causesy only if nothing essentially poorer would have done, and nothing essentially richer was needed. (shrink)

Fundamental Theory has been called an "unfinished symphony" and "a challenge to the musicians among natural philosophers of the future". This book, written in 1944 but left unfinished because Eddington died too soon, proved to be his final effort at a vision for harmonization of quantum physics and relativity. The work is less connected and internally integrated than 'Protons and Electrons' while representing a later point in the author's thought arc. The really interested student should read both books together.The (...) physical and mathematical reasoning are very deep, but it is possible to enjoy much of the flavor of the book even without following everything. The tidbits given below illustrate Eddington's beautiful and mellifluous English style. This edition contains a clickable table of contents and some interesting illustrations.WARNING: Due to the complexity of the mathematical typesetting, the only way to reproduce this book has been as a series of scanned page images. We believe this work is scientifically and culturally important, and despite a few imperfections and the inevitably small print, have brought it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of Eddington's work. On a portable electronic reader the pages come out pretty small, but they are legible. On a desktop computer running the Amazon app, they are perfectly fine. We appreciate your understanding, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.TIDBITS:The number of protons and electrons in the universe would, in itself, be merely a matter of idle curiosity. But N has a more general significance as a fundamental constant which enters into many physical formulae. Its special interpretation as the number of particles in the universe arises in the following way. If we consider a distribution of hydrogen in equilibrium at zero temperature, the presence of the matter produces a curvature of space, and the curvature causes the space to close when the number of particles contained in it reaches a certain total; that number is N. The present investigation seeks to determine N directly from the principles of measurement. We have to show, not that there are N particles in the universe, but that anyone who accepts certain elementary principles of measurement must, if he is consistent, think there are. We have to express in mathematical symbolism what we think we are doing when we measure things; for if we had no conception of what we were doing, the results of the measurements would not persuade us to believe anything in particular. All our results are derived from the condition that the conceptual interpretation which we place on the results of measurement must be consistent with our conceptual interpretation of the process of measurement.If we play about with a pin and a meter standard, we do not become aware of any number in particular unless the standard has been graduated, or unless we use a process of displacement which we interpret as adding pin-extensions. The fact is that, although measurement is primarily a process involving four entities, the conceptual interpretation of measurement postulates in addition the existence (in the structure contemplated) as something referred to as Z. The existence of Z is the condition that makes graduation an exact concept. In the actual universe there exists a basis which is uniform to a very high approximation, and this serves for almost all purposes; but to the much higher approximation required in the calculation of N the ideal exact basis of uniformity does not exist. The finitude of N is, in fact, the cause of the failure of the approximation.It must be remembered that we are now working to what would ordinarily be considered a fantastically high approximation. For ordinary purposes a measurable has 16 eigenvalues; but under the super-magnification here employed (which is not content to overlook 1 part in 10E39) there is a fine structure which splits each of them into 16 components. (shrink)

Fundamental Theory has been called an "unfinished symphony" and "a challenge to the musicians among natural philosophers of the future". This book, written in 1944 but left unfinished because Eddington died too soon, proved to be his final effort at a vision for harmonization of quantum physics and relativity. The work is less connected and internally integrated than 'Protons and Electrons' while representing a later point in the author's thought arc. The really interested student should read both books together.The (...) physical and mathematical reasoning are very deep, but it is possible to enjoy much of the flavor of the book even without following everything. The tidbits given below illustrate Eddington's beautiful and mellifluous English style. This edition contains a clickable table of contents and some interesting illustrations.WARNING: Due to the complexity of the mathematical typesetting, the only way to reproduce this book has been as a series of scanned page images. We believe this work is scientifically and culturally important, and despite a few imperfections and the inevitably small print, have brought it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of Eddington's work. On a portable electronic reader the pages come out pretty small, but they are legible. On a desktop computer running the Amazon app, they are perfectly fine. We appreciate your understanding, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.TIDBITS:The number of protons and electrons in the universe would, in itself, be merely a matter of idle curiosity. But N has a more general significance as a fundamental constant which enters into many physical formulae. Its special interpretation as the number of particles in the universe arises in the following way. If we consider a distribution of hydrogen in equilibrium at zero temperature, the presence of the matter produces a curvature of space, and the curvature causes the space to close when the number of particles contained in it reaches a certain total; that number is N. The present investigation seeks to determine N directly from the principles of measurement. We have to show, not that there are N particles in the universe, but that anyone who accepts certain elementary principles of measurement must, if he is consistent, think there are. We have to express in mathematical symbolism what we think we are doing when we measure things; for if we had no conception of what we were doing, the results of the measurements would not persuade us to believe anything in particular. All our results are derived from the condition that the conceptual interpretation which we place on the results of measurement must be consistent with our conceptual interpretation of the process of measurement.If we play about with a pin and a meter standard, we do not become aware of any number in particular unless the standard has been graduated, or unless we use a process of displacement which we interpret as adding pin-extensions. The fact is that, although measurement is primarily a process involving four entities, the conceptual interpretation of measurement postulates in addition the existence (in the structure contemplated) as something referred to as Z. The existence of Z is the condition that makes graduation an exact concept. In the actual universe there exists a basis which is uniform to a very high approximation, and this serves for almost all purposes; but to the much higher approximation required in the calculation of N the ideal exact basis of uniformity does not exist. The finitude of N is, in fact, the cause of the failure of the approximation.It must be remembered that we are now working to what would ordinarily be considered a fantastically high approximation. For ordinary purposes a measurable has 16 eigenvalues; but under the super-magnification here employed (which is not content to overlook 1 part in 10E39) there is a fine structure which splits each of them into 16 components. (shrink)

Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...) accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that causation is to be explicated in terms of a kind of dependence between cause and effect. These “dependence” theories are opposed by “production” accounts which hold that there is some more fundamental causal “oomph”. A wide range of experimental research on everyday causal judgments seems to indicate that ordinary people operate primarily with a dependence-based notion of causation. For example, people tend to say that absences and double preventers are causes. We argue that the (...) impression that commonsense causal discourse is largely dependence-based is the result of focusing on a very narrow class of causal verbs. Almost all of the vignette-based experimental work on causal judgment has been prosecuted using the word “cause”. But much ordinary causal discourse involves special causal verbs, such as “burn” and “crack”. We find that these verbs display a quite different pattern from the verb “cause”. For instance, for absences and double preventers (Studies 1-3), we find that while people are inclined to say that X caused Y to burn, turn, crack or start, they are less inclined to think that X burned, turned, cracked or started Y. In Study 4, we find that for chains involving a distal and proximal event, people are inclined to say that the distal event is not a special cause of the outcome, though it is a “cause” of the outcome. Together, we find a surprising double dissociation between “cause” and a stock of special causal verbs. We conclude by suggesting that much commonsense causal judgment, which heavily trades in special causal verbs, might be better captured by production-based accounts of causation. (shrink)

Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that "matching" events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the principle, so construed, runs afoul of certain results in quantum mechanics. (...) In this paper a new formulation of the principle is offered that emerges from its use in evolutionary theory. This characterization identifies fairly general conditions in which postulating common causes will be more explanatory than postulating separate causes. (shrink)

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of (...) some bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes. (shrink)

The current paper synthesizes theory and data from the field of life history (LH) evolution to advance a new developmental theory of variation in human LH strategies. The theory posits that clusters of correlated LH traits (e.g., timing of puberty, age at sexual debut and first birth, parental investment strategies) lie on a slow-to-fast continuum; that harshness (externally caused levels of morbidity-mortality) and unpredictability (spatial-temporal variation in harshness) are the most fundamental environmental influences on the evolution and development of (...) LH strategies; and that these influences depend on population densities and related levels of intraspecific competition and resource scarcity, on age schedules of mortality, on the sensitivity of morbidity-mortality to the organism’s resource-allocation decisions, and on the extent to which environmental fluctuations affect individuals versus populations over short versus long timescales. These interrelated factors operate at evolutionary and developmental levels and should be distinguished because they exert distinctive effects on LH traits and are hierarchically operative in terms of primacy of influence. Although converging lines of evidence support core assumptions of the theory, many questions remain unanswered. This review demonstrates the value of applying a multilevel evolutionary-developmental approach to the analysis of a central feature of human phenotypic variation: LH strategy. (shrink)

An important distinction is that between selective abductions, which select an optimal candidate from given multitude of possible explanations, and creative abductions, which introduce new theoretical concepts and models. The article focuses on creative abductions, which are essential for scientific progress, although they are rarely discussed in the literature. Scientifically, fruitful creative abductions are demarcated from purely speculative abductions by means of three virtues which are possessed by the former but not by the latter: (i) providing unification, (ii) detecting common (...) causes and (iii) generating novel predictions by means of which they can be independently tested. Based on historical examples it is demonstrated that common cause abduction from correlated dispositions is the fundamental abductive operation by which new theoretical concepts and models are scientifically generated. Statistical factor analysis can be regarded as a statistical generalization of common cause abduction. (shrink)

