Kant’s Theory of Divine and Secondary Causation

This chapter examines Kant’s theory of the relation between God’s causal activity in the world and so-called “secondary” causation, the causality of created beings. The central question he faces here is the traditional one for a theistic metaphysics: How does the activity of God viewed as primordial creator and conserver of the world relate in general to the causal activity, if any, of created beings? His own evolving account of the divine causal role is shaped by his ongoing engagement with three competing theories of divine causation distinguished in late scholastic philosophy, and vigorously debated in the modern period by Malebranche and Leibniz. It is shown here that the most significant milestone in the emergence of Kant’s mature account does not lie in his transition from pre-Critical to Critical philosopher, but in an earlier one from necessitarian to libertarian on human agency.

E. J. Lowe and Divine Causal Agency

In this essay, I apply Lowe’s theory of rational agency to God’s causal activity. I argue that Lowe’s account fits well the traditional notions that God acts in the world for reasons. In contrast to Lowe’s analysis of human causal agency, I argue that in the divine case, reasons for acting are not constituted by needs. They are constituted by God’s desires or plans. The fit between Lowe’s account of causal agency and the contours of divine causal agency motivate an argument in favor of Lowe’s theory. Any philosopher who is a theist ought to think Lowe’s account is likely to be true.

Distinguishing Different Levels of Consciousness using a Novel Network Causal Activity Measure

Characterizing consciousness, the inner subjective feeling that is present in every experience, is a hard problem in neuroscience, but has important clinical implications. A leading neuro-scientific approach to understanding consciousness is to measure the complex causal neural interactions in the brain. Elucidating the complex causal interplay between cortical neural interactions and the subsequent network computations is very challenging. In this study, we propose a novel quantitative measure of consciousness - Network Causal Activity - using a recently proposed Compression-Complexity Causality measure to analyze electrocorticographic signals from the lateral cortex of four monkeys during two states of consciousness (awake and anaesthesia). Our results suggest that Network Causal Activity is consistently higher in the awake state as compared with anaesthesia state for all the monkeys.

What It All Comes Down To

This chapter assembles the pieces of the puzzle, reconstructing Sthiramati’s argument in his commentary on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśika that all language use is metaphorical. It demonstrates how Sthiramati joins many of the elements introduced in the previous chapters of this book into an innovative philosophical theory of meaning. The innovation lies in tying together, through the pan-figurative view, the Yogācāra understanding of the causal activity of consciousness with a linguistic theory of sense. This theory enabled Sthiramati to present a unique understanding of discourse that distinguishes among varying levels of truth within the conventional realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra’s soteriological and theoretical needs, and most important, allowed Sthiramati to defend the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical discourse in the face of the Madhyamaka’s radical conventionalism. This suggests that the prominent dispute between the early Yogācāra and the Mādhyamika turned on linguistic rather than ontological issues.

Aquinas’ Ontology of Transeunt Causal Activity

This paper reconstructs and analyzes Thomas Aquinas’ intriguing views on transeunt causal activity, which have been the subject of an interpretive debate spanning from the fifteenth century up until the present. In his Physics commentary, Aquinas defends the Aristotelian positions that (i) the actualization of an agent’s active potential is the motion that it causes in its patient and (ii) action and passion are the same motion. Yet, in other texts, Aquinas claims that (iii) action differs from passion and (iv) “action is in the agent” as subject. This paper proposes a solution for how to reconcile Aquinas’ varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. In addition to advancing understanding of Aquinas’ views on causal activity, the paper also offers insights into more general topics in his thought, such as the relationship between actualities and accidents and the nature of extrinsic accidents.