Content externalism and vehicle externalism (what-externalism and how—externalism) or more commonly known as the thesis of extended mind, are said to be two totally independent views that ”diverge sharply” (Stanford encyclopedia). There are advocates, adversaries but also ag nostics about the extended mind thesis. The approach has been much debated and the controversies about vehicle externalism are importantly manifold. I am not going into any of them. My aim is different and fo cused on why and how content externalism is (...) characterized by vehicle externalists. Content externalism is labelled by extended mind theorists as: merely causal, taxonomic (Wilson), reactionary (Rowlands), passive (Clark), while vehicle externalism is: constitutive, radical and active. Since content externalists (to my knowledge) have not reacted to a rather negative presentation of their ideas, I restrict myself to showing that many of vehicle externalist (VE) presented views about content externalism (CE) are partly unjustified, not definitive and even wrong. I zoom on the following: 1. CE being ‘merely’ causal. 2. Active vs. Passive distinc tion, 3. CE being behaviourally inert. (shrink)

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to (...) be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence—i.e. mechanisms—although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation. (shrink)

In the present article, I introduce Husserl’s analyses of ‘natural causality’ and ‘volitional causality’, which are collected in the volume ‘Wille und Handlung’ of the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins. My aim is to show that Husserl’s insight into these phenomena enables us to understand more clearly both the specificity of, and the relation between, the motivational nexus belonging to the sphere of the will in contrast with the causal laws of nature. In light of this understanding, (...) in the last part of the article I reflect on whether and to what extent there is, in fact, an ontological and epistemological compatibility between volitional causality and natural causality. (shrink)

Professor Turner’s reply to my article focuses on the ways in which set-theoretic analysis can be used to help solve problems of causal heterogeneity in social science research. By contrast, I discuss the ways in which set-theoretic analysis can be used to help solve problems of conceptual heterogeneity. I identify conceptual heterogeneity as a ubiquitous problem that is disguised by psychological essentialism. The seriousness of this problem must be recognized for scholars to appreciate the advantages of constructivist set-theoretic analysis (...) for the social sciences. (shrink)

We respond to Jack Vromen’s critique of our discussion of the missing micro-foundations of work on routines and capabilities in economics and management research. Contrary to Vromen, we argue that inter-level relations can be causal, and that inter-level causal relations may also obtain between routines and actions and interactions; there are no macro-level causal mechanisms; and on certain readings of the notion of routines and capabilities, these may be macro causes.

This paper will be concerned with the role acquaintance plays in contemporary theories of introspection. Traditionally, the relation of acquaintance has been conceived in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind as being only epistemically relevant inasmuch as it causes, or enables, or justifies a peculiar kind of propositional knowledge, i.e., knowledge by acquaintance. However, in recent years a novel account of the role of acquaintance in our introspective knowledge has been offered. According to this novel constitutive approach, acquaintance is, (...) in itself, a sui generis—i.e., non-propositional—kind of knowledge. As we will suggest, a stalemate between David Chalmers’ account of direct phenomenal concepts—as a prototypical example of a causal view—and Anna Giustina’s account of primitive introspection—as a prototypical example of a constitutive view—is looming in the current controversy between the two families of theories. Towards the end of the essay, we will point to some possible ways for a constitutive theorist to break the stalemate. (shrink)

