Causal Necessity in Aristotle

Like many realists about causation and causal powers, Aristotle uses the language of necessity when discussing causation, and he appears to think that by invoking necessity, he is clarifying the manner in which causes bring about or determine their effects. In so doing, he would appear to run afoul of Humean criticisms of the notion of a necessary connection between cause and effect. The claim that causes necessitate their effects may be understood— or attacked— in several ways, however, and so whether the view or its criticism is tenable depends on how we understand the necessitation claim. In fact, Aristotelian efficient causation may be said to involve two distinct necessary connections: one is a relation between causes considered as potential, while the other relates them considered as active. That is, the claims that (1) what has the power to heat necessarily heats what has the power to be heated, and that (2) a particular flame which is actually under a pot necessarily heats it, both of which appear to be true for Aristotle, involve distinct notions of necessity. The latter kind of necessity is based on the facts, as Aristotle sees them, about change, whereas the former is based in the nature of properties. Though different, both kinds of necessity are instances of what contemporary philosophers would call metaphysical necessity, and together they also amount to a theory of causal determination.     

Causal Powers and the Necessity of Realization

Non-reductive physicalists hold that mental properties are realized by physical properties. The realization relation is typically taken to be a metaphysical necessitation relation. Here, I explore how the metaphysical necessitation feature of realization can be explained by what is known as ‘the subset view’ of realization. The subset view holds that the causal powers that are associated with a realized property are a proper subset of the causal powers that are associated with the realizer property. I argue that the said explanation of the metaphysical necessitation feature requires a careful treatment of the relationship between properties and causal powers.     

Absence Causation and a Liberal Theory of Causal Explanation

For the framework of event causation—i.e. the framework according to which causation is a relation between events—absences or omissions pose a problem. Absences, it is generally agreed, are not events; so, under the framework of event causation, they cannot be causally related. But, as a matter of fact, absences are often taken to be causes or effects. The problem of absence causation is thus how to make sense of causation that apparently involves absences as causes or effects. In an influential paper, Helen Beebee offers a partial solution to the problem by giving an account of causation by absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be causes). I argue that Beebee's account can be extended to cover causation of absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be effects) as well. More importantly, I argue that the extended Beebeeian account calls for a major modification to David Lewis's theory of causal explanation, usually taken as standard. Compared to the standard theory, the result of this modification, which I shall call ‘the liberal theory of causal explanation’, has, among other things, the advantage of being able to accommodate causal explanations in which the explananda are not given in terms of events.     

Causal Exclusion and Causal Autonomism

The causal exclusion problem is often considered as one of the major difficulties for which non-reductive physicalists have no easy solution to offer. Some non-reductive physicalists address this problem by arguing that mental properties are to some extent causally autonomous. If this is the case, then mental properties will not be causally excluded by their physical realizers because causation, in general, is a relation between properties of the same level. In this paper, I argue that the response from causal autonomy cannot be successful for two reasons. First, it does not offer a satisfactory explanation for how mental particulars can have causal efficacy in a non-reductive physicalist framework. Second, the causal considerations underpinning this response do not really support the conclusion that mental properties are causally autonomous.     

There are Non‐Causal Explanations of Particular Events

A defence of non‐causal explanations of events is presented in cases where explanation is understood as modal explanation. In such cases the source of modal information is crucial. All explanations implicitly use contrast classes, and relative to a particular contrast we can privilege some difference makers over others. Thinking about changes in these privileged “actual” difference makers is then the source of modal information for any given explanandum. If an actual difference maker is non‐causal, then we have a principled definition of a non‐causal explanation of an event regardless of how much causal information is also contained in the explanans. A demarcation of explanation into causal and non‐causal in this way recovers ordinary language about explanation as well as reflecting genuine differences in practice, such as the in‐principle evidential base for any modal claim.     