This paper explores the scientific viability of the concept of causality—by questioning a central element of the distinction between “fundamental” and non-fundamental physics. It will be argued that the prevalent emphasis on fundamental physics involves formalistic and idealized partial models of physical regularities abstracting from and idealizing the causal evolution of physical systems. The accepted roles of partial models and of the special sciences in the growth of knowledge help demonstrate proper limitations of the concept of (...) class='Hi'>fundamental physics. We expect that a cause precedes its effect. But in some tension with this point, fundamental physical law is often held to be symmetrical and all-encompassing. Physical time, however, has not only measurable extension, as with spatial dimensions, it also has a direction—from the past through the present into the future. This preferred direction is time’s arrow. In spite of this standard contrast of time with space, if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetrical, they are indifferent to time’s arrow. In consequence, excessive emphasis on the ideal of symmetrical, fundamental laws of physics generates skepticism regarding the common-sense and scientific uses of the concept of causality. The expectation has been that all physical phenomena are capable of explanation and prediction by reference to fundamental physicals laws—so that the laws and phenomena of statistical thermodynam- ics —and of the special sciences—must be derivative and/or secondary. The most important and oft repeated explanation of time’s arrow, however, is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper explores the prospects for time’s arrow based on the second law. The concept of causality employed here is empirically based, though acknowledging practical scientific interests, and is linked to time’s arrow and to the thesis that there can be no causal change, in any domain of inquiry, without physical interaction. (shrink)

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of (...) some bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes. (shrink)

In the Archaic Geek world of epic poetry, the causes of things are shrouded in divine mystery; the gods intervene in human affairs, and bring about events, in a cruel and capricious fashion, according to their whims; Apollo visits the devastating plague of Iliad 1 on the Greek host to avenge Agamemnon's ill-treatment of one of his priests; Poseidon shakes the earth and angers the sea, bringing to destruction those who have incurred his ire, as does Zeus himself with his (...) thunderbolts. The gods take on human shape and intervene in battle with devastating effect. In tragedy, the houses of Atreus and of Laius are brought low when men offend against the gods. This article focuses on the explorations of the fundamental concepts of reasons and causation, and the problems of explanation, and argues that it is indeed reasonable to see in Presocratic thought the foundations of Western scientific explanation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Making Things Up, Bennett defends the intriguing idea that causation should be included among the building relations. I critique Bennett’s arguments for inclusion, and claim that inclusion distorts her own treatments of causation, relative fundamentality, and absolute fundamentality. Instead, I argue for treating causation and grounding as separate species of generative, explanatory difference-making.

One of the central aims of autism research is to identify specific neurodevelopmental mechanisms that cause and explain the visible autistic signs and symptoms. In this short paper, I argue that the persistent search for autism-specific pathophysiologies has two fundamental difficulties. The first regards the growing gap between basic autism science and clinical practice. The second regards the difficulties with demarcating autism as a psychiatric condition. Instead of the unremitting search for the neurobiological basis of autism, I suggest (...) that basic autism research should focus on experiences of impairment and distress, and on how these experiences relate to particular behaviors in particular circumstances, regardless of whether we are dealing with an autism diagnosis or not. (shrink)

BackgroundFear of cancer recurrence is an important cause of suffering for cancer survivors, and both empirical evidence and theoretical models suggest that prognostic uncertainty plays a causal role in its development. However, the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR is incompletely understood.ObjectiveTo explore the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR among patients with ovarian cancer.DesignA qualitative study was conducted utilizing individual in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer who had completed first-line treatment with surgery (...) and/or chemotherapy. Semi-structured interviews explored participants’ understanding of their prognosis; experiences, preferences, and attitudes regarding prognostic information; and strategies for coping with prognostic uncertainty. Inductive qualitative analysis and line-by-line software-assisted coding of interview transcripts was conducted to identify key themes and generate theoretical insights on the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR.ResultsThe study sample consisted of 21 participants, nearly all of whom reported experiencing significant FCR, which they traced to an awareness of the possibility of a bad outcome. Some participants valued and pursued prognostic information as a means of coping with this awareness, suggesting that prognostic uncertainty causes FCR. However, most participants acknowledged fundamental limits to both the certainty and value of prognostic information, and engaged in various strategies aimed not at reducing but constructing and maintaining prognostic uncertainty as a means of sustaining hope in the possibility of a good outcome. Participants’ comments suggested that prognostic uncertainty, fear, and hope are connected by complex, bi-directional causal pathways mediated by processes that allow patients to cope with, construct, and maintain their uncertainty. A provisional dual-process theoretical model was developed to capture these pathways.ConclusionAmong patients with OC, prognostic uncertainty is both a cause and an effect of FCR—a fear-inducing stimulus and a hope-sustaining response constructed and maintained through various strategies. More work is needed to elucidate the relationships between prognostic uncertainty, fear, and hope, to validate and refine our theoretical model, and to develop interventions to help patients with OC and other serious illnesses to achieve an optimal balance between these states. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to examine the claim that it would be possible for us now to do something which would be the posterior efficient cause of some past event. I am not prepared to discuss the physics of elementary particles, and I will not consider what is sometimes called time reversal. Rather my analysis will be limited to cases in which it is alleged that we, in a world of middle-sized physical objects where most causes precede or (...) are simultaneous with their effects, could conceivably do something so that something else should have happened. I will argue that some of the cases which meet this description are indeed backwards causation if one is prepared to make certain assumptions about time. I will not evaluate these assumptions; rather I will try to clarify them and to make plain their implications for causality. For the argument about backwards causation is most fundamentally, or so I will try to show, an argument about the nature of time. (shrink)