The book deals with the changing nature and with the history of the concept of scientific determinism from the classical mechanics until the time immediately preceding quantum mechanics: such a historical-philosophical reconstruction is aimed at (1) signalizing and overcoming the deficiencies of the received opinion on the topic and (2) understanding better a concept which has influenced science from the beginning. -/- Before dealing with historical matters I develop in the first Chapter a kind of new, three-dimensional “measurement system” for (...) analyzing any concept of scientific determinism: many different concepts have been developed in the course of history, and we need a classification system which, on the one hand, is inclusive and broad enough to deal with different concepts; on the other hand, which makes possible to differentiate with some precision between them. My “measurement system” has three dimension or parameter: the “strength” (of the determining link between different states of the physical system), the “depth” (depending on how strong the ontological commitment of the particular concept of scientific determinism is), and the breadth (referring to the domain or the object, to which a deterministic evolution is ascribed). -/- In the second chapter I discuss briefly some main shortcomings of the received opinion about scientific determinism. Then I try to identify the “core” of scientific determinism at its origins while at the same time embedding it in the broader historical-cultural context especially of the Renaissance. On the one hand I show how the core of scientific determinism was mathematical, and this distinguished it from other related concepts, as mechanism, the principle of sufficient reason, and the aristotelic conception of science. On the other hand, precisely the support which these related concepts provided to scientific determinism, together with its mathematical nature, endowed it with an incredible resistance against empirical classification. -/- In the following three chapters I analyze the historic-philosophical development of scientific determinism along the three parameter of my measurement system. -/- In the third Chapter I reconstruct the weakening of scientific determinism with respect to its depth: the starting point is the question about the extent in which the deterministic mathematical descriptions do refer. In the development of mechanics into analytical mechanics the more and more formal character of its mathematical descriptions became evident and it became less obvious that these formal, deterministic structures also have an immediate material truth. Parallel developments within epistemology, starting with Kantian philosophy (which I deal with quite in detail), let the deterministic structures (principle, laws, equations, causal relations) appear less absolute and real and more as a product of reason, as conventions, or as models. A brief consideration of the interpretation of mechanics and its principles by Jacobi, Hertz, Mach and Poincaré shows the implications of these developments. -/- The fourth chapter reconstructs the weakening of scientific determinism with respect to the strength of the determining link: here my work deepens the track which has been opened by Ian Hacking, who interpreted the so-called “probabilistic revolution” in the 19th Century as the main reason for the erosion of determinism. The increasing pervasiveness of statistical methods in the social and natural sciences in the course of the 19th Century gave rise to a conception of scientific laws which could dispense with strict determinism. A new, empirical interpretation of probability (Frequentism) and the statistical explanation of thermodynamic phenomena in physics even suggested chance phenomena to be a necessary condition for the emergence of natural laws. -/- The last part of my work (Ch. 5, 6 and 7) considers the period (2nd half of the 19th century until ca. 1920) in which the concept of scientific determinism became explicit and was discussed as a world-picture or a world-view – that is, in its maximal breadth. I argue that there were two main reasons for the emergence of an explicit and ideological opposition “determinism vs. indeterminism” at that time: the first was the successful application of the deterministic paradigm to sociology, history, physiology and psychology in the course of the 19th Century, which provided scientific determinism with ethical implications (in particular with respect to the problem of free will, which scientific determinism seemed to deny). The second, related reason is that in the 19th Century natural scientists became public men, science was increasingly popularized and scientific issues were increasingly related to life-issues, to worldview-questions, and even to politics. In Chapter 6 I reconstruct the debates on the issue “determinism vs. indeterminism” in such a public, ideological and sometimes even political context. Among the discussants were Fechner, Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholtz, Bernard, Ostwald, Haeckel, Boussinesq, Maxwell, Boutroux, Poincaré, Renouvier, James und Peirce. Also in Vienna the debate on the issue of determinism was fervid and took ideological and political connotations: Michael Stöltzner and Deborah Coen have pointed to a particular tradition of “Vienna Indeterminism” (Stöltzner), or Viennese liberal probabilism (Coen), which was characterized by a strongly empirical conception of science and by the full acceptance and appreciation of statistical thinking in science. In the last Chapter of my work I focus on the early philosophy of Edgar Zilsel, a philosopher who stood near to the Vienna Circle and who has been much neglected in the literature by now, and I suggest considering it as part of the “Vienna Indeterminism”. First, I show how he gave an indeterministic foundation both to statistical and causal knowledge as well as to irreversibility in physics. Second, I inquire into his philosophy of probability and show how it developed in parallel to the ones of Hans Reichenbach and Richard von Mises. Finally, Zilsel happens to be a further, relevant case-study for pointing to the ideological and political side of the issue of determinism. -/- At the end of this reconstruction it should have become clear how no physical theory, no empirical evidence and no experimental confirmation can support or contradict scientific determinism in its non-trivial formulations. The validity of any such formulation depends strongly not only (from the systematical point of view) from the definition of other concepts (like time, physical state, causality etc.), but also from the particular conception of science which more or less implicitly constitutes its background, and which is subjected to historical change. -/- (ISBN: 9783495491034). (shrink)

The identity of a natural kind can be construed in terms of its causal profile. This conception is more appropriate to science than two alternatives. The identity of a natural kind is not determined by one causal role because one natural kind can have many causal roles and several functions and because some functions are shared by different kinds. Furthermore, the microstructuralist thesis is wrong: The identity of certain natural kinds is not determined by their microstructure. It (...) is true that if A and B have the same microstructural composition then a sample of a c. hemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B. However, the reverse does not hold. It is not the case that if a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B then A and B have the same microstructural composition. This is because a macroscopic NK can be “multiconstituted” by different microstructures. (shrink)

Our concerns fall into three areas: (1) Barsalou fails to make clear what simulators are (vs. what they do); (2) activation of perceptual areas of the brain during thought does not distinguish between the activation's being constitutive of concepts or a mere causal consequence (Barsalou needs the former); and (3) Barsalou's attempt to explain how modal symbols handle abstraction fails.

