Many candidates have been tried out as proximate causes of actions: belief-desire pairs, volitions, motives, intentions, and other kinds of pro-attitudes. None of these mental states or events, however, seems to be able to do the trick, that is, to get things going. Each of them may occur without an appropriate action ensuing. After reviewing several attempts at closing the alleged “causal gap”, it is argued that on a correct analysis, there is no missing link waiting to be discovered. (...) On the counterfactual account of singular causation, the onset of belief or desire may perfectly well cause an action, although no kind of mental antecedent is ever a causally sufficient condition for a specific kind of action to occur. (shrink)

I propose a new formalist account of legal (/proximate) causation – one that holds legal causation to be a matter of amoral, descriptive fact. The account starts with a metaphysical relation, akin to but distinct from common-sense causation, and it argues that legal causation aligns exactly with that relation; it is unified and principled.

Extant research has shown that ordinary causal judgments are sensitive to normative factors. For instance, agents who violate a norm are standardly deemed more causal than norm-conforming agents in identical situations. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for the Norm Effect: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. According to the former, the Norm Effect arises because ordinary causal judgment is intimately intertwined with moral responsibility. According to the alternative view, the Norm Effect is the result of a (...) blame-driven bias. In a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 2688), we present evidence that predominantly favours the Bias View. In particular, and against predictions made by the Responsibility View, we show that participants deem agents who violate nonpertinent or silly norms – norms that do not relate to the outcome at hand – as more causal, and that this effect cannot be explained in terms of plausible mediators such as the agent’s foreknowledge and desire, or the foreseeability of harm. We close with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings, in as regards the just assessment of proximate cause in the law. (shrink)

A common explanatory error in science concerns the conflation of the epistemological roles between two domains. Here we will address a specific case: when explanations of development replace evolutionary explanations or vice versa. Ernst Mayr famously distinguished between proximate and ultimate causal explanations in biology. His view was central to the Modern Synthesis’ exclusion of development from evolutionary theory. Nonetheless, the explanatory role of developmental processes in evolution is a central theme in current theoretical biology which has prompted several (...) revisions of Mayr’s distinction. Here we will review these reviewers to determine whether the integration of development and evolution is based on an appropriate reinterpretation of Mayr’s distinction. In many cases, revisionists suggest an interactionist alternative, in which proximate and ultimate causes interact to produce evolved traits. The most frequent interactionist account relies on the idea of reciprocal causation. We will argue that this perspective is still problematic and that the boundaries between explanatory domains are crossed. Instead, we should rethink Mayr’s distinction by adopting an alternative view of evolutionary causation, the so-called Statisticalist view, which maintains that the only level of causation is the individual level. By ruling out two different levels of causation, this framework is appropriate to avoid fallacious explanations and reconsider reciprocal causation entirely as a proximate phenomenon. We introduce the concept of “statistical reciprocity” to explain the statistical effects of reciprocal causality in populations and outline some ideas of “population ontogenetics” as a prominent framework for unifying development and evolution beyond interactionist positions. (shrink)

Abstract: A common explanatory error concerns conflating epistemological roles between two domains. Here I deal with a special case: when explanations of development replace evolutionary explanations or vice versa. Ernst Mayr famously distinguished between proximate and ultimate causal explanations in biology. His view was central to keeping development outside the theory of evolution. Nevertheless, the explanatory role of developmental processes in evolution is a central theme in current theoretical biology, which has led to several revisions of Mayr’s distinction. In (...) the following, I will review these reviewers to determine whether the integration of development and evolution is based on an appropriate reinterpretation of Mayr’s distinction. The revisionists often propose an interactionist alternative in which proximate and ultimate causes interact to produce evolved traits. The most common interactionist account relies on the idea of reciprocal causation. I will argue that this perspective is still problematic and that the boundaries between explanatory domains are crossed. Instead, we should rethink Mayr’s distinction by adopting an alternative view of evolutionary causation, the so-called Statisticalist view on natural selection, which claims that the only level of causation is the proximate level. By excluding two different levels of causation, this framework is able to avoid fallacious explanations and fully consider reciprocal causation as a proximate phenomenon. I introduce the concept of “statistical reciprocity” to explain the statistical effects of (proximate) reciprocal causation in ultimate explanations and outline some ideas of “population ontogenetics” as a prominent framework for unifying development and evolution beyond interactionist positions. (shrink)