Philosophers like to worry about luck. And well they should. Luck poses potential difficulties for knowledge, moral appraisal, and freedom. The primary target of this paper will be the last of these concerns . Recent arguments from luck have been levied against libertarian accounts of free will, including agent-causal ones. One general goal of this paper will be to demonstrate the truth of an often overlooked claim about responsibility-undermining luck. Part of this task will include illustrating what is genuinely worrisome (...) about luck in the context of free will. It will turn out that the problem is not fundamentally a problem of explanation. Another aim will be to argue that the truth of this claim about luck reveals a problem for event-causal libertarianism but has yet to reveal a problem for the agent-causal view. For the purposes of this paper, it will be assumed that luck does indeed undermine free action and moral responsibility. But it will be argued that agent-caused actions have not been shown to be "lucky.". (shrink)

Much contemporary egalitarian theorizing is broadly divided between luck egalitarians, such as G. A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer, and relational egalitarians, such as John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Josh Cohen, and me. The two camps disagree about how to conceive of equality: as an equal distribution of non-relational goods among individuals, or as a kind of social relation between persons - an equality of authority, status, or standing.This disagreement generates a second, about when unequal distributions of non-relational goods are (...) unjust. Luck egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it is accidental: when it is caused by morally arbitrary factors such as circumstances of birth. Relational egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it disadvantages people: when it reflects, embodies, or causes inequality of authority, status, or standing. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of the view that causation can be analyzed in terms of explanation. In particular, the following points are argued: a genuine explanatory analysis of causation must make use of a fully epistemological-psychological notion of explanation; it is unlikely that the relatively clear-cut structure of the causal relation can be captured by the relatively unstructured relation of explanation; the explanatory relation does not always parallel the direction of causation; certain difficulties arise for any attempt to construct (...) a nonrelativistic relation of causation from the essentially relativistic relation of explanation; and to analyze causation as explanation is to embrace a form of “causal idealism”, the view that causal connections are not among the objective features of the world. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the contrast between the two fundamentally opposed viewpoints about causality, namely causal idealism and causal realism. (shrink)

This paper explores the scientific viability of the concept of causality—by questioning a central element of the distinction between “fundamental” and non-fundamental physics. It will be argued that the prevalent emphasis on fundamental physics involves formalistic and idealized partial models of physical regularities abstracting from and idealizing the causal evolution of physical systems. The accepted roles of partial models and of the special sciences in the growth of knowledge help demonstrate proper limitations of the concept of (...) class='Hi'>fundamental physics. We expect that a cause precedes its effect. But in some tension with this point, fundamental physical law is often held to be symmetrical and all-encompassing. Physical time, however, has not only measurable extension, as with spatial dimensions, it also has a direction—from the past through the present into the future. This preferred direction is time’s arrow. In spite of this standard contrast of time with space, if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetrical, they are indifferent to time’s arrow. In consequence, excessive emphasis on the ideal of symmetrical, fundamental laws of physics generates skepticism regarding the common-sense and scientific uses of the concept of causality. The expectation has been that all physical phenomena are capable of explanation and prediction by reference to fundamental physicals laws—so that the laws and phenomena of statistical thermodynamics—and of the special sciences—must be derivative and/or secondary. The most important and oft repeated explanation of time’s arrow, however, is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper explores the prospects for time’s arrow based on the second law. The concept of causality employed here is empirically based, though acknowledging practical scientific interests, and is linked to time’s arrow and to the thesis that there can be no causal change, in any domain of inquiry, without physical interaction. (shrink)

Many non-physicalists, including Chalmers, hold that the zombie argument succeeds in rejecting the physicalist view of consciousness. Some non-physicalists, including, again, Chalmers, hold that quantum collapse interactionism, i.e., the idea that non-physical consciousness causes collapse of the wave function in phenomena such as quantum measurement, is a viable interactionist solution for the problem of the relationship between the physical world and the non-physical consciousness. In this paper, I argue that if QCI is true, the zombie argument fails. In particular, I (...) show that if QCI is true, a zombie world physically identical to our world is impossible because there is at least one law of nature, a fundamental law of physics in particular, that exist only in the zombie world but not in our world. This shows that philosophers like Chalmers are committing an error in endorsing the zombie argument and QCI at the same time. (shrink)