The Inherent Empirical Underdetermination of Mental Causation

It has become a popular view among non-reductive physicalists that it is possible to devise empirical tests generating evidence for the causal efficacy of the mental, whereby the exclusion worries that have haunted the position of non-reductive physicalism for decades can be dissolved once and for all. This paper aims to show that these evidentialist hopes are vain. I argue that, if the mental is taken to supervene non-reductively on the physical, there cannot exist empirical evidence for its causal efficacy. While causal structures without non-reductive supervenience relations can be conclusively identified in ideal discovery circumstances, it is impossible, in principle, to generate evidence that would favour models with mental causation over models without. Ascribing causal efficacy to the mental, for the non-reductive physicalist, is a modelling choice that must be made on the basis of metaphysical background theories or pragmatic maxims guiding the selection among empirically indistinguishable models.     

Agent causation as a solution to the problem of action

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.     

Causal Inference from Descriptions of Experimental and Non-Experimental Research: Public Understanding of Correlation-Versus-Causation

The human tendency to conflate correlation with causation has been lamented by various scientists (Kida, 2006; Stanovich, 2009), and vivid examples of it can be found in both the media and peer-reviewed literature. However, there is little systematic data on the extent to which individuals conflate correlation with causation. In three experiments, we presented people with one of four research vignettes generated from the combination of two independent variables: whether the vignette described an experimental or non-experimental design, and whether it revealed a positive or negative association. Upon reading their vignette, participants selected inferences that could be drawn from the findings. Participants drew causal inferences from non-experimental vignettes as often as they did from experimental vignettes, and more frequently for causal statements and directions of association that fit with intuitive notions than for those that did not. We discuss our findings in relation to other biases in human thinking.     

The Logic of Causal Explanation An Axiomatization

Three-valued (strong-Kleene) modal logic provides the foundation for a new approach to formalizing causal explanation as a relation between partial situations. The approach makes fine-grained distinctions between aspects of events, even between aspects that are equivalent in classical logic. The framework can accommodate a variety of ontologies concerning the relata of causal explanation. I argue, however, for a tripartite ontology of objects corresponding to sentential nominals: facts, tropes (or facta or states of affairs), and situations (or events). I axiomatize the relations and use canonical models to demonstrate completeness.     

单一因果关系因果力判断研究述评

简单因果归纳包括自下而上的材料驱动的加工和自上而下的因果知识驱动加工两个方面。简单因果归纳的多数理论模型强调自下而上的材料驱动的加工,这些模型又存在联想解释与计算解释的基本区分。最后,概述了单一因果关系因果力判断研究的基本问题：因果力判断的主要影响因素和过程机制、研究的方法问题。     

Causal powers and preventers: An explanatory account of cue interaction effects in human causal judgement

According to the causal powers theory, all causal relations are understood in terms of causal powers of one thing producing an effect by acting on liability of another thing. Powers can vary in strength, and their operation also depends on the presence of preventers. When an effect occurs, there is a need to account for the occurrence by assigning sufficient strength to produce it to its possible causes. Contingency information is used to estimate strengths of powers and preventers and the extent to which they account for occurrences and nonoccurrences of the outcome. People make causal judgements from contingency information by processes of inference that interpret evidence in terms of this fundamental understanding. From this account it is possible to derive a computational model based on a common set of principles that involve estimating strengths, using these estimates to interpret ambiguous information, and integrating the resultant evidence in a weighted averaging model. It is shown that the model predicts cue interaction effects in human causal judgement, including forward and backward blocking, second and third order backward blocking, forward and backward conditioned inhibition, recovery from overshadowing, superlearning, and backward superlearning.     

Epiphenomenal Properties

What is an epiphenomenal property? This question needs to be settled before we can decide whether higher-level properties are epiphenomenal or not. In this paper, I offer an account of what it is for a property to have some causal power. From this, I derive a characterization of the notion of an epiphenomenal property. I then argue that physically realized higher-level properties are not epiphenomenal, because laws of nature impose causal similarities on the bearers of such properties, and these similarities figure as powers in the causal profiles of these properties.     

There must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite,Essentially Ordered,Causal Series

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers.     

Seventy Years in Philosophy of Mind: An Overview,with Emphasis on the Issue of Mental Causation

This paper is an opinionated overview of major developments in philosophy of mind during the past seventy years, with emphasis on the issue of mental causation. Its most prominent positions all embrace a broadly “naturalistic” or “materialistic” conception of human beings, and of mentality and its place in nature. Included in this paper are discussions of analytical behaviorism, the psychophysical identity theory, functionalism, multiple realizability and strong multiple realizability, supervenience, the causal exclusion problem, phenomenal mental states, wide content, contextualist causal compatibilism, agentive phenomenology, and the agent-exclusion problem.     

