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Substance causation, powers, and human agency

In Sophie Gibb, E. J. Lowe & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Mental Causation and Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 153--172 (2013)

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  1. Emergent Substances, Physical Properties, Action Explanations.Jeff Engelhardt - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (6):1125-1146.
    This paper proposes that if individual X ‘inherits’ property F from individual Y, we should be leery of explanations that appeal to X’s being F. This bears on what I’ll call “emergent substance dualism”, the view that human persons or selves are metaphysically fundamental or “new kinds of things with new kinds of causal powers” even though they depend in some sense on physical particulars :5–23, 2006; Personal agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). Two of the most prominent advocates of (...)
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  • Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will.Randolph Clarke & Justin Capes - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    To have free will is to have what it takes to act freely. When an agent acts freely—when she exercises her free will—what she does is up to her. A plurality of alternatives is open to her, and she determines which she pursues. When she does, she is an ultimate source or origin of her action. So runs a familiar conception of free will.
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  • On the metaphysics of the incarnation.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2024 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 95 (2):153-185.
    This article aims to provide an elucidation of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A new ‘reduplication strategy’ and ‘compositional model’ is formulated through the utilisation of certain concepts and theses from contemporary metaphysics, which will enable the doctrine of the Incarnation to be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft-raised objections against it being fully dealt with.
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  • Two-Way Powers as Derivative Powers.Andrei A. Buckareff - 2019 - In Michael Brent & Lisa Miracchi Titus (eds.), Mental Action and the Conscious Mind. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 228-254.
    Some philosophers working on the metaphysics of agency argue that if agency is understood in terms of settling the truth of some matters, then the power required for the exercise of intentional agency is an irreducible two-way power to either make it true that p or not-p. In this paper, the focus is on two-way powers in decision-making. Two problems are raised for theories of decision-making that are ontologically committed to irreducible two-way powers. First, recent accounts lack an adequate framework (...)
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  • Biological mistakes: what they are and what they mean for the experimental biologist.David Oderberg, Jonathan Hill, Christopher Austin, Ingo Bojak, Francois Cinotti & Jon Gibbins - unknown
    Organisms and other biological entities are mistake-prone: they get things wrong. The entities of pure physics, such as atoms and inorganic molecules, do not make mistakes: they do what they do according to physical law, with no room for error except on the part of the physicist or their theory. We set out a novel framework for understanding biology and its demarcation from physics – that of mistake-making. We distinguish biological mistakes from mere failures. We then propose a rigorous definition (...)
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  • A Transformational Incarnation.Joshua Sijuwade - 2022 - Theologica 7 (2):1-37.
    Thisarticle aims to provide an explication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A ‘Transformational Model’of the doctrine is formulated within the metaphysicaland ontologicalframework of Jonathan Lowe (i.e. hisNon-Cartesian Substance Dualismand Four-Category Ontology). Formulating this modelwithinthisspecificframework will enable the doctrine of the Incarnationto be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft-raised objections against it can be answered.
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  • In Defense of the Agent and Patient Distinction: The Case from Molecular Biology and Chemistry.Davis Kuykendall - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...)
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  • Mad Qualia.Umut Baysan - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (276):467-485.
    This paper revisits some classic thought experiments in which experiences are detached from their characteristic causal roles, and explores what these thought experiments tell us about qualia epiphenomenalism, i.e., the view that qualia are epiphenomenal properties. It argues that qualia epiphenomenalism is true just in case it is possible for experiences of the same type to have entirely different causal powers. This is done with the help of new conceptual tools regarding the concept of an epiphenomenal property. One conclusion is (...)
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  • The Argument from Reason, and Mental Causal Drainage: A Reply to van Inwagen.Brandon Rickabaugh & Todd Buras - 2017 - Philosophia Christi 19 (2):381-399.
    According to Peter van Inwagen, C. S. Lewis failed in his attempt to undermine naturalism with his Argument from Reason. According to van Inwagen, Lewis provides no justification for his central premise, that naturalism is inconsistent with holding beliefs for reasons. What is worse, van Inwagen argues that the main premise in Lewis's argument from reason is false. We argue that it is not false. The defender of Lewis's argument can make use of the problem of mental causal drainage, a (...)