Since the fundamental challenge that I laid at the doorstep of the pluralists was to defend, with nonderivative models, a strong notion of genic cause, it is fatal that Waters has failed to meet that challenge. Waters agrees with me that there is only a single cause operating in these models, but he argues for a notion of causal ‘parsing’ to sustain the viability of some form of pluralism. Waters and his colleagues have some very interesting and (...) important ideas about the sciences, involving pluralism and parsing or partitioning causes, but they are ideas in search of an example. He thinks he has found an example in the case of hierarchical and genic selection. I think he has not. (shrink)

Anything other than paraphrasing the well-known Heraclitean aphorism would not be more appropriate to portray the crux of the contribution of the three philosophers of the Budapest School, Gábor Hofer-Szabó, Miklós Rédei and Lázló E. Szabó, in the ongoing discussion of the principle of the common cause . Indeed, ‘common causes love to hide’ and for that reason critics and aspirant falsifiers of PCC find correlations which, at a first level of analysis, might lack a common cause explanation. (...) But as the authors argue such correlations do not amount to disconfirming evidence for the principle, since PCC does not specify where to search for a common cause of a correlation; it just states that there is one. PCC is neither falsifiable, nor verifiable; it is a metaphysical doctrine that can only be assessed for its plausibility in the light of theories of empirical science. This idea fosters the investigation of the existence of common causes of correlations in two fundamental physical t .. (shrink)

A range of multidisciplinarily arguments and observations can and have been employed to challenge the view that the human relationship to nature is fundamentally a cognitive matter of collectively held cultural ideas and values about nature. At the same time, the very similar cognitivist idea of collective sharing of conceptual schemes, normative orientations, and the like as the engine of collective action remains the chief analytic tool offered by many influential philosophical and sociological theories of collective action and human sociality (...) generally. Critically discussing in empirical as well as theoretical contexts the prospects of cognitivism to account for the human collective causing of environmental problems, the paper illustrates the deficiencies of cognitivism about collective action and discusses the challenges facing a different way forward. (shrink)

Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interventionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways in which a class of (...) concepts can be said to depend on facts about their users. Three importantly different forms of dependence will emerge from the discussion: Pragmatic dependence on us: truth conditions for x-beliefs can be given by a function f \ of more fundamental physical structures making no explicit reference to human agents. But there are any other number of functions ) ontologically on a par with x and what explains the distinguished role f plays in our practical and epistemic lives are facts about us. Implicit relativization: truth conditions for x-beliefs are relative to agent or context; the context supplies the value of a hidden parameter that determines the truth of x-beliefs. Indexicals: like implicit relativization except that the surface syntax contains a term whose semantic value is context-dependent. I suggest that Price’s insights are best understood in the first way. This will draw a crucial disanalogy with his central examples of perspectival concepts, but it will refine the thesis in a way that is more faithful to what his arguments show. The refined thesis will also support generalization to other concepts, and clarify the foundations of the quite distinctive research program that Price has been developing for a number of years. (shrink)

Man and machine are rife with fundamental differences. Formal research in artificial intelligence and robotics has for half a century aimed to cross this divide, whether from the perspective of understanding man by building models, or building machines which could be as intelligent and versatile as humans. Inevitably, our sources of inspiration come from what exists around us, but to what extent should a machine's conception be sourced from such biological references as ourselves? Machines designed to be capable of (...) explicit social interaction with people necessitates employing the human frame of reference to a certain extent. However, there is also a fear that once this man-machine boundary is crossed that machines will cause the extinction of mankind. The following paper briefly discusses a number of fundamental distinctions between humans and machines in the field of social robotics, and situating these issues with a view to understanding how to address them. (shrink)

Genetic intervention is on the near horizon for the treatment of substance abu se. Genetic intervention involves a reprogramming of a person’s own genetic instructions so that that person will no longer have the physical craving for the drug of choice. Unlike pharmacologic intervention, genetic intervention will change the genetic identity of the person, albeit slightly. The legal issue is whether one has a fundamental right to this medical procedure. A fundamental right is one that the government cannot (...) deny without a compelling interest. The case law indicates that the right o f medical necessity applies when the person’s affliction is serious, there are no reasonable or effective alternatives, the person did not intentionally cause the condition, and the treatment is effective for the long term. Unlike the medical marijuana ph enomenon, genetic intervention is per se anti - drug, unrelated to illegal, recreational drug use, and on its face has a medical use. Legal doctrines to date though not directly on point are conceptually compatible with the existence of a fundamental right of medical necessity for genetic intervention. (shrink)