Abstract: The use of evolutionary explanations to account for proximate phenomena has been labeled by various authors as an explanatory error, the so-called phylogeny fallacy. In this paper, this fallacy will be analyzed in the context of teleosemantics. I will discuss whether teleosemantics projects that rely on the Selected-Effect Theory of Functions (i.e., mainstream teleosemantics) generally commit the fallacy. To frame the discussion, I will present two desiderata that, as argued here, every teleosemantic project must fulfill. The actuality desideratum, (...) motivated by Brentano’s problem, demands for a proximate analysis of the properties that make a system intentional. The historical desideratum, on the other hand, says that a teleological view of intentionality requires a historical dimension in order to understand the causal basis of teleological explanations. While I give some reasons why mainstream teleosemantics might be implicated in the phylogeny fallacy, my main argument aims to highlight an explanatory gap in mainstream teleosemantics: the population perspective on teleofunctions is inadequate to explain the proximate properties of intentional systems. In other words, the account of the historical desideratum in population-evolutionary terms prevents an adequate solution to the actuality desideratum. This is related to two central goals of teleosemantics: The goal of explaining content determination by recourse to natural selection processes makes it impossible to solve another goal of teleosemantics, the so-called problem of representational status. I analyze this situation and argue that inherited information (sometimes interpreted in a teleosemantic sense) plays the role of closing the gap. This leads teleosemantics into a complex situation: in order to close the gap, it must commit the fallacy. At the end of the article, I propose an alternative to fulfill both desiderata, motivated by an evo-devo perspective. I state that lineage explanations have the property of providing historical explanations based on proximate causes. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that causation is to be explicated in terms of a kind of dependence between cause and effect. These “dependence” theories are opposed by “production” accounts which hold that there is some more fundamental causal “oomph”. A wide range of experimental research on everyday causal judgments seems to indicate that ordinary people operate primarily with a dependence-based notion of causation. For example, people tend to say that absences and double preventers are causes. We argue that the (...) impression that commonsense causal discourse is largely dependence-based is the result of focusing on a very narrow class of causal verbs. Almost all of the vignette-based experimental work on causal judgment has been prosecuted using the word “cause”. But much ordinary causal discourse involves special causal verbs, such as “burn” and “crack”. We find that these verbs display a quite different pattern from the verb “cause”. For instance, for absences and double preventers (Studies 1-3), we find that while people are inclined to say that X caused Y to burn, turn, crack or start, they are less inclined to think that X burned, turned, cracked or started Y. In Study 4, we find that for chains involving a distal and proximal event, people are inclined to say that the distal event is not a special cause of the outcome, though it is a “cause” of the outcome. Together, we find a surprising double dissociation between “cause” and a stock of special causal verbs. We conclude by suggesting that much commonsense causal judgment, which heavily trades in special causal verbs, might be better captured by production-based accounts of causation. (shrink)

Evolution never stops. Stress is often a manifestation of competition which seems to drive human gene-culture coevolution. A popular, Dutch account on evolution in everyday life. People often claim that we are thoroughly cultural beings, but culture is based on a series of talents which are a product of directional and stabilizing selection. Culture also presupposes certain psychological characteristics. People adopt and change culture to fit their biopsychological needs.

The standard perception of the dichotomy between population thinking and essentialism (typological thinking) in evolutionary economics descends from the golden age of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Over the last few decades the received view on population thinking has been seriously challenged in biology and its philosophy. First, the strong version of population thinking that banishes essentialism witnessed important tensions stemming from the ontological status of species. These tensions have been amplified by the demise of positivism and the rise of a new (...) essentialism in philosophy of science. Second, the soft version that transforms the opposition between population thinking and essentialism to the dichotomy between ultimate and proximate causation has led to contradictory interpretations regarding the locus of ultimate causes. Taking stock of the previous discussion the paper addresses the limits to population thinking in the socio-economic realm. The upshot is that without denying the important achievements made by the application of population thinking in sub-disciplines like industrial dynamics and economic anthropology, the idea to generalize these applications into the whole socio-economic realm is problematic. The aforementioned achievements cannot come to grips with the structural aspects of capitalism, its different periods (e.g. the contemporary finance-led capitalism) and its geographical varieties. The resulting gap points to the importance of structural analysis (essentialism) and evolutionary political economy. The latter is distinguished from the rest of evolutionary economics by its project to go beyond the surface of economic phenomena and to critically analyze their underlying social structures. (shrink)