职务绩效评估的因果模型

职务绩效评估是人力资源管理中的一个关键问题。本文着重介绍了几种有关职务绩效评估的因果模型 ,揭示了这些模型的演变过程及其背后的理论变化。同时也指出了以往研究在理论、方法和研究范围上的一些不足 ,并对今后的研究提出了建议。     

因果模型在类比推理中的作用

通过操纵因果模型的特征维度及推理方向, 探讨因果模型在类比推理中的作用。实验一探讨了当结果特征未知时进行类比推理的情况, 发现在一果多因时, 被试采用因果模型进行类比推理, 而在一因多果时, 被试同时采用因果模型和计算模型进行类比推理。实验二探讨当原因特征未知时进行类比推理的情况, 发现在一果多因和一因多果时, 被试均采用因果模型进行类比推理。结果表明：(1)当结果特征未知时, 人们会建构因果模型进行类比推理。且当因果模型和计算模型处于冲突情境时, 人们会采用因果模型进行类比推理; 但当因果模型和计算模型处于非冲突情境时, 人们会同时采用因果模型和计算模型。(2)当原因特征未知时, 即按照因果模型推理的难度增加时, 人们仍会建构因果模型进行类比推理。     

说明文阅读中因果序列的表征

结合自定步调阅读与句子启动再认范式, 探讨说明文阅读过程中因果序列的表征问题。研究包括3个实验, 实验1的文本提供一个包括4个概念的因果链(如, A－B－C－D), 文本最后设置包含概念A或概念B或概念C的句子, 对概念D进行探测, 结果发现, 对于概念D的再认启动作用, 概念C＞概念B＞概念A; 实验2改变因果链的说明顺序, 使之与因果链本身次序不一致, 结果与实验1一致; 实验3的文本分别介绍两条独立的因果链(如A－B－C; D－E－F), 最后呈现包含概念A或概念D的句子, 对概念C进行探测, 结果发现, 包含概念A的句子理解启动了相关因果链, 使读者对随后呈现的概念C的再认反应加快。基于本研究结果, 结合相关研究, 本文尝试提出说明文文本表征的建构模式。     

突发公共卫生事件下心境障碍的特点与应对

突发公共卫生事件会给较大范围的人群造成相当的心理压力和情绪问题。突发事件发生时,社会心理因素对突发事件控制效果和进程的影响越来越显著,因疫情、疾病、生活、工作以及社会和人际关系等因素而致的情绪问题非常突出。突发事件时情绪问题的表现有疑病、恐慌、焦虑、抑郁和强迫心理等,对此应采取相应的对策,而不同群体如罹患人群、隔离人群、家属、普通就医者及一般公众的情绪问题有其独特的表现和应对措施。突发事件为情绪问题的研究提供了广阔的前景。     

The Causal Structure of Evolutionary Theory

One contentious debate in the philosophy of biology is that between the statisticalists and causalists. The former understand core evolutionary concepts like fitness and selection to be mere statistical summaries of underlying causal processes. In this view, evolutionary changes cannot be causally explained by selection or fitness. The causalist side, on the other hand, holds that populations can change in response to selection—one can cite fitness differences or driftability in causal explanations of evolutionary change. But, on the causalist side, it is often not clear how, precisely, one should understand these causes. Thus, much more could be said about what sort of causes fitness and driftability are. In this paper, I borrow Dretske's distinction between structuring and triggering causes and I suggest that fitness and driftability are structuring causes of evolution.     

其它可能原因对于因果共变信息作用的影响

研究使用相继呈现信息的方法控制了被试获得信息的顺序,将其它可能原因在因果判断过程中所起到的作用分离了出来,并按照其对不同共变信息的影响进行了分析。研究结果表明：(1)其它可能原因会影响到被试利用因果共变信息而进行的因果推断。(2)其它可能原因与待判断原因共同存在的程度在很大程度上影响着其它可能原因所起到的作用。(3)其它可能原因对于不同共变信息的影响有着明显的差别。