The invariance under interventions –account of causal explanation imposes a modularity constraint on causal systems: a local intervention on a part of the system should not change other causal relations in that system. This constraint has generated criticism against the account, since many ordinary causal systems seem to break this condition. This paper answers to this criticism by noting that explanatory models are always models of specific causal structures, not causal systems as a whole, (...) and that models of causal structures can have different modularity properties which determine what can and what cannot be explained with the model. (shrink)

According to Catharine MacKinnon, pornography itself subordinates women by ranking women as inferior to men and legitimating acts of violence and discrimination against us. As such, pornography is directly implicated in women's diminished moral and civil status. It follows that pornography is not a form of speech, but rather an action, and so does not deserve first amendment protection. I argue that MacKinnon does not adequately support her claim that pornography is an action but instead shows that it is harmful (...) speech. While this might be grounds for limiting it, MacKinnon does not adequately support the view that pornography is especially harmful in comparison to other sorts of misogynist and sexist speech. Hence we lack reasons to limit pornography alone. (shrink)

Clear statements of both extended and enactive conceptions of cognition can be found in John Dewey and other pragmatists. In this paper I'll argue that we can find resources in the pragmatists to address two ongoing debates: in contrast to recent disagreements between proponents of extended vs enactive cognition, pragmatism supports a more integrative view—an enactive conception of extended cognition, and pragmatist views suggest ways to answer the main objections raised against extended and enactive conceptions—specifically objections focused on constitution versus (...) causal factors, and the mark of the mental. (shrink)

Considering the growing need for formal counterparts of causal nexus (AI is desperately looking for a good one!) and thus trying to construct appropriate relations within a formal framework one faces the problem that the notion of “causal connection” is by no means explained with sufficient precision. How to overcome the resulting difficulties?

The main claim of this paper is that notions of implementation based on an isomorphic correspondence between physical and computational states are not tenable. Rather, ``implementation'' has to be based on the notion of ``bisimulation'' in order to be able to block unwanted implementation results and incorporate intuitions from computational practice. A formal definition of implementation is suggested, which satisfies theoretical and practical requirements and may also be used to make the functionalist notion of ``physical realization'' precise. The upshot of (...) this new definition of implementation is that implementation cannot distinguish isomorphic bisimilar from non-isomporphic bisimilar systems anymore, thus driving a wedge between the notions of causal and computational complexity. While computationalism does not seem to be affected by this result, the consequences for functionalism are not clear and need further investigations. (shrink)

The search for causes of perinatal brain damage needs a solid theoretical foundation. Current theory apparently does not offer a unanimously accepted view of what constitutes a cause, and how it can be identified. We discuss nine potential theoretical misconceptions: (1) too narrow a view of what is a cause (causal production vs. facilitation), (2) extrapolating from possibility to fact (potential vs. factual causation), (3) if X, then invariably Y (determinism vs. probabilism), (4) co-occurrence in individuals vs. association in (...) populations, (5) one cause is all that is needed (single cause attribution vs. multicausal constellations), (6) drawing causal inferences from very small numbers of observations (the tendency to generalize), (7) unstated causal inferences, (8) ignoring heterogeneity, and (9) failing to consider alternative explanations for what is observed. We hope that our critical discussion will contribute to fruitful research and help reduce the burden of perinatal brain damage. (shrink)

Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This (...) paper is concerned with the attempt of confronting the challenge coming from the Causal Parity Thesis by offering principles of causal selection that are spelled out in terms of an explicit philosophical account of causation, namely an interventionist account. I show that two such accounts that have been developed, although they contain important insights about causation in biology, nonetheless fail to provide an adequate reply to the Causal Parity challenge: Ken Waters's account of actual-difference making and Jim Woodward's account of causal specificity. A combination of the two also doesn't do the trick, nor does Laura Franklin-Hall's account of explanation (in this volume). We need additional conceptual resources. I argue that the resources we need consist in a special class of counterfactual conditionals, namely counterfactuals the antecedents of which describe biologically normal interventions. (shrink)

