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Adding Potential to a Physical Theory of Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Mark Zangari
Mark Zangari*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University
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Extract

Recently, several authors have attempted to characterise causation by identifying causal connections with physical processes. While this approach may not live up to providing a complete analysis of causation in all its contexts, it has raised some significant points regarding the causal role played by various entities described in natural laws. To date, much of the discussion has involved the attempted identification of physical terms or concepts that necessarily or sufficiently characterise causal processes, and has centered around three main contentions:

  1. Cl. Causal processes involve the presence of forces, and that forces are themselves a species of primitive causes (e.g., Bigelow, et al. 1988).

  2. C2. Causal processes necessarily involve transfer of a physically measurable quantity, such as energy-momentum (e.g., Aronson 1982 and Fair 1979).

  3. C3. Causal processes necessarily involve microscopic interactions between “fundamental” entities, such as is described by quantum field theory (e.g., Heathcote 1989).

Type
Part VII. Realism: Causes, Capacities and Mathematics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 261 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to John Collier and Bill Wignall for many fruitful discussions and their helpful comments and criticisms.

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