Download or read book Causation and Universals written by Evan Fales and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world contains objective causal relations and universals, both of which are intimately connected. If these claims are true, they must have far-reaching consequences, breathing new life into the theory of empirical knowledge and reinforcing epistemological realism. Without causes and universals, Professor Fales argues, realism is defeated, and idealism or scepticism wins. Fales begins with a detailed analysis of David Hume's argument that we have no direct experience of necessary connections between events, concluding that Hume was mistaken on this fundamental point. Then, adopting the view of Armstrong and others that causation is grounded in a second-order relation between universals, he explores a range of topics for which the resulting analysis of causation has systematic implications. In particular, causal identity conditions for physical universals are proposed, which generate a new argument for Platonism. The nature of space and time is discussed, with arguments against backward causation and for the view that space and time can exist independently of matter or causal process. Many of Professor Fales's conclusions seem to run counter to received opinion among contemporary empiricists. Yet his method is classically empiricist in spirit, and a chief motive for these metaphysical explorations is epistemological. The final chapters investigate the perennial question of whether an empiricist, internalist and foundational epistemology can support scientific realism.
Download or read book Causation and Explanation written by Stathis Psillos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the nature of causation? How is causation linked with explanation? And can there be an adequate theory of explanation? These questions and many others are addressed in this unified and rigorous examination of the philosophical problems surrounding causation, laws and explanation. Part 1 of this book explores Hume's views on causation, theories of singular causation, and counterfactual and mechanistic approaches. Part 2 considers the regularity view of laws and laws as relations among universals, as well as recent alternative approaches to laws. Part 3 examines the issues arising from deductive-nomological explanation, statistical explanation, the explanation of laws and the metaphysics of explanation. Accessible to readers of all levels, this book provides an excellent introduction to one of the most enduring problems of philosophy.
Download or read book Causatives and Causation written by Jae Jung Song and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causatives and Causation is the first comprehensive study of causative constructions found in the world's languages. This important new research, based on a data base of more than 600 languages, not only investigates fully the richness and variety of causative types, but also presents an alternative perspective to the traditional typological approach. The new typology enables a better understanding of how the human mind cognizes causation and how this is reflected in language. Causatives and Causation is also an important attempt to integrate language typology with diachrony by constructing a diachronic model of causative affixes on the basis of this new typology. Drawing on the theoretical insight of Role and Reference Grammar, this book provides a case study of the causative constructions in Korean, providing additional support for both the proposed new typology and the diachronic model. It also examines the pragmatic foundations of causatives, an important but previously unexplored area of study.
Download or read book The Facts of Causation written by D.H. Mellor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. The Facts of Causation, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account.
Download or read book The Cement of the Universe written by J. L. Mackie and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1980-09-18 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies causation both as a concept and as it is 'in the objects.' Offers new accounts of the logic of singular causal statements, the form of causal regularities, the detection of causal relationships, the asymmetry of cause and effect, and necessary connection, and it relates causation to functional and statistical laws and to teleology.
Download or read book Free Will and God s Universal Causality written by W. Matthews Grant and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional doctrine of God's universal causality holds that God directly causes all entities distinct from himself, including all creaturely actions. But can our actions be free in the strong, libertarian sense if they are directly caused by God? W. Matthews Grant argues that free creaturely acts have dual sources, God and the free creaturely agent, and are ultimately up to both in a way that leaves all the standard conditions for libertarian freedom satisfied. Offering a comprehensive alternative to existing approaches for combining theism and libertarian freedom, he proposes new solutions for reconciling libertarian freedom with robust accounts of God's providence, grace, and predestination. He also addresses the problem of moral evil without the commonly employed Free Will Defense. Written for analytic philosophers and theologians, Grant's approach can be characterized as “neo-scholastic” as well as “analytic,” since many of the positions defended are inspired by, consonant with, and develop resources drawn from the scholastic tradition, especially Aquinas.
Download or read book Ontology Causality and Mind written by John Bacon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays, all especially written for this volume, explore the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his interests.