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  • Must strong emergence collapse?Umut Baysan & Jessica Wilson - 2017 - Philosophica 91 (1):49--104.
    Some claim that the notion of strong emergence as involving ontological or causal novelty makes no sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers 'collapse', one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. Here we argue that there are several independently motivated and defensible means of preventing the collapse of strongly emergent features or powers into their lower-level bases, as directed against a conception of strongly emergent features as having fundamentally novel (...)
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  • Agent causation as a solution to the problem of action.Michael Brent - 2017 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (5):656-673.
    My primary aim is to defend a nonreductive solution to the problem of action. I argue that when you are performing an overt bodily action, you are playing an irreducible causal role in bringing about, sustaining, and controlling the movements of your body, a causal role best understood as an instance of agent causation. Thus, the solution that I defend employs a notion of agent causation, though emphatically not in defence of an account of free will, as most theories of (...)
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  • Realization and Causal Powers.Umut Baysan - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Glasgow
    In this thesis, I argue that physicalism should be understood to be the view that mental properties are realized by physical properties. In doing this, I explore what the realization relation might be. Since realization is the relation that should help us formulate physicalism, I suggest that the theoretical role of realization consists in explaining some of the things that physicalists wish to explain. These are: How are mental properties metaphysically necessitated by physical properties? How are mental properties causally efficacious? (...)
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  • Emergent Properties.Hong Yu Wong - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind. We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each (...)
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  • Action, passion, power.David S. Oderberg - 2024 - Noûs.
    The active/passive distinction, once a hallmark of classical metaphysics, has largely been discarded from contemporary thought. The revival of powers theory has not seen an equally vigorous rehabilitation of the real distinction between active and passive powers. I begin an analysis and vindication with a critique of E.J. Lowe's discussion. I then argue that the active/passive problem is a metaphysical one, not a logical or logico‐linguistic one, and so logic is impotent to solve it. Following this is a discussion of (...)
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  • Non-probabilistic Causation without Necessitation.Daniel Von Wachter - manuscript
    This article introduces the notion of the directedness of a process, which underlies event causation as well as the persistence of things. Using this notion it investigates what happens in typical cases of active event causation. Causes never necessitate their effects because even non- probabilistic causes can be counteracted.
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  • Formal Causation in Integrated Information Theory: An Answer to the Intrinsicality Problem.Javier Sánchez-Cañizares - 2021 - Foundations of Science 27 (1):77-94.
    Integrated Information Theory (IIT) stands out as one of the most promising theories for dealing with the hard problem of consciousness. Founded on five axioms derived from phenomenology, IIT seeks for the physical substrate of consciousness that complies with such axioms according to the criterion of maximally integrated information (Φ). Eventually, IIT identifies phenomenal consciousness with maximal Φ or, what is the same thing, with the strongest cause-effect power in the system. Among the scholars critical of this theory, some point (...)
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  • Piercing the smoke screen: Dualism, free will, and Christianity.Samuel Murray, Elise Dykhuis & Thomas Nadelhoffer - forthcoming - Journal of Cognition and Culture.
    Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: (1) a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, (2) that people (...)
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  • Circumnavigating the causal pairing problem with hylomorphism and the integrated information theory of consciousness.Matthew Owen - 2021 - Synthese (S11):2829-2851.
    The causal pairing problem allegedly renders nonphysical minds causally impotent. This article demonstrates how a dualist view I call neo-Thomistic hylomorphism can circumnavigate the causal pairing problem. After explicating the problem and hylomorphism, I provide an account of causal pairing that appeals to a foundational tenet of hylomorphism. Subsequently, I suggest that a prominent view of consciousness in theoretical neuroscience—the integrated information theory—can learn from hylomorphism and likewise account for causal pairing.
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  • Neo-Thomistic hylomorphism applied to mental causation and neural correlates of consciousness.Matthew Keith Owen - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
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  • How Powers Emerge from Relations.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2016 - Axiomathes 26 (2):187-204.
    I shall explore in this article the metaphysical possibility of powers’ strongly emerging from relations. After having provided a definition of emergent powers that is also based on the distinction between the possession and the activation of a power, I shall introduce different sorts of Relations that Ground Emergence, both external and internal. Later on, I shall discuss some examples of powers that are grounded on their instantiation. Finally, I shall examine the consequences of accepting such relations within a physicalistic (...)
