Aristotelian Powers at Work

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Agent ◽  
Mutual Interaction ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Fundamental Idea

This paper puts powers to work by developing a broadly Aristotelian account of causation, built on the fundamental idea (which Aristotle found in Plato, attributed by him to Heraclitus) that causation is a mutual interaction between powers. On this Aristotelian view, causal powers manifest them-selves in dependence on the manifestation of their mutual partners. (See also Heil, this volume; Mumford, this volume; and Martin 2008.) The manifestations of two causal power partners are co-determined, co-varying, and co-extensive in time. (See Marmodoro 2006.) Yet, causation has a direction and is thus asymmetric. This asymmetry is what underpins metaphysically the distinction between causal agent and patient. The proposed Aristotelian analysis of the interaction between mutually manifesting causal powers is distinctive, in that it pays justice to the intuition that there is agency in causation. That is, agency is not a metaphorical way of describing what causal powers do. For some powers, it is a way of being that instantiates the non-anthropomorphic sense in which powers are causal agents. This point is brought out in the paper in relation to the explanation of the concept of change. In an Aristotelian fashion, the paper argues that the distinction be-tween agent and patient in causation is pivotal to offering a realist account of causation that does not reify the interaction of the reciprocal causal partners into a relation. On the proposed view, the interaction between mutually manifesting causal partners consists in the power of one substance being realized in another substance. Specifically, the agent’s causal powers metaphysically belong to the agent, but come to be realized in the patient. The significance of this is that the interaction of the agent’s and the patient’s powers is not a relation; rather, it is an ex-tension of the constitution of the agent onto the patient, which occurs when agent and patient interact and their powers are mutually manifested. Thus the proposed Aristotelian account of causation explains the mutual interaction between manifestation partners—potentiality, agency, and change—as irreducible to one another, but interconnected.

scholarly journals The Roots of Occasionalism? Causation, Metaphysical Dependence, and Soul-Body Relations in Augustine

Vivarium ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tamer Nawar
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Dependence Relations ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Metaphysical Dependence

Abstract 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.

scholarly journals Why Rosenberg and Kaplan's attempt to reconcile physicalism and antireductionism concerning biology is unsatisfactory

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Slobodan Perovic
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Molecular Systems ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
Biological Laws ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Physical Laws

A. Rosenberg and D. Kaplan argue that their account of the Principle of Natural Selection (PNS), as a law of physical systems (including those systems studied by biology) underived from familiar physical laws, provides the precisely explanatory autonomy of biology sought after by antireductionists, without violating the principles of reductive physicalism. I argue, however, that the possibility of the PNS being an underived law of physical systems may be neutral to the explanatory autonomy of biology. In fact, if wedded with reductive physicalism (the possibility considered by these authors), it may yield only a very limited explanatory autonomy of biology, no stronger than the quasi-autonomy generally ascribed to it by reductionists. In the physicalist world, the PNS is operational and thus discoverable at the higher ontological levels (those concerning living cells, individuals, groups, populations and species), because the operation of a law concerning higher-level systems is grounded in its operation at the lower levels (atoms and molecules). Consequently, in terms of the explanatory criterion, a generalization discovered by biologists may be established as a law only if its status is confirmed in the form of its applicability to molecular and other systems studied by chemistry and physics. Otherwise, there is a danger that it could be a 'just so story.' The authors' narrow understanding both of antireductionism and biological laws as reducible to those concerning molecular systems provides only an illusory vindication of the explanatory autonomy: in the case of the PNS, although biologists happened to be the first to utilize it, their research concerning cells, individuals, populations and species could not possibly have established it as a law. This results, at best, in the inter-theoretic irreducibility of molecular biology as a discipline of physical science. I argue that a substantial explanatory autonomy of biology concerns the causal powers of biological systems at multiple levels, where the PNS, or any other biological law, is a basic law of nature in that it is concerned with the entities whose causal power is irreducible to that of the lower-level entities. Thus, only if confirmable at the levels higher than the molecular, could the generalizations discovered by biologists reflect such autonomy.

Causal Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Richard Corry
Keyword(s):  
Force Fields ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Conditional Analysis ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Reductive Explanation ◽  
Causal Influence

This chapter investigates the ontology of causal power and causal influence that was suggested by the discussion of reductive explanation in the previous two chapters. In particular, it is suggested that we should understand causal powers to be dispositions to manifest causal influence. Such powers, it is shown, can be given a conditional analysis that is less susceptible to counterexamples than conditional analyses of dispositions more generally. It is further argued that the conditional analysis can be extended to cover multi-track powers by using functions, rather than conditionals, to describe powers. Functional descriptions of powers connect nicely to the descriptions of force fields that one finds in physics, suggesting that we can interpret forces as influences in the sense described here.