In the UK, many fundamentally important policy decisions that are likely to affect the relationship between citizens and care services are now made at the sublegislative level and without adequate ethical consideration and scrutiny. This is well exemplified in the proposed guidance on the disclosure of information on children. A recent consultation paper by the UK government on the subject proposes an approach that seeks a simple technical solution to a complex problem, emphasising control and surveillance. This reflects pressure to (...) be seen to act. The document fails with regard to ethical reflection appropriate to the complexity of the issue, an appreciation of complex relationships of trust, and a proper sense of the richness and complexity of the public interest. Such policies would, if implemented, fundamentally change the relationships between citizens and their carers, and among carers and the law and the state. This and similar proposals require far more ethical scrutiny and consideration of the public interest in the widest sense. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 3-4, pp 320 - 339 Thirteenth-century views on consequences have not yet received much attention. Authors of this period deserve closer scrutiny, because of their profound interest in the nature of consequence. The fundamental feature of a consequence was captured in the claim that its antecedent is the cause of its consequent. At the same time authors systematically discussed consequences in terms of truth-preservation. This paper considers the requirements of syllogistic argument and consequences (...) in general, including the role of ‘cause’ in the identification of syllogisms proper, looks at different descriptions of consequence, moves on to discussions of the syncategorema ‘_si_’ – in _syncategoremata_ treatises by Peter of Spain, Henry of Ghent, Nicholas of Paris and William of Sherwood, as well as some _sophismata_ tracts – and explores what thirteenth-century authors make of the truth-functional characterisation of consequence, showing how it clashes with the authors’ insistence on a causal connection between antecedent and consequent. (shrink)

In this highly original and important book, the author analyzes one of the fundamental questions of international relations: what causes war? Drawing on historical, statistical, and philosophical perspectives to produce an innovative theory, the author rejects the simplistic notion that war can be explained by some straightforward formula, yet demonstrates that there are basic similarities among the diverse origins of wars. Comparing various narrative accounts of the origins of wars, the author shows that enquiry into the causes of war (...) is inseparable from the question of responsibility. (shrink)

Ornaments are the most common and ubiquitous art form of the Late Pleistocene. This fact suggests a common, fundamental function somewhat different to other kinds of Paleolithic art. While the capacity for artistic expression could be considerably older than the record of preserved art would suggest, beads signal a novel development in the efficiency and flexibility of visual communication technology. The Upper Paleolithic was a period of considerable regional differentiation in material culture, yet there is remarkable consistency in the (...) dominant shapes and sizes of Paleolithic beads over more than 25,000 years and across vast areas, even though they were made from diverse materials and, in the case of mollusc shells, diverse taxonomic families. Cultural and linguistic continuity cannot explain the meta-pattern. The evidence indicates that widespread adoption of beads of redundant form was not only about local and subregional communication of personal identity or group affinity, but also an expansion in the geographic scale of social networks. The conformity of the beads grew spontaneously and in a self-organizing manner from individuals’ interest in tapping into the network as a means for spreading social and environmental risk. (shrink)

An attractive picture of the world is that some features are metaphysically fundamental and others are derivative, with the derivative features grounded in the fundamental features. But how do we have justified beliefs about which features are fundamental? What is the epistemology of fundamentality? I sketch a response in this paper. The guiding idea is that the same properties cause the same experiences. I argue that a probabilistic connection between epistemic fundamentality and metaphysical fundamentality is sufficient (...) for justified beliefs about the metaphysically fundamental. (shrink)