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  • Mental Causation for Mind-Body Dualists.Antonella Corradini - 2015 - Humana Mente 8 (29).
    Interactive dualism is notorious for supporting genuine and autonomous mental causation that is allegedly impossible for its confliction with basic principles of physics. The purpose of this essay is to show the invalidity of this commonplace view, by arguing to the contrary in three different steps. First, I will deal with the objection about the non-scientific character of interactive dualism, as it is conceived of in present-day philosophy of mind. Second, I will illustrate and critically examine three contemporary models of (...)
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  • Dispositional explanations in dualism.Janko Nesic - 2013 - Filozofija I Društvo 24 (4):218-241.
    In order to defend mental explanations dualists may appeal to dispositions (powers). By accepting a powers theory of causation, a dualist can more plausibly defend mental explanations that are given independently of physical explanations. Accepting a power-based theory still comes with a price. Absences and double preventers are not causes in a powers theory, and solutions based on them can only defend their explanatory relevance in mental explanations. There is still a chance that such mental explanations can be causal explanations, (...)
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  • Emergence, Reduction and the Identity and Individuation of Powers.Alexander Daniel Carruth - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1021-1030.
    One recently popular way to characterise strong emergence is to say that emergent entities possess novel causal powers. However, there is little agreement concerning the nature of powers. One controversy involves whether powers are single- or multi-track; that is, whether each power has only one manifestation type, or whether a single power can be directed towards a number of distinct manifestations. Another concerns how powers operate: whether a lone power manifests when triggered by the presence of a suitable stimulus, or (...)
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  • Causality and “the mental”.Jennifer Hornsby - 2015 - Humana Mente 8 (29).
    Many analytic philosophers of mind take for granted a certain conception of causality. Assumptions deriving from that conception are in place when they problematize what they call mental causation or argue for physicalism in respect of the mental. I claim that a different conception of causality is needed for understanding many ordinary causal truths about things which act, including truths about human, minded beings — sc. rational beings who lead lives.
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  • Mental Causation.Sophie Gibb - 2014 - Analysis 74 (2):327-338.
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  • Moral Agents in a Moral World: A New Account of Moral Realism and Moral Perception.Lanell Maria Mason - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Reading
    The purpose of this thesis is to provide a metaphysic for moral realism and moral perception. This thesis is in two parts. The first is concerned with basic ontology. I begin in chapter 1 with an analysis of causation, demonstrating that substance theory is superior to Humeanism at accounting for our observations; thus I defend a substance ontology. In chapter 2, I address human agency, demonstrating that reasons internalism does not allow for incompatibilist freedom; hence, I affirm reasons are states (...)
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  • Why incompatibilism about mental causation is incompatible with non-reductive physicalism.Jonas Christensen & Umut Baysan - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):546-568.
    ABSTRACT The exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making account of causation suggest that the exclusion problem can be solved because mental properties can be difference-making causes of physical effects. Here, we focus on what we dub an incompatibilist implementation of this general strategy and argue against it from a non-reductive physicalist perspective. Specifically, we argue that (...)
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  • Substance Causation.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (1):287-308.
    I defend the thesis that, if there are substances, substance causation (i.e., causation by substances) is the only sort of causation in the universe – or the only fundamental sort. Subsequently, I develop an account of substance causation that is partly grounded on a peculiar interpretation of absolute change (i.e., of entities' coming and ceasing to be) and qualitative change, on some ontological assumptions about modes (i.e., individual properties that ontologically depend on their bearers) and powers. Finally, I reply to (...)
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  • Powerful qualities, the conceivability argument and the nature of the physical.Henry Taylor - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (8):1895-1910.
    David Chalmers’ ‘conceivability’ argument against physicalism is perhaps the most widely discussed and controversial argument in contemporary philosophy of mind. Recently, several thinkers have suggested a novel response to this argument, which employs the ‘powerful qualities’ ontology of properties. In this paper, I argue that this response fails because it presupposes an implausible account of the physical/phenomenal distinction. In the course of establishing this, I discuss the so-called ‘ultimate’ argument for the claim that dispositional properties form the subject matter of (...)
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