Scepticism, Causal Science and ‘The Old Hume’

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Subjective Impression ◽  
Pyrrhonian Scepticism

This paper replies to Peter Millican (Mind, 2009), who argues that Hume denies the possible existence of causal powers which underlie the regularities that we observe in nature. I argue that Hume's own philosophical views on causal power cannot be considered apart from his mitigated skepticism. His account of the origin of the idea of causal power, which traces it to a subjective impression, only leads to what he calls ‘Pyrrhonian scepticism’. He holds that we can only escape such excessive skepticism by way of a natural judgment based on the association of ideas, which forms the basis of what he calls ‘a legitimate ground of Assent’.

scholarly journals Of Babies and Bathwater. A Review of Tuukka Kaidesoja Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-331
Author(s):  
Dave Elder-Vass
Keyword(s):  
Critical Realism ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Realist Ontology

AbstractTuukka Kaidesoja’s new book is a welcome addition to the literature on critical realism. He shows good judgement in defending Roy Bhaskar’s argument for causal powers while criticising its framing as a transcendental argument. In criticising Bhaskar’s concept of a real-but-not-actual ontological domain, however, he discards an essential element of a realist ontology, even a naturalised one: a recognition of the transfactual aspect of causal power.

scholarly journals Emotions and Emergence

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Lamb-Books
Keyword(s):  
Critical Realism ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Social Emotion ◽  
Sociology Of Emotion ◽  
Historical Sequences ◽  
Emotion Labels

The sociology of emotion remains divided. One group of social scientistsadheres closely to positivism and formulates lengthy lists of abstractpropositions and predictions (Collins, Turner, Kemper, etc.). In contrast,the other group’s epistemology is enmeshed in interpretivism and producesthick-descriptions of emotion labels, scripts, and understandings(Hochschild, Katz, Wetherell, etc.). Neither positivist nor interpretivistapproaches adequately theorize the causal and conjunctural status of humanemotions in social-historical sequences; thus, they both fail to show how,why, and when accounts of emotional states may be necessary in socialexplanations. Critical realism (CR) offers a better way to conceptualizethe influence of the psychophysiological subsistence of emotion withinsocial interactions. A CR-inspired approach to the sociology of emotionshould include three insights: (1) *Emotions as Evolved Capabilities:* Fromour evolutionary prehistory, humans have inherited distinctive emotionalcapabilities, including a complex palette of emotional experience andimpressive emotional mechanisms for rapid-fire sublinguistic communication.(2) *Emotions as Emergent Causal Powers:* Human emotions are themselves‘emergent’ neurophenomenological entities belonging to themicrosociological domain of ontology. Emotional experiences emerge from butare not reducible to labels, bodies, gestures, minds, social situations,scripts, etc. Integrating these multicomponent ingredients, thepsychophysiological coherence of emotions indicates the existence ofemergent properties, including possibilities of upward and downwardcausation. (3) *Emotions as Situational Dispositions*: Emotions realizetheir causal power as psychological dispositions to action, inaction, andcommunication. By embracing critical realism, sociologists can avoid bothan upward conflation of emotion into higher-level social structures, likelanguage (an error of the interpretivists), as well as a downward reductionof the psychology of social emotion to neurobiology or behavioralism (anerror of the positivists).

The Doctrine of Occasionalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
Divine Concurrence ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Scholastic Tradition

Chapter 1 explains the doctrine of occasionalism. Section 1.1 unpacks the occasionalist claim that God is the only efficient cause, by explaining the concept of an efficient cause, as it was typically understood in medieval and early modern texts. Section 1.2 contrasts occasionalism with a theory of divine providence developed by Thomas Aquinas, which says that God “concurs” with the actions of created substances. Section 1.3 clarifies the difference between occasionalism and the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence using the notion of a causal power: According to this analysis, occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. Malebranche expresses this claim by saying that created beings are “occasional causes” that merely “give occasion” to God’s actions. However, section 1.4 argues that there is also a Scholastic tradition that uses terms such as “occasion” and “occasional cause” to refer to a type of true efficient cause.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Salt Rocks ◽  
The World

Causal powers are ubiquitous. Electrons are negatively charged; they have the power to repel other electrons. Water is a solvent; it has the power to dissolve salt. Rocks are hard; they have the power to break windows. We use concepts of causal powers and their relatives—dispositions, capacities, abilities, and so on—to describe the world around us, both in everyday life and in scientific practice. But what is it about the world that makes such descriptions apt? While most philosophers agree it is appropriate to use causal power concepts to describe the world, there is substantive disagreement about what it is that makes it appropriate.

scholarly journals Kant’s Causal Power Argument Against Empirical Affection

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Jonas Jervell Indregard
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Spatial Effects ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
The Right

AbstractA well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal or both. I argue that, according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves.

scholarly journals Collective Intentionality and Causal Powers

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Elder-Vass
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Minimal Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractBridging two traditions of social ontology, this paper examines the possibility that the concept of collective intentionality can help to explain the mechanisms underpinning the causal powers of some social entities. In particular, I argue that a minimal form of collective intentionality is part of the mechanism underpinning the causal power of norm circles: the social entities causally responsible for social norms. There are, however, many different forms of social entity with causal power, and the relationship of collective intentionality to these causal powers varies, depending on the form of the mechanism underpinning the power concerned. Some powers depend on collective intentionality, and others do not.

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