Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wlg5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T20:09:41.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Powerful Substances Because of Powerless Powers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2019

DAVIS KUYKENDALL
DAVIS KUYKENDALL*
Affiliation:
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITYdkuykend@gmu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that the debate between proponents of substance causation and proponents of causation by powers, as to whether substances or their powers are causes, hinges on whether or not powers (as properties) are self-exemplifying or non-self-exemplifying properties. Substance causation is committed to powers being non-self-exemplifying properties while causation by powers is committed to powers being self-exemplifying properties. I then argue that powers are non-self-exemplifying properties, in support of substance causation.

Keywords

substance causationcausation by powerspropertiescausationexemplification

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 339 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anscombe, G. E. M. (1993) ‘Causality and Determination’. In Sosa, Ernest and Tooley, Michael (eds.), Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 88–104.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas. (1981) Summa Theologica. Translated by The Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster: Christian Classics.Google Scholar
Aristotle. (1984) Metaphysics. In Barnes, Jonathan (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle. Vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1552–1728.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jonathan. (1988) Events and Their Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buckareff, Andrei A. (2017) ‘A Critique of Substance Causation’. Philosophia, 45, 1019–26.Google Scholar
Chakravartty, Anjan. (2010) A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, Robert K. (2015) ‘Two Ways to Particularize a Property’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1, 635–52.Google Scholar
Garcia, Robert K. (2016) ‘Tropes as Character-Grounders’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94, 499–515.Google Scholar
Harré, R. (1970) ‘Powers’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 21, 81–101.Google Scholar
Heil, John. (2003) From an Ontological Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heil, John. (2012) The Universe As We Find It. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ingthorsson, R. D. (2002) ‘Causal Production as Interaction’. Metaphysica, 3, 87–119.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (1923) Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Darmstadt: Berlin Academy.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (1966) Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz. Edited by Couturat, Louis. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (1969) Philosophical Papers and Letters. Edited and translated by Loemker, Leroy. 2nd ed. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Locke, J. [1690] (1975). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Nidditch, Peter. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2008) Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2010) ‘On the Individuation of Powers’. In Marmodoro, Anna (ed.), The Metaphysics of Power: Their Grounding and their Manifestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 8–26.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2013) ‘Substance Causation, Powers, and Human Agency’. In Gibb, Sophie, Lowe, E. J., and Ingthorsson, R. D. (eds.), Mental Causation and Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 153–72.Google Scholar
Marmodoro, Anna. (2010) ‘Introduction’. In Marmodoro, Anna (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and their Manifestations (New York: Routledge), 1–7.Google Scholar
Marmodoro, Anna. (2017) ‘Aristotelian Powers at Work: Reciprocity without Symmetry in Causation’. In Jacobs, Jonathan D. (ed.), Causal Powers (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 57–76.Google Scholar
Martin, C. B., and Pfeifer, Karl. (1986) ‘Intentionality and the Non-Psychological’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 46, 531–54.Google Scholar
Molnar, George. (2003) Powers: A Study in Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mumford, Stephen, and Anjum, Rani Lill. (2011) Getting Causes from Powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pernu, Tumoas K. (2013) ‘The Principle of Causal Exclusion Does Not Make Sense’. Philosophical Forum, 44, 89–95.Google Scholar
Place, Ullin T. (1996) ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Dispositional’. Dialectica, 50, 91–120.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard. (1997) ‘The Irreducibility of Causation’. Dialectica, 51, 79–92.Google Scholar
Whittle, Ann. (2016) ‘A Defense of Substance Causation’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2, 1–20.Google Scholar
Williams, Neil E. (2014) ‘Powers: Necessity and Neighborhoods’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 51, 357–71.Google Scholar