文章基本信息

标题：Mumford, Stephen and Rani Lill Anjum. Getting Causes from Powers.
作者：Briceno, Jose Sebastian
期刊名称：The Review of Metaphysics
印刷版ISSN：0034-6632
出版年度：2012
期号：June
语种：English
出版社：Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
摘要：MUMFORD, Stephen and Rani Lill Anjum. Getting Causes from Powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi + 254 pp. Cloth, $65.00--This book offers a fresh primitivist theory of causation, a positive alternative to the reductive attempts that try to explain causation in terms of something noncausal. The explanation offered by Mumford and Anjum is in terms of properties. Events, facts, and objects participate in causation only in a parasitic way. But what kind of properties are relevant to causation? Their answer is causal powers. "Properties just are clusters of causal powers." Effects are brought into existence when powers are manifested, though powers still exist when not manifested. Importantly, powers are only disposed towards some manifestations; they do not necessitate them. These manifestations are causes for further effects. Causation is just "passing powers around." It is a confessedly circular theory: causation is explained in terms of powers; powers in terms of dispositions (causes) towards some types of manifestations (effects). Causation, we are told, is already a basic ingredient of the world and a "simple idea," not something to be reduced or analyzed in terms of other more basic ingredients or more simple ideas. The constant failure of reductive attempts is explained by their falsity: they do not provide sufficient truthmakers for basic (causal) truths. The authors make a convincing case against the reducibility of causation, appealing to a wide range of scientific, epistemic, and metaphysical arguments. Circularity, after all, is better than falsity and anyway unavoidable when explaining primitives. The major novelty of this book, however, lies in the detailed way in which the fruitfulness of causal primitivism is tested against the usual challenges: the problem of distinguishing causes from effects and background conditions; the relations between causation, laws, counterfactuals, and explanation; the problems of omission and prevention; the problems of transitivity and simultaneity; the peculiar modal force of causation; the perception of causation. The essential move that the authors make to face these classical problems is their rejection of the dominant view according to which causation is a "relation" between separate and distinct relata. This idea has framed the development of the Humean reductive tradition but also has conditioned anti-Humean criticisms, in a way that the anti-Humean is regarded as trying to provide a "metaphysical glue" to bring things together in a relation stronger than that of constant spatiotemporal contiguity. In contrast, the authors say that we should think of causation as a continuous process of change, with no temporal gaps. "Causation should not then be understood as a relation between two events, but rather as what makes an event occur." The anxiety for "metaphysical glue" only appears when we see cause and effect as loose and separate. But if there is no temporal gap between cause and effect, these are not wholly distinct existents: they are both indivisible parts of a continuous process. A process in the sense used by Mumford and Anjum is not an aggregate of discrete point-like events or snapshots. We can choose a part of that process and call it "cause" or "event,." Then we can choose a later part of that same process and call it "effect" or "[event.sub.2]." Yet there is no separation. A cause is "depicted as merging into and becoming the effect through a natural process."

The idea of an undivided process is central to the solutions offered by Mumford and Anjum. But it is also the source of a fundamental tension in their work. While they simply dissolved the problem of interaction of distinct relata (a unified and undivided process makes the need of a "metaphysical glue" superfluous), underlying their work is also a clear commitment to a substance-attribute ontology. "Properties do not, however, float freely in the world. They are properties of things." "It is a something about the substance that does its causal work." The continuity and unbroken character of process is what brings the unity that other accounts of causation cannot provide. Now, how can that unity be possible if causation is something that involves powers instantiated by distinct substances? This problem is not the result of Humean scepticism against powers. It is a puzzle raised by two metaphysical claims that seem incompatible or at least in clear tension: the self-contained, persistent, and independent character of powerful substances versus the continuous, always changing, and undivided character of a process of causal influence. Leibniz solved the problem by accepting immanent process and activity, but rejecting inter-monadic causal influence. Process philosophers solved it by rejecting substances. Monists solved it by denying plurality. Mumford and Anjum have made a valuable contribution to expand the horizons of our understanding of causation, but they still owe us their answer to the former dilemma, and this answer demands an ontological sacrifice.--Jose Sebastian Briceno, The University of Nottingham.
关键词：Books

Mumford, Stephen and Rani Lill Anjum. Getting Causes from Powers.