1. Introduction: a look back at the reasons vs. causes debate. 2. The interventionist account of causation. 3. Four objections to interventionism. 4. The counterfactual analysis of event causation. 5. The role of free agency. 6. Causality in the human sciences. -- The reasons vs. causes debate reached its peak about 40 years ago. Hempel and Dray had debated the nature of historical explanation and the broader issue of whether explanations that cite an agent’s reasons are causal or not. (...) Melden, Peters, Winch, Kenny and Anscombe had contributed their anticausal conceptions. The neo-Wittgensteinians seemed to be winning the day when in 1963 Donald Davidson published his seminal paper “Actions, Reasons, and Causes”. Davidson’s paper devastated the Wittgensteinian camp. It contained, among other things, a powerful attack on the logical connection argument. Davidson argued that the existence of a logical or conceptual connection between descriptions can never eliminate a causal relation, which holds between events simpliciter, not between events under certain descriptions. Davidson maintained that in a way, reasons can be causes. When somebody acts for a certain reason, his intentional attitudes, or rather changes in his attitudes, cause his bodily movements. Davidson also argued that rationalization is a species of causal explanation. For the definition of action, he argued that intentional actions are bodily movements caused in the right way by beliefs and desires that rationalize them. Davidson’s paper paved the way for causal theories of action, which superseded neo-Wittgensteinian analyses in the following decades. The causal theory was rapidly adopted by Alvin Goldman, David Armstrong, Paul Churchland, Myles Brand and many others, entering the mainstream and dominating the philosophy of action to this very day. In 1971 Georg Henrik von Wright published his book "Explanation and Understanding". The second chapter did not deal with agency, but with causation. It developed a new account of causation, the interventionist or experimentalist account. Focusing on causation, von Wright remedied a major shortcoming of the reasons vs. causes debate. The concept of causality, and the nature of the causal relation, received little attention in this debate, a fact that holds true for both camps. Mostly it was simply taken for granted that, as Hempel had declared, “causal explanation is a special type of deductive-nomological explanation”. One camp then aligned intentional explanations with D-N explanations, while the other camp insisted on their disparity. So strictly speaking, the label “reasons/causes debate” was a misnomer. The controversy dealt primarily with the question as to whether intentional explanations can take the form of D-N explanations, while the notion of causation, and the metaphysics of the causal relation, were left obscured. With von Wright’s new approach, the situation changed. Von Wright was primarily concerned with causation, but his approach contained an implicit attack on the causal theory of action as well. His core idea was that the notion of causality is intimately linked with, or even derived from, the notion of intentionally making something happen. Other philosophers, even Hume, had considered such a connection before, but often just to reject this view, regarding it as a kind of myth belonging to the infancy of the human mind. Von Wright took the idea seriously. He submitted the analysis that p is the cause of q if and only if by doing p we could bring about q. The causal theory of action was also concerned with the relation between causation and agency, to which its name bears witness. The causal theory of action holds that actions are bodily movements with a certain causal history. This is why von Wright’s account constituted a momentous challenge to the causal theory: it reversed the direction of conceptual dependency between both notions. Davidson and his followers tried to define what an intentional action is by using the notion of causation. The causal condition which the causal theory sets is part of the definition of “doing something intentionally”. Von Wright claimed that the conceptual dependency is the other way round. He used the notions of doing, and bringing about, to explain what causal relations are. So, instead of a causal theory of action, he advocated an agency theory of causation, as it may be dubbed. It is remarkable how seldom this clash of opinions about conceptual primacy is reflected in the literature. There are few exceptions: Fred Stoutland noticed the conflict, and he published a number of papers in which he compared Davidson’s and von Wright’s views. Von Wright’s book "Explanation and Understanding" was widely read and discussed in the seventies, especially in Europe. But it strikes me that especially in North America, where the causal theory of action became the orthodoxy of the day, von Wright’s challenge went largely unnoticed. Even Davidson did not seem to take it seriously. He nowhere takes notice of the interventionist theory of causation, while he does discuss von Wright’s earlier book "Norm and Action". As is well-known, Davidson favoured an alternative account of causation, based on “the principle of the nomological character of causality”, as he somewhat clumsily called it, or, later and less clumsily, “the cause-law thesis”. Davidson’s firm adherence to a nomological theory of causality may explain why he did not take much interest in alternative accounts. [...] -/- . 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There are Humeans and unHumeans, disagreeing as to the validity of the Treatise’s ideas regarding practical reason, but not as to their importance. The basic argument here is that the enduring irresolution of their Hume centric debates has been fostered by what can be called the fallacy of normative monism, i.e. a failure to distinguish between two different kinds of normativity: empirical vs. rational. Humeans take the empirical normativity of personal desire to constitute the only real kind, while unHumeans insist (...) that only the objective rationality associated with categorical morality can provide reliable normative guidance. In turn, the failure to recognize the dual nature of normativity has helped engender motivational obscurantism: as essentially causal notions, motive and motivation obscure the rational processes that lie at the heart of deliberation and choice. Once it is realized that normativity takes two different forms, each with its own distinctive role, it becomes possible to mediate if not mitigate the differences between Humeans and unHumeans. Choice will be the key to understanding practical reasoning, and its analysis will provide the basis for a belief/desire model that upends conventional wisdom regarding motivation and desire. (shrink)

Mechanistic approaches are very common in the causal interpretation of biological and neuroscientific experimental work in today’s philosophy of science. In the mechanistic literature a strict distinction is often made between causal relations and constitutive relations, where the latter cannot be causal. One of the typical reasons for this strict distinction is that constitutive relations are supposedly synchronic whereas most if not all causal relations are diachronic. This strict distinction gives rise to a number (...) of problems, however. Our end goal in this paper is to argue that it should be given up, at least in the context of the biological and the psychological sciences. To that effect, we argue that constitutive relations in this context are diachronic, thus undermining the aforementioned reason. We offer two cases from scientific practice in which constitutive relations are regarded as both diachronic and causally efficacious, review three existing ways of dealing with the apparent diachronic nature of interlevel relations in mechanisms and propose a new account of diachronic, causal constitutive relevance. (shrink)

