Causally powerful processes

Processes produce changes: rivers erode their banks and thunderstorms cause floods. If I am right that organisms are a kind of process, then the causally efficacious behaviours of organisms are also examples of processes producing change. In this paper I shall try to articulate a view of how we should think of causation within a broadly processual ontology of the living world. Specifically, I shall argue that causation, at least in a central class of cases, is the interaction of processes, that such causation is the exercise of a capacity inherent in that process and, negatively, that causation should not be understood as the instantiation of universal laws. The approach I describe has substantial similarities with the process causality articulated by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe for physical causation, making it plausible that the basic approach can be applied equally to the non-living world. It is an approach that builds at crucial points on the criticisms of determinism and universal causality famously articulated by Elizabeth Anscombe.

Models of downward motion and their metaphorical potential (in Russian and Chinese)

The paper analyses the hypothesis of a mental structure as movement models to categorize the changes by the example of variable representation of performance indicators of the downward direction in Chinese and Russian. The research materials are the lexical and semantic variants of indicators xia and c-1, including the dictionary definitions and semantic features described by Chinese and Russian scholars. By reconstructing the physical causation processes repre-sented by two indicators, we found that in the Chinese language consciousness, a human body is a landmark for determining “the TOP”/“the BOTTOM.” In Russian, it is another object. The principal figure in the anthropic-oriented model is the subject of cognition, combining the role of a landmark for determining “the TOP”/“the BOTTOM.” During the metaphoric im-plementation, SOMETHING “placed” originally in the area of “anthropic-oriented TOP” ap-pears in the area of “anthropic-oriented BOTTOM” as a result of the manipulation. Depending on the nature of SOMETHING, the correlations are formed: “the BOTTOM – the zone under control,” “the BOTTOM – the zone of certainty,” “the BOTTOM – the zone of embod-iment,” “the BOTTOM – the zone of passivity.” Three variations of the object-oriented model implementation were revealed: changes destroying the current situation, changes towards “decreasing,” and repositioning of SOMETHING. In general, when implementing an object-oriented model, the correlation between the idea of “being on something” and understanding “being” prevails. Thus, the variability of metaphorization of changes is explained by different motion models being implemented and is due to spatial localization being a landmark-dependent operation and variability of a landmark choice.

Problems with the "Problems" with Psychophysical Causation

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation.

Expectations affect physical causation judgments

When several causes contributed to an outcome, people often single out one as "the" cause. What explains this selection? Previous work has argued that people select abnormal events as causes, though recent work has shown that sometimes normal events are preferred over abnormal ones. Existing studies have relied on vignettes that commonly feature agents committing immoral acts. An important challenge to the thesis that norms permeate causal reasoning is that people's responses may merely reflect pragmatic or social reasoning rather than arising from causal cognition per se. We tested this hypothesis by asking whether the previously observed patterns of causal selection emerge in tasks that recruit participants' causal reasoning about physical systems. Strikingly, we found that the same patterns observed in vignette studies with intentional agents arise in visual animations of physical interactions. Our results demonstrate how deeply normative expectations affect causal cognition.

Living is Surviving

Beyond extrinsic survival (e.g., finding food, avoiding dangers, etc.), intrinsic survival demands continual internal repair and reconstruction to offset the effects of unrelenting internal decay and depletion. The organism must constantly re-produce the conditions of its own existence. The individual’s survival is nevertheless subordinate to that of the species, which is achieved through biological reproduction in the ordinary sense (i.e., assemblage of a working copy of the organism itself, capable of surviving and reproducing in turn.). This article relates these two types of reproduction to others, such as the reproduction of a picture, of a melody, of a movement. I believe all of these reproductive forms are based on a fundamental one, which is the condition of possibility of all forms of replication. This fundamental kind of reproduction resides in the spontaneous reproduction of events under physical causation. On this basis, I advance an interpretation of semiosis as a type of second-order causation: at the level of biosemiotic transactions, semiosis alters habits which are embodied in constraints that in turn determine the extent and direction of physical changes.

Problems with the “Problems” with Psychophysical Causation

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation.

Potentia, actio, vis: the Quantity mv2 and its Causal Role

This article aims to interpret Leibniz’s dynamics project (circa 1678–1700) through a theory of the causation of corporeal motion. It presents an interpretation of the dynamics that characterizes physical causation as the structural organization of phenomena. The measure of living force (vis viva) by mv2 must then be understood as an organizational property of motion conceptually distinct from the geometrical or otherwise quantitative magnitudes exchanged in mechanical phenomena. To defend this view, we examine one of the most important theoretical discrepancies of Leibniz’s dynamics with classical mechanics, the measure of vis viva as mv2 rather than ½ mv2. This “error”, resulting from the limits of Leibniz’s methodology, reveals the systematic role of this quantity mv2 in the dynamics. In examining the evolution of the quantity mv2 in the refinement of the force concept (vis) from potentia to actio, I argue that Leibniz’s systematic limitations help clarify dynamical causality as neither strictly metaphysical nor mechanical but a distinct level of reality to which Leibniz dedicates the “dynamica” as “nova scientia”.

The Ontology of E. J. Lowe’s Substance Dualism

E. J. Lowe’s model of psychophysical causation offers a way of reconciling interactive substance dualism with the causal completeness principle by denying the homogeneity of the causal relata—more specifically, by invoking a distinction between ‘fact causation’ and ‘event causation’. According to Lowe, purely physical causation is event causation, whereas psychophysical causation involves fact causation, allowing the dualist to accept a version of causal completeness which holds that all physical events have only physical causes. But Lowe’s dualist model is only as plausible as the distinction between fact and event causation upon which it rests. In this chapter it is argued that a suitable distinction between fact and event causation is difficult to maintain within most common ontological systems. It is examined whether accepting the four-category ontology that Lowe defends can alleviate the problem, but it is argued that it is not clear that it can.