The paper defends the view that events are the basic relata of causation, against arguments based on linguistic analysis to the effect that only facts can play that role. According to those arguments, causal contexts let the meaning of the expressions embedded in them shift: even expressions possessing the linguistic form that usually designates an event take a factual meaning.However, defending events as fundamental relata of causation turns out to be possible only by attributing a – different – causal (...) role to facts as well. The role of facts in causation is characterized as «causal responsibility». This relation, and its connection to causation between events, is clarified by way of the analysis of different inference patterns between causal statements of the two sorts: statements linking events and statements linking facts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Can Creatures Cause Forms?Aquinas on Cosmology and EvolutionLucas PrietoThus formulated, the question may seem odd. It is enough to look at nature to see that many of the relations that are established between substances are causal relations that results in the production of a form. So, for example, the fire from a match in contact with a piece of paper produces fire, in such a way that the (...) agent causes a new form because it communicates its own actuality. In this sense, at the natural level, we can even say that all production involves the causation of a form. The question becomes meaningful, however, when we distinguish between being the cause of this form inasmuch as it actualizes a matter and being the cause of the form as such—that is, between causing a particular order in a matter and being the cause of the reason for this order.1 Continuing with the example: the fire of the match is specifically the same as the fire found in the paper, so that the former cannot be the cause per se of the fire of the latter—that is, the fire of the match is not that which gives reason for the formality of the fire—because in that case it would be the cause of its own formality. The argument leads us to postulate another agent that is the cause of fire as such.So, we can now ask: can creatures be ultimately responsible (at the created level) for this particular ontological configuration? That is, can creatures cause a natural form as such? Aquinas answers yes, and his answer is of particular importance in explaining the causal order among creatures [End Page 441] and the possibility of true specific novelty in the universe. In this article I will advance how Aquinas justifies ontological novelty by resorting to intra-mundane causes and then show how this causal model allows us to understand the transformism of species (evolution) in a Thomistic framework. To do so, we will formulate our argument in three steps: (1) first we will analyze the notion of form that Aquinas handles in order to understand also how it can be caused in an individual, (2) then we will study the various ways in which the causation of a form can occur, and (3) finally, we will apply these conclusions to the problem of evolution.Form and IndividualFor Aquinas, form is a fundamental ontological principle of the corporeal entity because it structures matter according to a determined order of perfection. By the form we can distinguish between different entities because a formal perfection supposes a certain term or limit of the act that implies the deprivation of the perfection of another form. A dog indicates a certain degree of perfection, but by the fact of being a dog it lacks the perfection of being a cat. Now, in the physical world, we find an innumerable diversity of entities that differ from each other not only in their form or essence, but also as individuals, which shows that, ultimately, the fundamental distinction is not between being a cat and being a dog, but between being this cat and being this dog, or more clearly, between this dog and that dog. Aquinas holds that this diversity and inequality, both specific and numerical, is something positively willed and caused by God as first agent.2 But does this mean that the diverse structuring of matter is produced by a special divine action? That is, is the formal difference the effect of a creative act of God?In the Summa theologiae, Thomas directly addresses this problem by asking whether creation is mixed in the works of nature and of the arts, which is equivalent, in the last analysis, to the question of the origin of novelty in the physical world.3 Indeed, when an entity is generated, a substance appears that is not absolutely contained in the preceding causes. The agent certainly communicates his actuality by resembling the effect to himself, but in the effect, there is always something else that escapes the essential principles. Therefore, how can this novelty of the effect be founded? Before answering this question... (shrink)

In the free-will discussion between Hobbes and Bramhall, Hobbes’s principle that actions are necessary is not immediately action-theoretic. The fundamental theoretical context of Hobbes’s explanation of action lies in an understanding of causation more generally. However, Hobbes’s action theory is not simply modeled after the account of cause and effect in his First Philosophy. It introduces a temporal qualification which ranks necessitarianism higher than First Philosophy does: not only a voluntary action, but also the determinate moment when the (...) mental act of volition is formed, is necessitated. My paper argues that this strengthening of causal necessity is due to the Hobbesian scheme of deliberation, which must be analyzed in terms of one distinctive kind of ‘mental discourse’ and practical reasoning, not merely in terms of a series of passions. For Hobbes, the impossibility of a direct representation of the future requires the mediation of a mental construction. (shrink)

In a range of human sciences, the human relationship to nature has often been viewed as driven fundamentally by religious, philosophical, political, and scientific ideas as well as values and norms about nature. As others have argued before, the emphasis on ideas and values faces serious problems in heeding the structural, socioeconomic quality of the human relationship to nature and thereby the deeply problematic structural character of the human environmental burden. At the same time, alleviating the structural environmental burden generated (...) by global industrial market society represents arguably the single most challenging task in addressing environmental problems. Critically explicating the tendency of our intellectual culture to produce ideological and psychologistic explanations of human ecologically consequential action, and human action more generally, can clarify the notion of the cultural causes of environmental problems and the character of the human collective causing them. Only a structuralist point of view can accommodate the diversity of our positions and perspectives toward nature in the global context in which environmental problems are caused. (shrink)

. My main claim is that explanations are fundamentally about relations between concepts and not, for example, essentially requiring laws, causes, or particular initial conditions. Nor is their linguistic form essential. I begin by showing that this approach solves some well-known old problems and then proceeds to argue my case using heuristic analogies with mathematical proofs. I find that an explanation is something that connects explanandum and explanans by apprehensible steps that penetrate into more fundamental levels than that of (...) explanandum. This leads to a deeper discussion of what it means to be more fundamental. Although I am not able to give a general definition, I argue that linguistic entities and empirical concepts are usually not fundamental, much relying on the distinction between complete and depleted ideas or experiences. (shrink)

Philosophers of science nowadays are inclined to believe in physical laws, but generally, like Hume and Russell, to reject causes. This paper urges the reverse. Explanatory practice in physics argues that we must take literally the causal stories that our theories provide, but the fundamental laws and equations that are essential to modern science are merely instrumental.