The present paper aims to provide an overview on Kant’s dealing with the main theories of causality which were proposed and discussed in his time. The goal is to show that, since the pre-critical period, he has never simply accepted the theories of causality that he could find in second-scholastic sources, but has always tried to develop an original position. Starting from a general acceptance of the theory of the “physical influx”, Kant tries to amend this theory, as it had (...) been roughly provided by Knutzen and Crusius. This emendation is carried out through elements coming from the Leibnitian tradition. But neither in this field Kant totally embraces the Wolffian, as well as the Baumgartenian model. The paper tries also to shed light on the way in which the critical conception of space allows Kant to fulfill his original theory of causality as an amended version of the physical influx. (shrink)

An epistemic account of constitutive relevance lists the criteria by which scientists can identify the components of mechanisms in empirical practice. Three prominent claims from Craver form a promising basis for an account. First, constitutive relevance is established by means of interlevel experiments. Second, interlevel experiments are executions of interventions. Third, there is no interlevel causation between a mechanism and its components. Currently, no account on offer respects all three claims. I offer my causal situationist account of (...) constitutive relevance that respects the claims. By situating a part of a mechanism on the causal chain between the mechanism’s input and output, components can be identified with interventions, without the interventions suggesting interlevel causation. The causal situationist account is the only account on offer so far that clearly fits within Craver’s framework. (shrink)

This work shows how systematically studying people’s use of emotion concepts (what people think emotions are), can inform debates regarding the nature of emotion (what emotions are). As such, it makes a contribution both in terms of method and content. In regards to the methodological approach, this work constitutes the first experimental philosophy Intuitions Project approach (see Article 4) to general questions regarding the nature of emotion. It does not only bring together the philosophical and scientific literature on emotion (as (...) much research has already done) but directly combines philosophical analysis and empirical research methods to study emotion. Articles 1 – 3 use quantitative (inferential statistics) and qualitative (text analysis) methods on data from surveys whose design was guided by philosophical analysis. And Article 4 considers the use of neuroimaging methods in philosophy. Finally, Article 2 builds bridges between analytic philosophy and the scientific study of concepts. In particular, by considering concepts’ internal structure (typicality, weight, and dependency relations). In regards to the content, the main contribution of this work consists in testing the premises used in arguments for (and against) emotion theories. This helps us discriminate between sound and unsound arguments, and select the appropriate conclusions regarding the nature of emotion. Figure 1 graphically represents the state of the debate after this contribution (see Figure 5 in the Introduction for a comparison point). In the following, I will detail the contribution of each of the articles in this work, and how they converge and complement each other to provide a coherent picture of emotion (concepts). Figure 1. Arguments from conditional and problem cases as applicable for both Cognitive / Perceptual theories and Somatic / Attitudinal theories. Solid black arrows indicate support, dashed red arrows indicate opposition. Claims challenged in this work are flagged using dashed lines. Claims not tested are flagged using transparency. -/- The studies presented in Article 1 tested the Subtraction Argument in favor of Somatic theories of emotion. The results of these studies showed that people apply emotion concepts (fear, anger, sadness) in cases of absence of bodily feelings. This questions the claim that bodily perceptions (attitudes) are necessary for emotion (see Introduction §4.1.) and supports the existence of “calm” cases of emotion (see Introduction §4.3.2.). As we saw in the introduction, these two claims are incompatible. The first one supports the Subtraction Argument in favor of Somatic (Attitudinal) theories, while the second one supports arguments against them. With these results in hand, we can conclude that the Subtraction Argument is unsound (its main premise is likely false), and the argument from calm emotions is sound (see Figure 1). This poses a problem for Somatic and Attitudinal theories of emotion, but also Hybrid theories of emotion, as they are also committed to the claim that felt bodily changes constitute emotions. The studies presented in Article 2 went beyond those in Article 1 by testing people’s use of emotion concepts in cases where the presence (absence) of bodily feelings, cognitive evaluations, and action tendencies is independently manipulated. The results show that people consider that bodily feelings are non-necessary for emotion, in line with the results in Article 1. Action tendencies were also regarded as non-necessary, which poses a problem for Motivational theories of emotion (see Introduction §5.2.1.). Finally, cognitive evaluations were considered non-necessary in two out of three studies. However, across all studies, cognitive evaluations were the most important factor in determining people’s use of emotion concepts. Thus, it seems like we should not give up the claim that “When someone does not [value perception/belief], she is not emotion]” (see Figure 1). Furthermore, the results show that bodily changes and action tendencies depend on cognitive evaluations. These last two results square well with the core tenets of Cognitive, Perceptual, and Appraisal theories of emotion. Thus, the results presented in Article 2 support these theories. Article 3 complements Article 1 and 2 by testing the weight of yet another factor in people’s use of emotion concepts. Namely, the value of the situation in which the emotion is experienced. The results of Article 3 show that this factor significantly influences people’s use of emotion concepts. This poses a challenge for theories of emotion as non-intentional states (Morag, 2017; Whiting, 2011). According to these accounts, emotions are only causally related to the situation in which they are experienced, but they are not about that situation. Thus, they seem unable to explain why differences in the value of the situation influence the use of emotion concepts even when the reaction of the agent is the same. By stressing the importance of the intentionality of emotion and the (normative) connection between emotion and value, these results (as those in Articles 1 and 2) favor Cognitive, Perceptual, and Appraisal theories. As we saw in the Introduction, these theories are especially well-suited to explain the intentionality of emotions and their relation to value. Finally, the main goal of Article 4 is to analyze the prospects of using fMRI to inform philosophically relevant questions concerning emotion. First, we saw that there are no brain areas specifically associated with emotion. The brain correlates of emotions are also involved in other psychological processes, so we cannot infer emotion from localized brain activity. Second, and against the predictions of Basic Emotion theories (see Introduction §5.2.), we saw that patterns of brain activity are not significantly different across emotion types. This provides evidence against this particular Componential account. However, other Componential theories (e.g. Appraisal theories) are compatible with the results. Note that the same approach used to test the claims of Basic Emotion theories (Ontology testing) could potentially be used to inform questions regarding the role of evaluative cognitions / bodily feelings in emotion. In particular, we could test the degree of overlap between the neural correlates of emotion and evaluative cognitions vs. the degree of neural overlap between emotion and bodily feelings. Future research should consider this approach to further investigate what constitutes emotions. To sum up, Articles 1 to 4 challenge Somatic, Attitudinal, Hybrid, Motivational, and Basic Emotion theories, and instead favor Cognitive, Perceptual, and Appraisal theories. But before declaring winners, some limitations should be taken into account. First, it is important to note that Cognitive, Perceptual, and Appraisal theories still face challenges. Cognitive theories have to account for the emotions of non-human animals as well as the phenomenology of emotion. Appraisal theories have to account for the problem of integration. And all Cognitive, perceptual, and appraisal theories have to account for cases of recalcitrant emotion. The work presented here provides an independent motivation to develop and defend such accounts. Second, as it has been noted in the discussion of Article 1, one could account for mismatches between theoretical and ordinary uses of emotion concepts by appealing to factors that are orthogonal to emotion. For example, it might be that people’s use of emotion concepts is heavily influenced by pragmatic factors. Thus, although the results presented in this work demand proponents of Somatic, Attitudinal, Hybrid, and Motivational theories to develop and empirically support such hypotheses, it doesn’t preclude the possibility to protect these theories from the evidence. Third, note that important issues around the nature of emotion, such as those concerning emotions’ representational (see, e.g. Grzankowski, 2016) or reason-responsive nature (see, e.g. Maguire, 2017), were not treated in this work. Arguably, these questions are better addressed using philosophical analysis alone. However, future work should consider the prospects of using empirical research methods to illuminate these issues. In general, future work should continue to explore the possibilities of combining philosophical analysis and empirical research methods to inform questions regarding the nature of emotion, so we can further advance long-standing debates in emotion theory. Hopefully, this work sets a precedent for this. (shrink)

