Causation

Ordinary efficient causation is characterized as the cooperative manifesting of powers. Thus regarded, instances of causation could be seen as bringings about. Given that the identity of a power hinges on what it is a power for (in concert with various reciprocal powers), causal relations would turn out to be ‘internal’, fully deterministic relations: if you have the powers distributed as they are, if you have this dispositional array, this ‘dispositional matrix’, you have the manifestations. Spontaneity would enter the picture if some manifestations were unilateral, as is apparently so in the case of the decay of an unstable element. A conception of this kind—an Aristotelian conception—could be contrasted with a competing Humean conception of causation that appeals to laws, contingent external factors taken to underlie causal sequences. Such laws would in no sense govern objects’ behavior.

Roots of Things

This chapter returns to idea that the manifest image concerns a higher-level reality, dependent on, but distinct from a more fundamental reality, the characterization of which falls to physics, noting that a more appealing option is available. Although the universe depicted by physics is apparently at odds with the Aristotelian character of the manifest image, the two images are not images of distinct realities, but different ways of depicting a single reality. The possibility that the scientific image is Humean in the manner of Lewis and Williams is explored and its implications for change and efficient causation discussed, setting the stage for Chapter 13, which concerns the reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images.

Productive Thoughts

We often experience that we have ideas in our mind, which present possible things and incite us to produce some of them. But how can our ideas be intentional? And how can they give rise to actions? In his theory of exemplar causes, Suárez examines both problems and offers a comprehensive theory. The paper first discusses his solution to the intentionality problem, arguing that he subscribes to an act theory, according to which ideas are mental acts that are about something in virtue of their specific content. The paper then reconstructs his solution to the causation problem, showing that he appeals to efficient causation: ideas are powers and hence efficient causes that immediately produce other acts, thereby triggering the production of material things. The analysis of both problems sheds light on Suárez’s broader theory of cognitive activity by showing that he takes mental acts to be intrinsically intentional and productive.

Aristotle on How Efficient Causation Works

In this article I argue that, in light of his critique of rival theories of efficient causation, there is a puzzle latent in Aristotle’s own account. According to that critique, efficient causes must explain why their effects come about when they do rather than at some other time, a feature I call temporal contrastiveness. But it is not clear how the various elements of one of Aristotle’s preferred examples of such causation, the activity of experts, can enjoy this feature. Solving the puzzle yields a novel reading of Aristotle, one according to which experts, but not their characteristic arts or skills, are efficient causes.

A biochemically-realisable model of the self-manufacturing cell

As shown by Hofmeyr, the processes in the living cell can be divided into three classes of efficient causes that produce each other, so making the cell closed to efficient causation, the hallmark of an organism. They are the enzyme catalysts of covalent metabolic chemistry, the intracellular milieu that drives the supramolecular processes of chaperone-assisted folding and self-assembly of polypeptides and nucleic acids into functional catalysts and transporters, and the membrane transporters that maintain the intracellular milieu, in particular its electrolyte composition. Each class of efficient cause can be modelled as a relational diagram in the form of a mapping in graph-theoretic form, and a minimal model of a self-manufacturing system that is closed to efficient causation can be constructed from these three mappings using the formalism of relational biology. This Fabrication-Assembly or (F,A)-system serves as an alternative to Robert Rosen's replicative Metabolism-Repair or (M,R)-system, which has been notoriously problematic to realise in terms of real biochemical processes. A key feature of the model is the explicit incorporation of formal cause, which arrests the infinite regress that plagues all relational models of the cell. The (F,A)-system is extended into a detailed formal model of the self-manufacturing cell that has a clear biochemical realisation. This (F,A) cell model allows the interpretation and visualisation of concepts such as the metabolism and repair components of Rosen's (M,R)-system, John von Neumann's universal constructor, Howard Pattee's symbol-function split via the symbol-folding transformation, Marcello Barbieri's genotype-ribotype-phenotype ontology, and Tibor Gánti's chemoton. The (F,A) cell model also teaches us that, from the cell up to ecosystems, human organisations and societies, the internal context that allows members to function efficiently has agency, and should therefore be actively maintained from within by those very members.

