causal powers: a neo-aristotelian metaphysic

218 Pages·2007·1.09 MB·English

CAUSAL POWERS: A NEO-ARISTOTELIAN METAPHYSIC
Jonathan D. Jacobs
Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Philosophy
Indiana University
December 2007
Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Doctoral Timothy O’Connor, Ph.D.
Committee (Principal Advisor)
Jordi Cat, Ph.D.
David Charles McCarty, Ph.D.
December 5, 2007 Frederick F. Schmitt, Ph.D.
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Copyright (cid:13)c 2008
Jonathan D. Jacobs
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
iii
Dedication
To Meaghan, whose power sustains me and whose love empowers me
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the help of many. My friends and family have supported me in intangible
ways during the journey to completion. Special thanks and gratitude are due my wife,
Meaghan,andchildren,GregoryandEmelia. Inadditiontotheirpatience,loveandsupport,
they are a daily source of joy and rejuvenation.
PortionsofthedissertationwerereadatIndianaUniversity,theDispositionsandCauses
Workshop at the University of Bristol, and Northern Illinois University. The dissertation
has benefitted from those conversations. Stephen Crowley was kind enough to read and
commentonportionsofChapter2. CommunicationswithAlexanderBirdhavebothhelped
my understanding and shaped my views in numerous ways.
My committee members, Timothy O’Connor, Jordi Cat, David McCarty and Frederick
Schmitt, have taught me much and have provided feedback that has improved the disser-
tation immensely. Special thanks are due to David McCarty. In addition to the valuable
instruction and support he has given me over the years and on the dissertation, he helped
me through the formal aspects of Chapter 6. Indeed, he provided the basic semantics for
counterfactuals that I offer there. (Any flaws are, of course, my own making.)
Finally, I would like to thank Timothy O’Connor for his instruction and guidance over
the years and on the dissertation. He has read many drafts of the dissertation, and his
comments and suggestions have been insightful and invaluable. More than that, though, he
has been an ideal teacher, mentor and role model.
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Abstract
Causalpowers, say, anelectron’spowertorepelotherelectrons, arehadinvirtueofhav-
ing properties. Electrons repel other electrons because they are negatively charged. One’s
views about causal powers are shaped by—and shape—one’s views concerning properties,
causation, laws of nature and modality. It is no surprise, then, that views about the na-
ture of causal powers are generally embedded into larger, more systematic, metaphysical
pictures of the world. This dissertation is an exploration of three systematic metaphysics,
Neo-Humeanism, Nomicism and Neo-Aristotelianism. I raise problems for the first two
and defend the third. A defense of a systematic metaphysics, I take it, involves appealing
to pre-theoretical commitments or intuitions, and theoretical issues such as simplicity or
explanatory power. While I think that Neo-Aristotelianism is the most intuitive of the
available general metaphysical pictures of the world, these kinds of intuitions do not settle
the matter. The most widely held of the alternative pictures, Neo-Humeanism, is accepted
in great part because of its theoretical power. In contrast, a systematic Neo-Aristotelian
metaphysic is, at best, nascent. The way forward for the Neo-Aristotelian, therefore, is a
contribution to an ongoing research program, generating Neo-Aristotelian views of modal-
ity, causation and laws of nature from the Neo-Aristotelian understanding of causal powers.
The central argument of this dissertation is that such views are defensible, and so the
Neo-Aristotelian metaphysic ought to be accepted.
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Contents
Dedication iv
Acknowledgements v
Abstract vi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Causal Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Three Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 Neo-Humeanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 Nomicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.3 Neo-Aristotelianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 An Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Metaphysics and Method 10
2.1 Truthmakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 In Defense of Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 A Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.1 The epistemic base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.2 What counts as best? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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3 Natural Properties 25
3.1 Spare and Abundant Conceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 Natural Properties and Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2.1 The Problem with Overdetermination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2.2 Boolean Properties are Non-Natural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.3 Structural Properties are Non-Natural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2.4 Multiply Realizable Properties are Non-Natural . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3 Infinite Complexity and Levels of Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4 Natural Properties and Causal Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.1 Functional Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4 Neo-Humeanism 43
4.1 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.1.1 Categoricalism and Quidditism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.2 Possible Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2.1 Lewisian Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.2.2 Ersatz Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.3 Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3.1 Comparative Similarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3.2 Counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.4 Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.5 Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.6 Causal Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.7 Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.7.1 Properties, Powers and Counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.7.2 Singularism versus Generalism, and Locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.7.3 Causal Supervenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
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4.7.4 Nomic Supervenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.7.5 Pre-emption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.7.6 The Big, Bad Bug: Chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.7.7 Context Sensitivity and Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.7.8 Modality and Changing the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5 Nomicism 110
5.1 Contingent Nomicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.1 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.2 Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.1.3 Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.1.4 Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.1.5 Causal Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.1.6 Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.2 Necessary Nomicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6 Neo-Aristotelianism 128
6.1 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.1.1 Natures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.1.2 Quiddities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.1.3 The Pure Powers View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.1.4 The Physical Intentionality View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.1.5 The Powerful Qualities View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.1.6 The Truthmaker View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
6.1.7 Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.2 Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
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6.2.1 Neo-Aristotelianism With Possible Worlds? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.2.2 Neo-Aristotelianism Without Possible Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.2.3 A Powers Semantics for Counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
6.2.4 Modal Facts are Counterfactual Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
6.2.5 The Plenitude of Possibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
6.2.6 The Illusion of Contingency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6.3 Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
6.4 Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
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