Online research in philosophy

This paper is the second of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some prominent contemporary scholars, including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber, have argued that Descartes is an Occasionalist about natural motion. On their reading, Descartes holds that God alone causes the motions that are not caused by the free actions of finite minds. Hatfield and Garber offer similar, but independent arguments that Descartes's views about physics – in particular, his arguments that the laws of nature are grounded in God's immutability – entail Occasionalism about natural motion. In this paper I argue contra Hatfield and Garber that Descartes's natural philosophy does not entail Occasionalism. Descartes holds that God is a direct efficient cause of every natural motion. Yet he does not take this to imply that bodies lack genuine causal powers. According to Descartes, God concurs with bodies to cause natural motion in such a way that both God and bodies are genuine, efficient causes of motion. I conclude by presenting an account of how Descartes's theory of body is compatible with the thesis that bodies have intrinsic active causal powers.

Does rational bargaining yield a social contract that is efficient and so inclusive? A core allocation, that is, an allocation that gives each coalition at least as much as it can get on its own, is efficient. However, some coalitional games lack a core allocation, so rationality does not require one in those games. Does rationality therefore permit exclusion from the social contract? I replace realization of a core allocation with another type of equilibrium achievable in every coalitional game. Fully rational agents coordinate the pursuit of incentives so that equilibria of this type are efficient. They adopt a social contract that is efficient and inclusive.

Leibniz speaks, in a variety of contexts, of there being two realms—a "kingdom of power or efficient causes" and "a kingdom of wisdom or final causes." This essay explores an often overlooked application of Leibniz's famous "two realms doctrine." The first part turns to Leibniz's work in optics for the roots of his view that nature can be seen as being governed by two complete sets of equipotent laws, with one set corresponding to the efficient causal order of the world, and the other to its teleological order. The second part offers an account of how this picture of lawful over-determination is to be reconciled with Leibniz's mature metaphysics. The third addresses a line of objection proposed by David Hirschmann to the effect that Leibniz's doctrine undermines his stated commitment to an efficient, broadly mechanical account of the natural world. Finally, the fourth part suggests that Leibniz's thinking about the harmony of final and efficient causes in connection with corporeal nature may help to shed light on his understanding of the teleological unfolding of monads as well.

: Dennis Des Chene's Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought reconstructs the discourse of late scholastic natural philosophy, and assesses Descartes' agreements and disagreements. In a critical discussion, I offer a different interpretation of late scholastic theories of final causality and of God's concursus with created efficient causes. Fonseca's and Suárez' conceptions of final causality in nature depend on their claim that a single action can be the action of two agents at once--in particular, of God and of a creature. I discuss both their theory of action and its implications for natural teleology. I then compare Descartes, emphasizing his demolition of the Aristotelian hierarchy of causes, with unmoved movers (culminating in God) regulating the action of inferior moved movers. Aristotle argues that unmoved causes are needed to produce a stable world-order; he takes arts (tÁxnai) as his models of unmoved causes, and uses this model to support natural teleology. Descartes radically simplifies this system by denying all unmoved movers other than God, and denying anything analogous to an art in non-human nature. I explore the implications for Descartes' notion of concursus and his criticism of natural teleology, and discuss his resulting difficulties in explaining natural stability.

The Aristotelian Ibn Sīnā places Necessary Being as the world’s Efficient Cause. Unlike “the standard” Muslim cosmogony of ex nihilo creation, however,his emanative scheme does not seem to grant Necessary Being freedom the exercise of which may cause the world to exist or not to exist. This paper will focus on Ibn Sīnā’s conception of the efficacy of Necessary Being in his emanative cosmogony. If Necessary Being does not have freedom, how does Ibn Sīnā maintain the causal explanation of the contingent being’s (be)coming into being?

: In this paper, I investigate Leibniz's conception of final causation. I focus especially on the role that Leibnizian final causes play in intentional action, and I argue that for Leibniz, final causes are a species of efficient causation. It is the intentional nature of final causation that distinguishes it from mechanical efficient causation. I conclude by highlighting some of the implications of Leibniz's conception of final causation for his views on human freedom, and on the unconscious activity of substances.

This paper has two main purposes. First, it will provide an introductory discussion of hyperset theory, and show that it is useful for modeling complex systems. Second, it will use hyperset theory to analyze Robert Rosen’s metabolismrepair systems and his claim that living things are closed to efficient cause. It will also briefly compare closure to efficient cause to two other understandings of autonomy, operational closure and catalytic closure.

I will argue that Aristotle’s fourfold division of four causes naturally arises from a combination of two distinctions (a) between things and changes, and (b) between that which potentially is something and what it potentially is. Within this scheme, what is usually called the “efficient cause” is something that potentially is a certain natural change, and the “final cause” is, at least in a basic sense, what the efficient cause potentially is. I will further argue that the essences of things and changes are not features or attributes of them, but paradigms that set the standards according to which these things and changes may be judged to be natural or typical. The “formal cause” of a natural thing will be shown to be its essence in this sense: it sets the standards of typicality that apply to instances of its kind. The final cause will be shown to set the standard of typicality for natural changes. When we understand Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes in this way, it becomes clear on what basis he could convincingly argue that final causality is operative in the whole of nature.

Construing all efficient causes as beginning and ceasing with their effects invites the dilemma that a given effect or event either always occurs or neveroccurs. One escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, according temporal priority of causes to their effects in the case of theformer. In the case of human making and doing, where the two efficient causes belong to the same subject, the two are supplemented by a final cause whichserves to link or to mediate them. This it does by drawing out or actuating the subsidiary cause which exists potentially in the basic cause. Arguing from analogy,can it be argued that, just when basic and subsidiary efficient causes belong to the same non-human subject in nature, they must likewise be supplemented byfinal causes if the potentiality of subsidiary causes in basic causes is to be drawn out and made actual? Surprising though it might seem to some, the answer tothis question is yes. To show this, I first place efficient causes in a dilemma. Next I show how one escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, making the former temporally precede the latter. These two causes in some cases need to be linked, and this, I argue, requires a cause of another type, a final cause.

Aristotle says that arts such as medicine, the soul, and the heavenly Unmoved Movers are all efficient causes. Because the arts do not seem to fit the model of an efficient cause that does something, scholars have posited two classes of efficient cause, “energetic” and “non-energetic” ones, and have classified the arts, the soul, and the Unmoved Movers as non-energetic. I argue that, once the way an Aristotelian efficient cause produces motion is properly understand, this distinction is not needed: all efficient causes are energetic. I end by proposing a new understanding of the efficient causality of the Unmoved Mover.