In 1990 Robert Lickliter and Thomas Berry identified the phylogeny fallacy, an empirically untenable dichotomy between proximate and evolutionary causation, which locates proximate causes in the decoding of ‘ genetic programs’, and evolutionary causes in the historical events that shaped these programs. More recently, Lickliter and Hunter Honeycutt argued that Evolutionary Psychologists commit this fallacy, and they proposed an alternative research program for evolutionary psychology. For these authors the phylogeny fallacy is the proximate/evolutionary distinction itself, which (...) they argue constitutes a misunderstanding of development, and its role in the evolutionary process. In this article I argue that the phylogeny fallacy should be relocated to an error of reasoning that this causal framework sustains: the conflation of proximate and evolutionary explanation. Having identified this empirically neutral form of the phylogeny fallacy, I identify its mirror image, the ontogeny fallacy. Through the lens of these fallacies I attempt to solve several outstanding problems in the debate that ensued from Lickliter and Honeycutt’s provocative article. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A systematic reconstruction of Chrysippus’ theory of causes, grounded on the Stoic tenets that causes are bodies, that they are relative, and that all causation can ultimately be traced back to the one ‘active principle’ which pervades all things. I argue that Chrysippus neither developed a finished taxonomy of causes, nor intended to do so, and that he did not have a set of technical terms for mutually exclusive classes of causes. Rather, the various adjectives which he used (...) for causes had the function of describing or explaining particular features of certain causes in particular philosophical contexts. I challenge the sometimes assumed close connection of Chrysippus’ notion of causation with explanation. I show that the standard view that the distinction between proximate and auxiliary causes and perfect and principal causes corresponds to the distinction between internal and external determining factors is not born out by the evidence, and argue that causes of the two types were not thought to co-operate, but rather conceived of as alternatives. (shrink)

, whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more important than proximate ones; several different causes can each be responsible for most of an effect; small (...) causes need not be less important than big ones; and non-additive interactive effects between causes present no particular difficulty. Key Words: causation • explanation • history • interaction • proximate • underlying. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The difference between perception and cognition seems introspectively obvious in many cases. Perceiving and thinking have also been assigned quite different roles, in epistemology, in theories of reference and of mental content, in philosophy of psychology, and elsewhere. Yet what is the nature of the distinction? In what way, or ways, do perception and cognition differ? The paper reviews recent work on these questions. Four main respects in which perception and cognition have been held to differ are discussed. First, (...) their phenomenal character, such as the often-remarked vivacity or immediacy of perception. Second, the way in which they represent the world, e.g. the non-propositional nature of the contents, or non-discursive character of the vehicles, that have been held to characterise perceptual representation. Third, their place in cognitive architecture, i.e., roughly, in the information-flow of the mind, such as their alleged (non-)modularity. Fourth, their mind-world relations, e.g. the way in which perceptions seem to be tightly causally linked with distal or proximal stimuli. Against this background, we distinguish some main options for an account of the perception/cognition distinction, in particular concerning whether there is one, several, or no interesting and principled distinction(s) to be drawn here. (shrink)

I examine the meaning and merits of a premise in the Exclusion Argument, the causal closure principle that all physical effects have physical causes. I do so by addressing two questions. First, if we grant the other premises, exactly what kind of closure principle is required to make the Exclusion Argument valid? Second, what are the merits of the requisite closure principle? Concerning the first, I argue that the Exclusion Argument requires a strong, “stringently pure” version of closure. The latter (...) employs two qualifications concerning the physical sufficiency and relative proximity of the physical cause required for every physical effect. The second question is addressed in two steps. I begin by challenging the adequacy of the empirical support offered by David Papineau for closure. Then I assess the merits of “level” and “domain” versions of stringently pure closure. I argue that a domain version lacks adequate and non-question-begging support within the context of the Exclusion Argument. And I argue that the level version leads to a puzzling metaphysics of the physical domain. Thus, we have grounds for rejecting the version of closure required for the Exclusion Argument. This means we can resist the Exclusion Argument while avoiding the implausible implications that come with rejecting one of its other premises. That is, because there are grounds to reject causal closure, one can reasonably affirm the non-overdeterminative causal efficacy of conscious mental states while denying that the latter are identical with physical states. (shrink)

Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...) that these properties emerge in a distinctive way. They emerge in part because of a system that is far beyond and typically before the object that instantiates them. I characterize how emergence occurs in these cases, juxtaposing it with how emergence is typically discussed. I then consider whether their emergence is best framed as weak or strong as these notions are characterized in the literature, and I reveal what debates are central to answering this question. Though I will not resolve these debates, I do show a collection of views that would vindicate these properties as strongly emergent and downwardly causing. (shrink)

Since the ENCODE project published its final results in a series of articles in 2012, there is no consensus on what its implications are. ENCODE’s central and most controversial claim was that there is essentially no junk DNA: most sections of the human genome believed to be «junk» are functional. This claim was met with many reservations. If researchers disagree about whether there is junk DNA, they have first to agree on a concept of function and how function, given a (...) particular definition, can be discovered. The ENCODE debate centered on a notion of function that assumes a strong dichotomy between evolutionary and non-evolutionary function and causes, prevalent in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. In contrast to how the debate is typically portrayed, both sides share a commitment to this distinction. This distinction is, however, much debated in alternative approaches to evolutionary theory, such as the EES. We show that because the ENCODE debate is grounded in a particular notion of function, it is unclear how it connects to broader debates about what is the correct evolutionary frame- work. Furthermore, we show how arguments brought forward in the controversy, particularly arguments from mathematical population genetics, are deeply embedded in their particular disciplinary contexts, and reflect substantive assumptions about the evolution of genomes. With this article, we aim to provide an anatomy of the ENCODE debate that offers a new perspective on the notions of function both sides employed, as well as to situate the ENCODE debate within wider debates regarding the forces operating in evolution. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the ecological approach to perception provides resources to overcome the causal argument against disjunctivism. According to the causal argument, since the brain states that proximally cause the perceptual experience and the corresponding hallucinatory one can be of the same type, there would be no good reason to reject that the perceptual experience and the corresponding hallucinatory experience have fundamentally the same nature. Disjunctivism concerning the nature of the experience would then be false. I identify (...) three assumptions that support the causal argument: the indistinguishability assumption, the linearity assumption, and the duplication assumption. According to the ecological approach to disjunctivism, these assumptions should be rejected, opening up room for a version of disjunctivism that I call 'Ecological Disjunctivism'. Perceptual episodes are extended over time and are supervenient to the organism-environment system. They can be distinguished from the 'corresponding' hallucinations because the former results from a controlled process of attunement to the environment, whereas hallucinations are passive and insensible to the exploratory activities of the perceptual system. Finally, ecological disjunctivism, since it is immune to the causal argument, is more advantageous than negative and positive disjunctivism. (shrink)

Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction has received renewed interest in recent years. Here we discuss its role in arguments about the relevance of developmental to evolutionary biology. We show that two recent critiques of the proximate–ultimate distinction fail to explain why developmental processes in particular should be of interest to evolutionary biologists. We trace these failures to a common problem: both critiques take the proximate–ultimate distinction to neglect specific causal interactions in nature. We argue that this is implausible, and (...) that the distinction should instead be understood in the context of explanatory abstractions in complete causal models of evolutionary change. Once the debate is reframed in this way, the proximate–ultimate distinction’s role in arguments against the theoretical significance of evo-devo is seen to rely on a generally implicit premise: that the variation produced by development is abundant, small and undirected. We show that a “lean version” of the proximate–ultimate distinction can be maintained even when this isotropy assumption does not hold. Finally, we connect these considerations to biological practice. We show that the investigation of developmental constraints in evolutionary transitions has long relied on a methodology which foregrounds the explanatory role of developmental processes. It is, however, entirely compatible with the lean version of the proximate–ultimate distinction. (shrink)

In most academic and non-academic circles throughout history, the world and its operation have been viewed in terms of cause and effect. The principles of causation have been applied, fruitfully, across the sciences, law, medicine, and in everyday life, despite the lack of any agreed-upon framework for understanding what causation ultimately amounts to. In this engaging and accessible introduction to the topic, Douglas Kutach explains and analyses the most prominent theories and examples in the philosophy of causation. (...) The book is organized so as to respect the various cross-cutting and interdisciplinary concerns about causation, such as the reducibility of causation, its application to scientific modeling, its connection to influence and laws of nature, and its role in causal explanation. Kutach begins by presenting the four recurring distinctions in the literature on causation, proceeding through an exploration of various accounts of causation including determination, difference making and probability-raising. He concludes by carefully considering their application to the mind-body problem. _Causation_ provides a straightforward and compact survey of contemporary approaches to causation and serves as a friendly and clear guide for anyone interested in exploring the complex jungle of ideas that surround this fundamental philosophical topic. (shrink)

The problem of mental causation is discussed by taking into account some recent developments in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. The import of the idea that causal claims involve contrastive classes in mental causation is also discussed. It is argued that mental causation is much less a problem than it has appeared to be.

This paper examines a promising probabilistic theory of singular causation developed by David Lewis. I argue that Lewis' theory must be made more sophisticated to deal with certain counterexamples involving pre-emption. These counterexamples appear to show that in the usual case singular causation requires an unbroken causal process to link cause with effect. I propose a new probabilistic account of singular causation, within the framework developed by Lewis, which captures this intuition.

Which country, politician, or policy is more of a cause of the Covid-19 pandemic death toll? Which of the two factories causally contributed more to the pollution of the nearby river? A wide-ranging portion of our everyday thought and talk, and attitudes rely on a graded notion of causation. However, it is sometimes highlighted that on most contemporary accounts, causation is on-off. Some philosophers further question the legitimacy of talk of degrees of causation and suggest that we (...) avoid it. Some hold that the notion of degrees of causation is an illusion. In this paper, I’ll argue that causation does come in degrees. (shrink)

In a gradually more interlinked world, the formation of collaborations with partners is increasingly regarded as an important driver for generating innovation. Although multidimensional proximities are important factors influencing interorganizational coinnovation performance, relevant empirical studies have not reached consistent conclusions. By focusing on organizational dyad and including intraorganizational collaboration network inefficiency as a moderating variable, we explore the effects of multidimensional proximities on interorganizational coinnovation performance. By reference to 5G patent data collected in China between 2011 and 2020, the research (...) results based on the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) model show that geographical proximity, cognitive proximity, and institutional proximity all improve interorganizational coinnovation performance. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to explore an alternative explanation of causation in Graham Priest’s modal meinongianism. Priest proposes an understanding of causation, which is either too confusing, or against the metaphysical core of modal meinongianism. In his proposals, causation is discussed in the context of defining purely fictional and abstract objects, by using a counterfactual approach. In this case, causation is understood as an existence-entailing relation. I will argue that such an account of (...) class='Hi'>causation proves ineffective. Instead, I will give another interpretation for causation, which is based on Peter Menzies and Huw Price’s version of agency theory of causation. The end result of my work will be the fact that causation as agency can, at best, be useful in understanding intentional acts, but not suitable for explaining what it means for a particular object to causally interact with us. (shrink)

What would it be for a process to happen backwards in time? Would such a process involve different causal relations? It is common to understand the time-reversal invariance of a physical theory in causal terms, such that whatever can happen forwards in time can also happen backwards in time. This has led many to hold that time-reversal symmetry is incompatible with the asymmetry of cause and effect. This article critiques the causal reading of time reversal. First, I argue that the (...) causal reading requires time-reversal-related models to be understood as representing distinct possible worlds and, on such a reading, causal relations are compatible with time-reversal symmetry. Second, I argue that the former approach does, however, raise serious sceptical problems regarding the causal relations of paradigm causal processes and as a consequence there are overwhelming reasons to prefer a non-causal reading of time reversal, whereby time reversal leaves causal relations invariant. On the non-causal reading, time-reversal symmetry poses no significant conceptual nor epistemological problems for causation. _1_ Introduction _1.1_ The directionality argument _1.2_ Time reversal _2_ What Does Time Reversal Reverse? _2.1_ The B- and C-theory of time _2.2_ Time reversal on the C-theory _2.3_ Answers _3_ Does Time Reversal Reverse Causal Relations? _3.1_ Causation, billiards, and snooker _3.2_ The epistemology of causal direction _3.3_ Answers _4_ Is Time-Reversal Symmetry Compatible with Causation? _4.1_ Incompatibilism _4.2_ Compatibilism _4.3_ Answers _5_ Outlook. (shrink)

Our ordinary causal concept seems to fit poorly with how our best physics describes the world. We think of causation as a time-asymmetric dependence relation between relatively local events. Yet fundamental physics describes the world in terms of dynamical laws that are, possible small exceptions aside, time symmetric and that relate global time slices. My goal in this paper is to show why we are successful at using local, time-asymmetric models in causal explanations despite this apparent mismatch with fundamental (...) physics. In particular, I will argue that there is an important connection between time asymmetry and locality, namely: understanding the locality of our causal models is the key to understanding why the physical time asymmetries in our universe give rise to time asymmetry in causal explanation. My theory thus provides a unified account of why causation is local and time asymmetric and thereby enables a reply to Russell’s famous attack on causation. (shrink)

Many philosophical theories of causation are egalitarian, rejecting a distinction between causes and mere causal conditions. We sought to determine the extent to which people's causal judgments discriminate, selecting as causes counternormal events—those that violate norms of some kind—while rejecting non-violators. We found significant selectivity of this sort. Moreover, priming that encouraged more egalitarian judgments had little effect on subjects. We also found that omissions are as likely as actions to be judged as causes, and that counternormative selectivity appears (...) to apply equally to actions and omissions. (shrink)

In many spheres, the law takes the legal concept of causation to correspond to the folk concept (the correspondence assumption). Courts, including the US Supreme Court, tend to insist on the "common understanding" and that which is "natural to say" (Burrage v. United States) when it comes to expressions relating to causation, and frequently refuse to clarify the expression to juries. As recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has uncovered, lay attributions of causation are susceptible to (...) a great number of unexpected factors, some of which seem rather peripheral to causation. One of those is the norm effect (Knobe & Fraser, 2008): Agents who, in acting as they do, break a salient norm, are more likely to be considered as having caused a certain consequence than when they do not violate a norm. According to some (e.g., Alicke, 1992) this constitutes a bias. According to others (e.g., Sytsma, 2020), the folk concept of causation is sensitive to normative factors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this paper, we explore the question whether the norm effect should be considered a bias from the legal perspective on the one hand, and from the psychological perspective on the other. To do this, we test whether norms which are nonpertinent to the consequences or outright silly also impact causation judgements. The data from two preregistered experiments (total N=593) clearly show they do. This, we argue, makes the bias interpretation plausible from the psychological perspective, and both plausible and problematic from the legal perspective. It also shows that the law should abstain from unreflectively assuming conceptual correspondence between legal and ordinary language concepts. (shrink)

Jeagwon Kim's exclusion argument is a well-known argument against non-reductive physicalism in the contemporary debate on mental causation. In this essay, we will first discuss two versions of the exclusion argument: the simple version and the sophisticated version. Secondly, we will take a conservative strategy to defend the kind of non-reductive physicalism initiated by Donald Davidson: the Token Identity Theory. Namely, we will explain where Kim failed to appropriately understand Davidson's work and argue that the simple version and the (...) sophisticated version of the exclusion argument won't work against the clarified token identity theory at all. Lastly, Since much of Kim's inappropriate interpretation of Davidson's work is rooted in their difference in metaphysics, there is reason to believe the proper understanding and evaluation on contemplation as such on mental causation, non-reductive physicalism, and other related problems can't be achieved without finding an appropriate metaphysical frame. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we argue (...) that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

Consensus in the contemporary philosophical literature has it that conserved quantity theories of causation such as that of Dowe [2000]—according to which causation is to be analysed in terms of the exchange of conserved quantities (e.g., energy)—face damning problems when confronted with contemporary physics, where the notion of conservation becomes delicate. In particular, in general relativity it is often claimed that there simply are no conservation laws for (say) total-stress energy. If this claim is correct, it is difficult (...) to see how conserved quantity theories of causation could survive. In this article, we resist the above consensus and defend conserved quantity theories from this conclusion, at least when focusing on the apparent problems posed by general relativity. We argue that this approach to causation can continue to be defended in general relativity, once one appreciates (a) the availability of approximate symmetries in generic general relativistic spacetimes, and (b) the role of modelling and idealisation in that theory. Given these points, conserved quantity theories of causation must stand or fall on other grounds. (shrink)

Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of (...) our agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action. (shrink)

