A Powerful Particulars View of Causation

A Powerful Particulars View of Causation
Author: R.D. Ingthorsson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000361039

This book critically examines the recent discussions of powers and powers-based accounts of causation. The author then develops an original view of powers-based causation that aims to be compatible with the theories and findings of natural science. Recently, there has been a dramatic revival of realist approaches to properties and causation, which focus on the relevance of Aristotelian metaphysics and the notion of powers for a scientifically informed view of causation. In this book, R.D. Ingthorsson argues that one central feature of powers-based accounts of causation is arguably incompatible with what is today recognised as fact in the sciences, notably that all interactions are thoroughly reciprocal. Ingthorsson’s powerful particulars view of causation accommodates for the reciprocity of interactions. It also draws out the consequences of that view for issue of causal necessity and offers a way to understand the constitution and persistence of compound objects as causal phenomena. Furthermore, Ingthorsson argues that compound entities, so understood, are just as much processes as they are substances. A Powerful Particulars View of Causation will be of great interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and neo-Aristotelian philosophy, while also being accessible for a general audience. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003094241, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Action and Existence

Action and Existence
Author: J. Swindal
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230355463

Since the pioneering work of Donald Davidson on action, many philosophers have taken critical stances on his causal account. This book criticizes Davidson's event-causal view of action, and offers instead an agent causal view both to describe what an action is and to set a framework for how actions are explained.

The Book of Why

The Book of Why
Author: Judea Pearl
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0465097618

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

Alternative Approaches to Causation

Alternative Approaches to Causation
Author: Yafeng Shan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2024-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192863487

This volume focuses on alternatives to the two main philosophical approaches to causation: mechanistic explanation, and explanation in terms of difference-making. It explores the pluralistic, the fictionalist, the inferentialist, and the informational approaches, as well as the application of various approaches to natural and social sciences.

Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation

Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation
Author: Barry S. Kogan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1985-09-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438409451

Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation examines the controversial causation issue. That causes produce their effects and can be known to do so is the view that Averroes defends in his Tahafut Al-Tahafut, where he summarizes and evaluates the debates about causation—debates that took place over several generations between the philosophers and the theologians of medieval Islam. Drawing from his Tahafut, his commentaries, and other writings, Kogan shows that Averroes' discussion of causation represents a dialogue across the generations and a rich contribution to the history of the causal controversy. Averroes responds to al-Ghazali's proto-Humean critique of the philosophers' account which treats causation as an entailment relation. In this response Averroes develops an independent position that is of philosophical interest because it clearly anticipates many of the contemporary responses to Hume associated with the singularist position. Building on this analysis, Kogan resolves many long-standing paradoxes in Averroes' treatment of miracles, eternal creation, God's causal knowing, and the theory of emanation.

Mental Action and the Conscious Mind

Mental Action and the Conscious Mind
Author: Michael Brent
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2022-07-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 042966351X

Mental action deserves a place among foundational topics in action theory and philosophy of mind. Recent accounts of human agency tend to overlook the role of conscious mental action in our daily lives, while contemporary accounts of the conscious mind often ignore the role of mental action and agency in shaping consciousness. This collection aims to establish the centrality of mental action for discussions of agency and mind. The thirteen original essays provide a wide-ranging vision of the various and nuanced philosophical issues at stake. Among the questions explored by the contributors are: Which aspects of our conscious mental lives are agential? Can mental action be reduced to and explained in terms of non-agential mental states, processes, or events? Must mental action be included among the ontological categories required for understanding and explaining the conscious mind more generally? Does mental action have implications for related topics, such as attention, self-knowledge, self-control, or the mind-body problem? By investigating the nature, scope, and explanation of mental action, the essays presented here aim to demonstrate the significance of conscious mental action for discussions of agency and mind. Mental Action and the Conscious Mind will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of agency, as well as to philosophically inclined cognitive scientists.

Form and Transformation

Form and Transformation
Author: Gerry Webster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1996-11-13
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780521354516

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection fails to explain the forms of organisms because it focuses on inheritance and survival, not on how organisms are generated. The first part of this 2007 book (by Gerry Webster) looks critically of the conceptual structure of Darwinism and describes the limitation of the theory of evolution as a comprehensive biological theory, arguing that a theory of biological form is needed to understand the structure of organisms and their transformations as revealed in taxonomy. The second part of the book (by Brian Goodwin) explores such a theory in terms of organisms as developing and transforming dynamic systems, within which gene action is to be understood. A number of specific examples, including tetrapod limb formation and Drosophila development, are used to illustrate how these hierarchically-organized dynamic fields undergo robust symmetry-breaking cascades to produce generic forms.

Causation and Responsibility

Causation and Responsibility
Author: Michael S. Moore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 635
Release: 2010-07-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199599513

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that much of thelegal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Hart and Honoré to clarify the philosophical background to the legal and moral debates.The book first sets out the place of causation in criminal and tort law and outlines the metaphysics presupposed by the legal doctrine. It then analyses the best theoretical accounts of causation in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and using these accounts criticises many of the core legal concepts surrounding causation - such as intervening causation, forseeability of harm and complicity. It considers and rejects the radical proposals to eliminate the notion of causation from law byusing risk analysis to attribute responsibility. The result of the analysis is a powerful argument for revising our understanding of the role played by causation in the attribution of legal and moral responsibility.

Powers, Parts and Wholes

Powers, Parts and Wholes
Author: Christopher J. Austin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2023-08-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000931110

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts–whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic, and yet what they can do—and what can happen to them—is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first part of this book explores how powers divide; the second part, how powers compose. The final part showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic.