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Author: Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192640925
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
Author: Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192640925
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Get Book
Book Description
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
Author: Benjamin Hill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192642766
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
Author: Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198869525
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science to fill explanatory gaps seen to be left by reductivist and eliminativist accounts of previous generations. This volume revisits the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles across history to foster deeper discussions about their metaphysical natures
Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019969561X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Here, the authors develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.
Author: Bruno Gnassounou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315577616
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Author: Rom Harré
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Author: Stavros Ioannidis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009022431
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.
Author: Ruth Groff
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781472526830
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A Critical Introduction to Causation and Causal Powers responds to a groundswell of interest in the topic of causal powers in contemporary metaphysics, presenting a fresh systematic overview of the realist literature,debates and arguments. Introducing the topic via the lens of a contrast between passivism and anti-passivism, the contrast is established in the opening historical overview, plotting the course from Aristotle to early modern rationalism, through to Hume, Reid, Kant and Mill. As well as covering contemporary and 20th century neo-Humean accounts, this introduction includes a review of foundational work on causal powers and dispositional properties in the 1970s, taking care to include both a descriptive and an analytic component. Exploring contemporary anti-passivist thinking about causation, it covers leading theories of causation and provides powers-based approaches to matters such as laws, essences, necessitation, determinism, pandispositionalism, transitivity and induction. The ascription of causal powers to different kinds of potential causal bearer is also addressed: individual agents, sociological phenomena; abstractions and absences. Offering a balanced approach to this key metaphysical topic, A Critical Introduction to Causation and Causal Powers not only introduces debates amongst anti-passivists, but explains throughout how the same issues are handled by passivists. With study questions and references for further reading at the end of each chapter, this is an accessible, up-to-date overview designed for students and researchers working in metaphysics today.
Author: Richard Corry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192577204
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.
Author: George Molnar
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 019925978X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
George Molnar came to see that the solution to a number of the problems in contemporary philosophy lay in the development of an alternative to Hume's metaphysics, with real causal powers at its center. Molnar's eagerly anticipated book setting out his theory of powers was almost complete when he died, and has been prepared for publication by Stephen Mumford, who provides a context-setting introduction.