In a recent paper I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causation theorists. I consider six of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that one can't be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before one was born; (ii) Peter van Inwagen's modal argument, involving the inference rule (β); (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability to do (...) otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom; (iv) "manipulation arguments," involving cases in which an agent is manipulated by some powerful being into doing something that he or she would not normally do, but in such a way that the compatibilist's favorite conditions for a free action are satisfied; (v) the problem of constitutive luck; and (vi) the claim that it is not fair to blame someone for an action if that person was determined by forces outside of his or her control to perform that action. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation than she does otherwise. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that (...) a weaker version of Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

In The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease, Derek Bolton and Grant Gillett argue that a defensible updated version of the biopsychosocial model requires a metaphysically adequate account of disease causation that can accommodate biological, psychological, and social factors. This present paper offers a philosophical critique of their account of biopsychosocial causation. I argue that their account relies on claims about the normativity and the semantic content of biological information that are metaphysically contentious. Moreover, I suggest that these (...) claims are unnecessary for a defence of biopsychosocial causation, as the roles of multiple and diverse factors in disease causation can be readily accommodated by a more widely accepted and less metaphysically contentious account of causation. I then raise the more general concern that they are misdiagnosing the problem with the traditional version of the biopsychosocial model. The challenge when developing an explanatorily valuable version of the biopsychosocial model, I argue, is not so much providing an adequate account of biopsychosocial causation, but providing an adequate account of causal selection. Finally, I consider how this problem may be solved to arrive at a more explanatorily valuable and clinically useful version of the biopsychosocial model. (shrink)

On the dominant interpretation, Ockham is an externalist about mental content. This reading is founded principally on his theory of intuitive cognition. Intuitive cognition plays a foundational role in Ockham’s account of concept formation and judgment, and Ockham insists that the content of intuitive states is determined by the causal relations such states bear to their objects. The aim of this paper is to challenge the externalist interpretation by situating Ockham’s account of intuitive cognition vis-à-vis his broader account of efficient (...) causation. While there can be no doubt that intuitive states are causally individuated, I argue that, given Ockham’s broader theory of efficient causation (on which causation turns out to be an internal relation), this very fact entails that the content of such states is determined by factors internal (rather than external) to the states themselves. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new interpretation of Clauberg’s account of the mind-body problem, against both occasionalist and interactionist readings. It examines his treatment of the mind-body relation through the lens of his theories of substance and cause. It argues that, whereas Clauberg embraces Descartes’s substance dualism, he retains a broadly scholastic theory of causation as the action of essential powers. On this account, mind and body are distinct, power-bearing substances, and each is a genuine secondary cause of its own (...) modifications. Between mental and bodily modes, however, there is only a special, divinely instituted correlation, but no causation. Clauberg’s view has the consequence that the conjunction of mind and body cannot be understood causally but only as the covariation of sensations and brain states, which he treats as mutually referring signs. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that causal theories of memory are typically committed to two independent, non-mutually entailing theses. The first thesis pertains to the necessity of appropriate causation in memory, specifying a condition token memories need to satisfy. The second pertains to the explanation of memory reliability in causal terms and it concerns memory as a type of mental state. Post-causal theories of memory can reject only the first (weak post-causalism) or both (strong post-causalism) theses. Upon this backdrop, (...) I examine Werning’s (2020) causalist argument from probabilistic correlation. I argue that it doesn’t establish the necessity of appropriate causation and thus it can only target strong post-causalist theories. I end up by presenting some general considerations, suggesting that memories may not always be causally linked to past experiences. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely characterize causal relata, including their (...) degree of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques. (shrink)

This paper argues that proper functions are proximal functions. In other words, it rejects the notion that there are distal biological functions – strictly speaking, distal functions are not functions at all, but simply beneficial effects normally associated with a trait performing its function. Once we rule out distal functions, two further positions become available: dysfunctions are simply failures of proper function, and pathological conditions are dysfunctions. Although elegant and seemingly intuitive, this simple view has had surprisingly little uptake in (...) the literature. Indeed, our position departs from that of almost every theorist who has engaged with the issue at any depth. We start by presenting three arguments for the position that proper functions are proximal: one from the specificity of functions, one from their relation to intervention, and one from their relation to pathology. We then consider two case studies evidencing the trouble that accepting distal functions causes for philosophical reflection on the nature of pathological conditions. Finally, we anticipate and respond to three objections: that there can be failure of function without dysfunction; that our account is unacceptably revisionary in respect of normal function-talk; and that our thesis over-generalises from a narrow set of cases. (shrink)