This essay examines the relation between causation and causal explanation. It distinguishes two prominent roles that causes play within the sciences. On the one hand, causes may work as metaphysical posits. From this standpoint, mainstream in contemporary philosophy, causation provides the ‘raw material’ for explanation. On the other hand, causes may be conceived as explanatory postulates, theoretical hypotheses lacking any substantial ontological commitment. This unduly neglected distinction provides the conceptual resources to revisit longstanding philosophical issues, such as overdetermination and (...) causal pluralism. It also inspires a provocative reframing of Russell’s famous, if notoriously elusive, remarks on the nature of causation. (shrink)

Alexander Gebharter has recently proposed to use Bayesian network causal discovery methods to identify the constitutive dependencies that underwrite mechanistic explanations. The proposal depends on using the assumptions of the causal Bayesian network framework to implicitly define mechanistic constitution as a kind of deterministic direct causal dependence. The aim of this paper is twofold. In the first half, we argue that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe conceptual problems. In the second half, we present an alternative way to (...) bring Bayesian network tools to bear on the issue of understanding mechanistic constitution. More precisely, our proposal interprets constitution as the relation explaining why a target phenomenon has its characteristic causal role in terms of the causal roles of some of its spatiotemporal parts---where the notion of causal role is probabilistically understood. (shrink)

Kim's exclusion argument threatens to show that irreducible constituted objects are epiphenomenal. Kim's arguments are examined and found to be unconvincing; that a constituted cause requires its constituent to be a cause is not an adequate reason to reject the causation of the constituted object (event or property-instance). However, I introduce and argue for, the Causal Power Uniqueness Condition (CPUC). I argue that CPUC and the causal closure of the physical, implies that constituted objects or property-instances are not (...) novel causal powers. (shrink)

