Do causes necessitate their effects? Causal necessitarianism is the view that they do. One major objection—the “monotonicity objection”—runs roughly as follows. For many particular causal relations, we can easily find a possible “blocker”—an additional causal factor that, had it also been there, would have prevented the cause from producing its effect. However—the objection goes on—, if the cause really necessitated its effect in the first place, it would have produced it anyway—despite the blocker. Thus, CN must be false. Though different (...) from Hume’s famous attacks against CN, the monotonicity objection is no less important. In one form or another, it has actually been invoked by various opponents to CN, past and present. And indeed, its intuitive appeal is quite powerful. Yet, this paper argues that, once carefully analysed, the objection can be resisted—and should be. First, I show how its success depends on three implicit assumptions concerning, respectively, the notion of cause, the composition of causal factors, and the relation of necessitation. Second, I present general motivations for rejecting at least one of those assumptions: appropriate variants of them threaten views that even opponents to CN would want to preserve—in particular, the popular thesis of grounding necessitarianism. Finally, I argue that the assumption we should reject is the one concerning how causes should be understood: causes, I suggest, include an element of completeness that excludes blockers. In particular, I propose a way of understanding causal completeness that avoids common difficulties. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue in favor of necessitarianism, the view that dispositions, when stimulated, necessitate their manifestations. After introducing and clarifying what necessitarianism does and does not amount to, I provide reasons to support the view that dispositions once stimulated necessitate their manifestations according to the stimulating conditions and the relevant properties at stake. In this framework, I will propose a principle of causal relevance and some conditions for the possibility of interference that allow us to avoid the use (...) of ceteris paribus clauses. I then defend necessitarianism from recent attacks raised by, among others, Mumford and Anjum, noting that the antecedent strengthening test is a test for causal relevance that raises no difficulties for necessitarianism. (shrink)

Theists claim that God can make a causal difference in the world. That is, theists believe that God is causally efficacious, has power. Discussion of divine power has centered on understanding better the metaphysics of creation and sustenance, special intervention, governance, and providing an account of omnipotence consistent with other divine attributes, such as omnibenevolence. But little discussion has centered on what, deep down ontologically, God’s power is. I show that a number of prominent accounts of power fail to model (...) what divine power could be, and then develop an account based on teleological and primitivist accounts of power. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMeasurements of environmental toxicity from long-term exposure to oil contamination have delivered inaccurate and contradictory results regarding the potential harms for humans and ecosyste...

According to Kripke’s thesis of the necessity of origin, if an object has an origin, it necessarily has that origin. Kripke’s thesis has special cases that we may refer to as “origin theses” when applied to certain types of objects, such as humans and tables. While origin theses have intuitive plausibility, why they are true remains unclear. This paper addresses a prominent line of defense for origin theses. In a celebrated note in Naming and Necessity, Kripke briefly presented an incomplete (...) argument. Advocates of this line of defense attempt to establish origin theses by proposing additional principles with which to complete Kripke’s argument. I call these defenses “Kripkean defenses.” The usual debate in the literature regarding Kripkean defenses has focused on the justifiability of the proposed principles. In this paper, I highlight a neglected issue that arises for Kripkean defenders, even if the debate is assumed to be settled in their favor. I argue that, even if Kripke’s argument is sound, it falls short of establishing origin theses, leaving an inferential gap. How to close the gap is a new problem for Kripkean defenders. My goal in the paper is to offer a solution that I believe is their best hope. If I am right, Kripkean defenders should commit themselves to the Aristotelian view that individuals such as human beings and tables are, in a robust Aristotelian sense, substances with irreducible powers that emerge from the powers of their causal origin. (shrink)

In this article, I aim at showing how powers may ground different types of probability in the universe. In Section 1 I single out several dimensions along which the probability of something can be determined. Each of such dimensions can be further specified at the type-level or at the token-level. In Section 2 I introduce some metaphysical assumptions about powers. In Section 3 I show how powers can ground single-case probabilities and frequency-probabilities in a deterministic setting. Later on, in Section (...) 4, I move to a theoretical framework where the falsity of determinism is assumed. Within such a framework, I first argue that some probabilities are grounded on basic powers. Moreover, in Section 5, I introduce tendencies and suggest that they are endowed with specific degrees of activation that may change over time. Such degrees explain why tendencies are more likely to be activated than non-activated, or vice versa. In Section 6 I compare my account of tendencies with other accounts. Finally, in Section 7, I anticipate some general objections against my account – objections that it shares with propensity-accounts of probability – and against degrees of activation of tendencies. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two metaphysical accounts of modality and properties: Modal Realism which treats possible entities as primitive; and Strong Dispositionalism in which metaphysical possibility and necessity are determined by actually existing dispositions or powers. I argue that Strong Dispositionalism loses its initial advantages of simplicity and parsimony over Modal Realism as it is extended and amended to account for metaphysical rather than just causal necessity. Furthermore, to avoid objections to its material and formal adequacy, Strong Dispositionalism requires a richer (...) fundamental ontology which it cannot explicate without appealing either to possible worlds or to an account of counterfactual truth conditions, both of which Strong Dispositionalism was intended to replace. (shrink)