Conceptual analyses can be subdivided into two classes, good and evil. Em- pirical analysis is the good kind, routinely practiced in the sciences. Orthodox analysis is the malevolent version that plagues philosophical discourse. In this paper, I will clarify the difference between them, provide some reasons to prefer good over evil, and illustrate their consequences for the metaphysics of causation. By conducting an empirical analysis of causation rather than an orthodox analysis, one can segregate the genuine metaphysical problems (...) that need to be addressed from the many pseudo-problems that have long dogged traditional accounts of causation. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: 1) How is the residential proximity to the coast during childhood, and nature connectedness, associated with peace of mind when visiting the coast? 2) Does the residential proximity to the coast during childhood moderate the relationship between nature connectedness and peace of mind when visiting the coast? 3) How is the peace of mind associated with improved thinking when visiting the coast?

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 agent causation are. Rather, I argue that the notion of agent causation introduced here best explains how it is that you are making your body move during an action, thereby providing a satisfactory solution to the problem of action. (shrink)

The standard objection to dualist theories of mind is that they seemingly cannot account for the obvious fact that mental phenomena cause our behaviour. On the plausible assumption that all our behaviour is physically necessitated by entirely physical phenomena, there appears to be no room for dualist mental causation. Some argue that dualists can address this problem by making minimal adjustments in their ontology. I argue that no such adjustments are required. Given recent developments in philosophy of causation, (...) it is plausible that mental phenomena cause behaviour in standard dualist ontologies. (shrink)

Whereas many philosophers take backwards causation to be impossible, the few who maintain its possibility either take it to be absent from the actual world or else confined to theoretical physics. Here, however, I argue that backwards causation is not only actual, but common, though occurring in the context of our social institutions. After juxtaposing my cases with a few others in the literature and arguing that we should take seriously the reality of causal cases in these contexts, (...) I consider several objections. These objections involve whether the cases should be reinterpreted, whether they are properly within the institution, whether they involve necessitation or else Cambridge changes, whether and how they involve changing the past, and whether this should call us to question institutional reality. I end by suggesting that it is a virtue of our institutions that they allow backwards causation, that this is a kind of technology that they are often built to incorporate. (shrink)

We propose that all actual causes are simultaneous with their direct effects, as illustrated by both everyday examples and the laws of physics. We contrast this view with the sequential conception of causation, according to which causes must occur prior to their effects. The key difference between the two views of causation lies in differing assumptions about the mathematical structure of time.

Disputes about the causal structure of natural selection have implications for teleosemantics. Etiological, mainstream teleosemantics is based on a causalist view of natural selection. The core of its solution to Brentano’s Problem lies in the solution to Kant’s Puzzle provided by the Modern Synthesis concerning populational causation. In this paper, I suggest that if we adopt an alternative, statisticalist view on natural selection, the door is open for two reflections. First, it allows for setting different challenges to etiological teleosemantics (...) that arise if a statisticalist reading of natural selection is right. Second, by providing a different solution to Kant’s Puzzle based on individual causes of evolution, statisticalism promotes a different answer to Brentano’s Problem, what I label as Agential Teleosemantics. (shrink)

The Minimal Theory of Causation, presented in Graßhoff and May, 2001, aspires to be a version of a regularity analysis of causation able to correctly predict our causal intuitions. In my article, I will argue that it is unsuccessful in this respect. The second aim of the paper will be to defend Hitchcock’s proposal concerning divisions of causal relations against criticism made, in Jakob, 2006 on the basis of the Minimal Theory of Causation.

The concept of supererogation is strictly correlated with duty, since its peculiar value is defined by acts that go beyond our regular obligations. This paper highlights the importance of proximity (relational closeness) in allowing the proper theoretical space to supererogation. As a matter of fact if we broaden our sense of duty, the possibility to perform supererogatory acts correspondingly decreases. Special obligations emphasize how difficult acts of supererogation are to perform if we stand in some morally-relevant special position with the (...) recipient of our acts. Thus, we can conclude that the relationship between the agent and the recipient of the act (proximity) plays an important role both for our sense of duty (generating special obligations) and for the possibility of performing supererogatory acts. Furthermore, this analysis brings attention to the fact that whenever an act is supererogatory, it cannot, at the same time, be a special obligation (and vice versa). As a consequence, if proximity plays such a role, an objection to the possibility of self-regarding supererogation can be made. (shrink)