Download or read book Laws of Nature Causation and Supervenience written by Michael Tooley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1999 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Fundamental Causation written by Christopher Gregory Weaver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fundamental Causation addresses issues in the metaphysics of deterministic singular causation, the metaphysics of events, property instances, facts, preventions, and omissions, as well as the debate between causal reductionists and causal anti-reductionists. The book also pays special attention to causation and causal structure in physics. Weaver argues that causation is a multigrade obtaining relation that is transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric. When causation is singular, deterministic and such that it relates purely contingent events, the relation is also universal, intrinsic, and well-founded. He shows that proper causal relata are events understood as states of substances at ontological indices. He then proves that causation cannot be reduced to some non-causal base, and that the best account of that relation should be unashamedly primitivist about the dependence relation that underwrites its very nature. The book demonstrates a distinctive realist and anti-reductionist account of causation by detailing precisely how the account outperforms reductionist and competing anti-reductionist accounts in that it handles all of the difficult cases while overcoming all of the general objections to anti-reductionism upon which other anti-reductionist accounts falter. This book offers an original and interesting view of causation and will appeal to scholars and advanced students in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics.
Download or read book Duns Scotus and the Problem of Universals written by Todd Bates and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-08-26 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Duns Scotus (d.1308), known as the ‘subtle doctor' among medieval schoolmen, produced a formidable philosophical theology using and adapting an Aristotelian metaphysical framework. Critical of Thomas Aquinas' grand Summas, Scotus died before producing a final synthesis of his own. Indeed, his work, left in disarray for centuries, has only recently become available in an edited format. Contemporary metaphysics, taking up the problem of universals, treads on ground already well-worked by Scotus. Duns Scotus and the Problem of Universals shows how Scotus' treatment of the problem of universals is both coherent and, even by contemporary standards, cogent. Todd Bates recovers and sets out Scotus' understanding of the structure of material substance, reconstructs Scotus' arguments for universals and haecceities, and shows how Scotus' theory applies to the metaphysics of the Incarnation. This book makes an important contribution to a neglected but crucial area of Scotus scholarship.
Download or read book The Physical Basis of Predication written by Andrew Newman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-10-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book about metaphysics the author defends a realistic view of universals, characterizing the notion of universal by considering language and logic, the idea of possibility, hierarchies of universals, and causation. He argues that neither language nor logic is a reliable guide to the nature of reality and that basic universals are the fundamental type of universal and are central to causation. All assertions and predications about the natural world are ultimately founded on these basic universals. A distinction is drawn between unified particulars (which reveal natural principle of unity) and arbitrary particulars (which lack such a principle); unified particulars are the terms of causal relations and thus the real constituents of the world. The world is not made up of events but of unified particulars and basic universals.
Download or read book Metaphysics of Causation written by Max Kistler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element presents the main attempts to account for causation as a metaphysical concept, in terms of 1) regularities and laws of nature, 2) conditional probabilities and Bayes nets, 3) necessitation between universals and causal powers, 4) counterfactual dependence, 5) interventions and causal models, and 6) processes and mechanisms. None of these accounts can provide a complete reductive analysis. However, some provide the means to distinguish several useful concepts of causation, such as total cause, contributing cause, direct and indirect cause, and actual cause. Moreover, some of these accounts can be construed so as to complement each other. The last part presents some contemporary debates: on the relation between grounding and causation, eliminativism with respect to causation in physics, the challenge against 'downward' causation from the Closure and Exclusion principles, robust and proportional causation, and degrees of causation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Download or read book Universal Unity and Causation written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Theory of Causation in the Social and Biological Sciences written by A. Reutlinger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first full length treatment of interventionist theories of causation in the social sciences, the biological sciences and other higher-level sciences the presents original counter arguments to recent trends in the debate and serves as useful introduction to the subject.
Download or read book The Universal One written by Walter Russell and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Spirituality of Causation written by Richard Laming and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tropes written by Douglas Ehring and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Properties and objects are everywhere. We cannot take a step without walking into them; we cannot construct a theory in science without referring to them. Given their ubiquitous character, one might think that there would be a standard metaphysical account of properties and objects, but they remain a philosophical mystery. Douglas Ehring presents a defense of tropes—properties and relations understood as particulars—and of trope bundle theory as the best accounts of properties and objects, and advocates a specific brand of trope nominalism, Natural Class Trope Nominalism. This position rejects the existence of universals, and holds that the nature of each individual trope is determined by its membership in various natural classes of tropes (in contrast with the view that a trope's nature is logically prior to those class memberships). The first part of the book provides a general introduction and defense of tropes and trope bundle theory. Ehring demonstrates that there are tropes and indicates some of the things that tropes can do for us metaphysically, including helping to solve the problems of mental causation, while remaining neutral between different theories of tropes. In the second part he offers a more specific defense of Natural Class Trope Nominalism, and provides a full analysis of what a trope is.