Briceno, Jose Sebastian

MUMFORD, Stephen and Rani Lill Anjum. Getting Causes from Powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi + 254 pp. Cloth, $65.00--This book offers a fresh primitivist theory of causation, a positive alternative to the reductive attempts that try to explain causation in terms of something noncausal. The explanation offered by Mumford and Anjum is in terms of properties. Events, facts, and objects participate in causation only in a parasitic way. But what kind of properties are relevant to causation? Their answer is causal powers. "Properties just are clusters of causal powers." Effects are brought into existence when powers are manifested, though powers still exist when not manifested. Importantly, powers are only disposed towards some manifestations; they do not necessitate them. These manifestations are causes for further effects. Causation is just "passing powers around." It is a confessedly circular theory: causation is explained in terms of powers; powers in terms of dispositions (causes) towards some types of manifestations (effects). Causation, we are told, is already a basic ingredient of the world and a "simple idea," not something to be reduced or analyzed in terms of other more basic ingredients or more simple ideas. The constant failure of reductive attempts is explained by their falsity: they do not provide sufficient truthmakers for basic (causal) truths. The authors make a convincing case against the reducibility of causation, appealing to a wide range of scientific, epistemic, and metaphysical arguments. Circularity, after all, is better than falsity and anyway unavoidable when explaining primitives. The major novelty of this book, however, lies in the detailed way in which the fruitfulness of causal primitivism is tested against the usual challenges: the problem of distinguishing causes from effects and background conditions; the relations between causation, laws, counterfactuals, and explanation; the problems of omission and prevention; the problems of transitivity and simultaneity; the peculiar modal force of causation; the perception of causation. The essential move that the authors make to face these classical problems is their rejection of the dominant view according to which causation is a "relation" between separate and distinct relata. This idea has framed the development of the Humean reductive tradition but also has conditioned anti-Humean criticisms, in a way that the anti-Humean is regarded as trying to provide a "metaphysical glue" to bring things together in a relation stronger than that of constant spatiotemporal contiguity. In contrast, the authors say that we should think of causation as a continuous process of change, with no temporal gaps. "Causation should not then be understood as a relation between two events, but rather as what makes an event occur." The anxiety for "metaphysical glue" only appears when we see cause and effect as loose and separate. But if there is no temporal gap between cause and effect, these are not wholly distinct existents: they are both indivisible parts of a continuous process. A process in the sense used by Mumford and Anjum is not an aggregate of discrete point-like events or snapshots. We can choose a part of that process and call it "cause" or "event,." Then we can choose a later part of that same process and call it "effect" or "[event.sub.2]." Yet there is no separation. A cause is "depicted as merging into and becoming the effect through a natural process."

The idea of an undivided process is central to the solutions offered by Mumford and Anjum. But it is also the source of a fundamental tension in their work. While they simply dissolved the problem of interaction of distinct relata (a unified and undivided process makes the need of a "metaphysical glue" superfluous), underlying their work is also a clear commitment to a substance-attribute ontology. "Properties do not, however, float freely in the world. They are properties of things." "It is a something about the substance that does its causal work." The continuity and unbroken character of process is what brings the unity that other accounts of causation cannot provide. Now, how can that unity be possible if causation is something that involves powers instantiated by distinct substances? This problem is not the result of Humean scepticism against powers. It is a puzzle raised by two metaphysical claims that seem incompatible or at least in clear tension: the self-contained, persistent, and independent character of powerful substances versus the continuous, always changing, and undivided character of a process of causal influence. Leibniz solved the problem by accepting immanent process and activity, but rejecting inter-monadic causal influence. Process philosophers solved it by rejecting substances. Monists solved it by denying plurality. Mumford and Anjum have made a valuable contribution to expand the horizons of our understanding of causation, but they still owe us their answer to the former dilemma, and this answer demands an ontological sacrifice.--Jose Sebastian Briceno, The University of Nottingham.