Early Stoic Determinism

This chapter pursues the question how teleological elements and efficient causation were merged in early Stoic cosmology. Stoic determinism is originally introduced in teleological terms, built on a distinction between a global and an inner-worldly perspective on events, in which Nature is the global active principle that determines all inner-worldly events. Additionally, Chrysippus’ efficient causality connects inner-worldly causes and their effects and is used to construct a contemporary-style universal causal determinism. The teleological and seemingly mechanical elements are combined in the early Stoic concept of fate (heimarmenē). The Stoics present details of this combination in biological and psychological analogies. It emerges that the early Stoic theories of Nature as world seed and world soul and world agent offer a fascinating solution to the question how science and theology, in particular predetermination, can be joined consistently within cosmology: theological and scientific explanation of the world are two complementary explanations of the same thing.

Potens per accidens sine accidentibus: Ockham on Material Substances and Their Essential Powers

Medieval scholastics share a commitment to a substance-accident ontology and to an analysis of efficient causation in which agents act in virtue of their powers. Given these commitments, it seems ready-made which entities are the agents or powers: substances are agents and their accidents powers. William of Ockham, however, offers a rather different analysis concerning material substances and their essential powers, which this article explores. The article first examines Ockham’s account of propria and his reasons for claiming that a material substance is essentially powerful sine accidentibus. However, the article subsequently argues that, given Ockham’s reductionism about material substance, only substantial forms – never substances – are truly agents and powers. Thus, a material substance is essentially powerful but only by courtesy – per accidens, as Ockham calls it – because it has a non-identical part, its substantial form, which does all the causal work by itself, per se.

Stability and robustness of asymptotic autocatalytic systems

Here, we address the consequences of the extension in the space of a simple model of a system that is closed to efficient causation: the (M,R)-system model. To do so, we use a diffusion term to describe the collective motion of the nutrients’ concentration across the compartmentalized space that defines the organism. We show that the non-trivial stable steady state remains despite such generalization, as long as the system is small enough to deal with the transport of the precursors to feed the entire protocell and dispose of a sufficient concentration of it in its surroundings. Such consideration explains the emergence of a bifurcation with two parameters that we characterize. Finally, we show that the robustness of the system under catastrophic losses of catalysts also remains, preserving the original’s model character.

Mind–Body Interactionism

Chapter 3 argues that Descartes’ views about mind–body interaction are internally consistent, and compatible with his more general views about causation; thus neither Descartes nor his followers were forced to reject interactionism to maintain mind–body dualism. In some later works, Descartes says that corporeal motions “give occasion” to the mind to form ideas, which are innate to the mind. Section 3.3 argues that these remarks are consistent with his claims in earlier texts that corporeal motions produce or bring about ideas in the mind. This causal theory of sensation seems to be inconsistent with general causal principles that Descartes endorses elsewhere—such as the principle that a cause must contain, “formally or eminently,” whatever it brings about in its effect. But sections 3.3 and 3.4 show that Descartes’ general statements about efficient causation are compatible with the view that bodily motions have the power to elicit sensations in the mind.

Clauberg

Chapter 4 uses Clauberg’s theory of the mind–body union to show how a Cartesian thinker could respond to perceived problems with Descartes’ interactionism without adopting occasionalism. Section 4.1 presents Clauberg’s theory, according to which the mind is a “moral cause” of motions in the body, and corporal motions are “procatarctic causes” of ideas in the mind. Section 4.2 shows how Clauberg reconciles this account with the causal principles that “an effect may not be more noble than its cause,” and that a cause must formally or eminently contain whatever it brings about in its effect. Section 4.3 argues that Clauberg takes moral and procatarctic causes to be types of efficient causes. This is consistent with a broad conception of efficient causation, which section 4.4 argues Clauberg came to hold by the 1660s. The position that emerges thus represents an alternative to that of Cartesian occasionalists, such as Geulincx and Malebranche.