In his “New Consensus” on explanation, Wesley Salmon (1989) famously argued that there are two kinds of scientific explanation: global, derivational, and unifying explanations, and then local, ontic explanations backed by causal relations. Following Salmon’s New Consensus, the dominant view in philosophy of science is what I term “neo-Causalism” which assumes that all ontic explanations of singular fact/event are causal explanations backed by causal relations, and that scientists only search for causal patterns or relations and only (...) offer causal explanations of singular facts/events. I argue that there are foundational, and fatal, flaws in the neo-Causal picture. The relations backing constitutive mechanistic explanations of activities of wholes using activities of parts, as well as other species of compositional explanation, cannot be causal relations. Treating them as causal or causation-like is therefore plausibly a category mistake. Compositional explanations in the sciences represent instead a sui generis kind of ontic explanation of singular fact/event backed by sui generis compositional relations. We thus need a pluralistic revision of Salmon’s New Consensus on explanation to reflect these findings. (shrink)

The author of the paper critically analyzes a quasi-theory of future contingents (PFC) given by Marcin Tkaczyk and proposes his own explication of its theses and terms. The author makes it by introducing operational definitions of temporal and modal concepts, distinguishing between the causal and functional determination, discussing the status of the principle of bivalence, and replacing Tkaczyk’s theses by their new formulations. As a result, the author states, among other things, that (contrary to Tkaczyk) there is no contradiction (...) between the thesis about the opened future and the thesis about divine omniscience, because it requires the causal (but not functional as it is a case) determination between a true proposition and its determined fact. The author also shows that Tkaczyk’s examples of the retroactive causes are not an accurate solution of the antinomy because they are, at most, the examples of the factors which change the picture of the past but not the past itself. (shrink)

J.S. Bell believed that his famous theorem entailed a deep and troubling conflict between the empirically verified predictions of quantum theory and the notion of local causality that is motivated by relativity theory. Yet many physicists continue to accept, usually on the reports of textbook writers and other commentators, that Bell’s own view was wrong, and that, in fact, the theorem only brings out a conflict with determinism or the hidden-variables program or realism or some other such principle that (unlike (...) local causality), allegedly, nobody should have believed anyway. Moreover, typically such beliefs arise without the person in question even being aware that the view they are accepting differs so radically from Bell’s own. Here we try to shed some light on the situation by focusing on the concept of local causality that is the heart of Bell’s theorem, and, in particular, by contrasting Bell’s own understanding with the analysis of Jon Jarrett which has been the most influential source, in recent decades, for the kinds of claims mentioned previously. We point out a crucial difference between Jarrett’s and Bell’s own understanding of Bell’s formulation of local causality, which turns out to be the basis for the erroneous claim, made by Jarrett and many others, that Bell misunderstood the implications of his own theorem. (shrink)

Humeans and non-Humeans reasonably agree that there may be necessary connections between entities that are identical or merely partly distinct—between, e.g., sets and their individual members, fusions and their individual parts, instances of determinates and determinables, members of certain natural kinds and certain of their intrinsic properties, and (especially among physicalists) certain physical and mental states. Humeans maintain, however, that as per “Hume’s Dictum”, there are no necessary connections between entities that are wholly distinct;1 and in particular, no necessary (...) class='Hi'>causal connections between such entities (even when the background conditions requisite for causation are in place). The Humean’s differential treatment appears principled, in reflecting that commonly accepted necessary connections involve constitutional relations, whereas wholly distinct entities (notably, causes and effects) do not constitute each other. I’ll argue, however, that the appearance of principle is not genuine, as per the following conditional: Constitutional→Causal: If one accepts certain constitutional necessities, one should accept certain causal necessities. This result provides needed leverage in assessing the two main frameworks in the metaphysics of science, treating natural kinds, causes, laws of nature, and the like. These frameworks differ primarily on whether Hume’s Dictum is taken as a working constraint on theorizing; and it has proved difficult for either side to criticize the other without presupposing their preferred stance on the dictum, hence talking past one another. The arguments for Constitutional→Causal are based, however, in general and independent considerations about what facts in the world might plausibly warrant our beliefs in certain constitutional necessities involving broadly scientific entities. The Humean can respond to these arguments, which reveal a deep tension in their view, at attendant costs of implausibilty and adhocery. The non-Humean framework doesn’t face any such tension between constitutional and causal necessities, however, and so in this respect comes out ahead. (shrink)

The Mind/Body Problem is about causation not correlation. And its solution will require a mechanism in which the mental component somehow manages to play a causal role of its own, rather than just supervening superflously on other, nonmental components that look, for all the world, as if they can do the full causal job perfectly well without it. Correlations confirm that M does indeed "supervene" on B, but causality is needed to show how/why M is not supererogatory; and (...) that's the hard part. (shrink)

The identity of a natural kind can be construed in terms of its causal profile. This conception is more appropriate to science than two alternatives. The identity of a natural kind is not determined by one causal role because one natural kind can have many causal roles and several functions and because some functions are shared by different kinds. Furthermore, the microstructuralist thesis is wrong: The identity of certain natural kinds is not determined by their microstructure. It (...) is true that if A and B have the same microstructural composition then a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B. However, the reverse does not hold. It is not the case that if a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B then A and B have the same microstructural composition. This is because a macroscopic NK can be “multiconstituted” by different microstructures. (shrink)