The aim of the article is threefold: to argue and motivate that unnecessary surgery is a worldwide phenomenon, that it exposes patients to unwarranted risks and that patients should actively participate in decision-making and take a shared responsibility to protect their interests. There is a firm belief that the enterprise of medicine is something of value – both intrinsically because being healthy is good and instrumentally since being healthy allows us to do what we wish to, to attain happiness and (...) to live valuable lives. However, this can only hold if treatment is justified in terms of accepted evidence-based criteria. Imperative for all forms of treatment, including costly and invasive investigations, this is particularly true for surgical interventions because no surgery is without risk. Surgery performed outside of the norms of accepted indications constitutes a grave form of assault. Medicine is a noble cause if we stick to the rules and help each other to do so. As professionals, our most fundamental regulation is by ourselves. (shrink)

Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the limits (...) of reductionism in molecular biology; and (c) the renewed interest in the nature of life as a genuine scientific problem. This essay examines these recent developments and considers the new epistemological roles being played by the organism in each of them. It also reflects on what the present resurgence of the organism means for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

The philosophical work of Jean-François Courtine suffers undeservedly from under-representation to English-speaking readers. Over the last fifteen years, his commentaries and translations have made available to French students of German idealism, significant works of Schelling and J. G. Hamann. Now the present collection of essays shows that Courtine is as much at ease in the universe of late idealism as he is before the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger et la Phénoménologie assembles articles and lectures published from 1978 (...) through the end of the 1980’s. If one were to imagine, for the sake of heuristics, a subtitle for the present work, it might read, “the cause of phenomenology and the possibility of a teleology of the I and the other.” Indeed, the first part of the book, “Phénoménologie et histoire de l’être”, examines the unfolding of Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology in light of the reciprocal questions ‘what is the meaning of Being?’ and ‘what is man?’. Courtine’s reading of the Heideggerian corpus is polemical to the extent that it argues for, and justifies, the essential continuity of the latter’s investigation into the meaning and historiality of Being, against interpretations that interpret the Kehre in Heidegger’s thought as a profound thematic rupture, with a view to highlighting discontinuities in that thought. Courtine’s reading also rejects claims that a surreptitious, formal anthropomorphism hides at the root of the analytic of Dasein. Instead, the tone of Heidegger et la Phénoménologie is set by Courtine’s arguments for reading Heidegger’s work as a comprehensive deconstruction of the philosophic tradition, committed to liberating the most radical, underlying sense of the meaning of Being. (shrink)

This paper offers two related things. First, a theory of singular causal statements attributing causal responsibility for a particular harm to a particular agent based on the conjunction of a positive condition (necessitation) and a negative condition (avoidability) which captures the notions of sufficiency and necessity in intuitive ideas about agent causation better than traditional conditio sine qua non based theories. Second, a theory of representation of causal issues in the law. The conceptual framework is that of Game Trees and (...) Games in Extensive Form. Causal conditions are defined set-theoretically over Game Trees; causal issues and fundamental distinctions (dependent versus independent intervening causes, foreseeability or not of harm etc.) arising in legal cases are accommodated by the device of a probability distribution over the game-tree representation of cases. (shrink)

Since the fundamental challenge that I laid at the doorstep of the pluralists was to defend, with nonderivative models, a strong notion of genic cause, it is fatal that Waters has failed to meet that challenge. Waters agrees with me that there is only a single cause operating in these models, but he argues for a notion of causal `parsing' to sustain the viability of some form of pluralism. Waters and his colleagues have some very interesting and (...) important ideas about the sciences, involving pluralism and parsing or partitioning causes, but they are ideas in search of an example. He thinks he has found an example in the case of hierarchical and genic selection. I think he has not. (shrink)

The language of medicine is an extension of everyday language by adding technical terms such as "appendicitis", "angina pectoris", "blood pressure" and the like. It is therefore characterized by semantic chaos. Most of its terms are either not defined or ill-defined. The chaos would not deserve any attention, however, if it were not practically detrimental in research and practice. The best way to prevent the damage it causes is to learn in medicine something about methods of scientific concept formation. The (...) present chapter provides a concise and unrivalled introduction to such a methodology. We shall discuss the main methods of scientific concept formation known today, that is, all methods of definition and explication. Our discussion divides into the following four sections and is based on, and extends, the most valuable pioneering studies by Carl Gustav Hempel and, especially, Patrick Suppes (Hempel, 1952; Suppes, 1957, 151–173, 246–260): 6.1 What a Definition is; 6.2 What Role a Definition Plays; 6.3 Methods of Definition; 6.4 What an Explication is. (shrink)