This manuscript delves into the philosophical debate surrounding the Special Composition Question (SCQ), focusing on the causal relationships between objects and their constituent parts. By distinguishing between Weak and Strong Causal Composition, the article explores how causal mechanisms underpin the composition of objects. Theories from notable philosophers, including van Inwagen and Leibniz, are evaluated. This study seeks to bridge the gap between common sense perspectives and principled ontological theories by introducing the concepts of Weak and Strong (...) class='Hi'>Causal Composition. The analysis reveals how a causal approach can offer insightful resolutions to longstanding debates in mereology and ontology, emphasizing the role of causality in understanding the essence of material composition. The proposed causal perspective encourages further philosophical inquiry into the foundational principles governing the composition of objects. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, constitutive explanations have attracted much attention since Craver’s influential book Explaining the Brain (2007). His Mutual Manipulability (MM) theory of constitution aimed to explicate constitution as a non-causal explanatory relation and to demarcate between constituents and non-constituents. But MM received decisive criticism. In response, Craver et al. (2021) have recently proposed a new theory, called Matched Interlevel Experiments (MIE), which is currently gaining traction in various fields. The authors claim that MIE retains “the spirit (...) of MM without conceptual confusion.” Our paper argues that this claim is not borne out: neither does MIE meet MM’s objectives nor is it free of conceptual confusion. At the same time, we show that it is possible to meet MM’s objectives in a conceptually sound manner—by adopting the so-called No De-Coupling theory of constitution. (shrink)

This article attempts to outline the contours of a transcendental phenomenology that would retain the intuition of a healthy realism. In this connection it is proposed to reinterpret the Husserlian notion of constitution, presenting constitution as a discover of reality. A distinction is made between strong and weak versions of constitution. It is constitution in the weak sense that combines, in our opinion, with the realist attitude. In order to achieve the above-mentioned goal (to present constitution as discovery), the Husserlian (...) notion of object sense is clarified: it is excluded as a representative or substitute of an intentional object; object sense is seen as a mode of givenness, as а medium by means of which the object is implied or given. The idea of a meaningful discovery of reality is best matched by this treatment of object meaning. It is thus possible to combine the realist attitude with the idea of meaningful access to the real, thus avoiding, on the one hand, naive realism and, on the other hand, transcendental-idealist implications. The Husserlian notion of constitution is further related with the idea of forming interpretative schemes of understanding the world, which may include political agendas, scientific paradigms, systems of speculative metaphysics, and religious faith. It is emphasized that, although the rejection of interpretation is impossible, interpretive schemes must be reconciled with real facts and events in order to “fine-tune” reason and reality. Finally, a separation is undertaken with the conception of J.- L. Marion, which relies on the deflation of meaning in favor of the given as such, calling into question the status of man as a being who possesses reason, who discovers reality and constitutes its meaning. (shrink)

Inextricably bound up with the philosophy of John Searle is, famously among philosophers, the concept of constitutive rules. Less well known, however, is that starting in the 1970s, a conversation on this topic emerged in Italian legal philosophy, reaching a depth and complexity hardly matched anywhere else in the world. This is due chiefly to the work of Gaetano Carcaterra and Amedeo G. Conte. This chapter moves that conversation forward by connecting these different research lines: It shows how the (...) evolution of Searle’s concept of a constitutive rule can ground a critique of Conte’s own concept of a constitutive rule, and how, conversely, those developments in Searle’s ideas are consistent with some sound critiques Conte aimed at Searle’s original thinking on constitutive rules. (shrink)

This chapter questions the causal-constitution fallacy raised against the extended mind. It does so by presenting our signature temporal thesis about how to understand constitutive relations in the context of the extended mind, and with respect to dynamical systems, more broadly. We call this thesis diachronic constitution. We will argue that temporalising the constitution relation is not as remarkable (nor problematic) as it might initially seem. It is (arguably) inevitable, given local interactions between microscale and macroscale states of (...) (coupled) dynamical systems. We focus primarily on the metaphysics of the extended mind in this paper. However, we also show how our account of diachronic constitution has important implications for the metaphysics of dependence relations more generally as well as an emerging literature on inter-level explanations in the mechanistic framework applied to the discussion over extended, enactive and embodied cognition. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cognition based on insights from nonlinear dynamics. Contrariwise to the mainstream literature in both analytical metaphysics and extended cognition, (...) I develop a nonstandard, alternative conception of constitution, which I call “diachronic process constitution”. It will be argued that only a diachronic and dynamical conception of constitution is consistent with the nature of constitution in distributed cognitive processes. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that a counterfactual approach to causation is not sufficient to provide a solution to the causal exclusion problem in the form of systematic overdetermination. Taking into account the truthmakers of causal counterfactuals provides a strong argument in favour of the identity of causes in situations of translevel, causation.