Causal powers

The probabilities of different outcomes can thus be seen as resulting from the causal powers and capacities of the system and their arrangement. This makes probability a function of the nature of the system, not merely a statement of degrees of belief or the frequency with which an outcome occurs. We can account for the observed probability (in a frequency sense) by the interplay of capacities or causal powers, and we can estimate a probability (in the epistemic sense) if we know something about the capacities of the things that may influence the outcome. 

As should be clear by now, however, I think that one should not stop at extension in either the mathematical case or the material case. Standing above extension mathematically and below extension materially is prime matter. Like extension, prime matter, according to the interpretation I am offering, exists in material composites. Its existence, however, and any formal characteristics it might have are entirely dependent on the forms that enform it. And so, it is only when one completely abstracts away all the formal content horn a material composite, that is only when one abstracts away all the causal powers and the spatial structures that characterize a material composite, that one arrives at, in its pure form, prime matter. 

If the methods of actual scientific practice for resolving questions about sampling in experimental design rely upon prior (approximate) theoretical knowledge of unobservable factors, then, in particular, knowledge of such factors is actual and therefore possible. Thus, the empiricist conception that experimental knowledge cannot extend to unobservable causal powers and mechanisms must be mistaken and the philosophical justification of the Humean definition of causation rests upon a false epistemological premise. (Boyd, 1985, p. 73)... 

Harre, R. and Madden, E.H. 1977. Causal Powers. Oxford Blackwell. 

If, however, we reduce mental properties to physical properties, then mental properties will simply inherit the causal powers of their supervenience bases and will thus be causal in this derivative sense. 

Ned Block, in his article Do Causal Powers Drain Away , puts forth a powerful version of the generalization argument. He argues that if Kim s exclusion/supervenience argument is sound, then we are left with two unappealing, and presumably false, consequences. First of all, if the exclusion principle is true, then causation at any irreducible supervenient level will always be pre-empted by causation at a subvenient level below it. Furthermore, if matter is infinitely divisible, and there is no lowest level, then we will be left with no causation anywhere. Kim refers to these two... 

Seepage. If property Q supervenes on a property Q at a lower level without being reducible to it, Q s causal powers are pre-empted by those of Q (Kim 2005 60). 

So it seems that in this scenario, where we have closure at L - 1 with respect to L, the exclusion principle and seepage will both apply. The causal powers of properties at L will always be preemped by properties at L - 1. Causation need not seep down to a lowest closed level for the exclusion argument to work. Instead, it seems that if the exclusion principle applies to all irreducible supervenient levels, then whenever there is closure of a subvenient level with respect to its supervenient level, causation will seep... 

However we see the problem of seepage, the fact remains that causal powers at irreducible levels become causally impotent. Whether the causal powers get preempted by the level just below them, or seep all the way down to the lowest level of physics, we are still left with the unappealing consequence that irreducible properties are causally impotent. 

Thus, there will be no closed lowest level to stop the seepage of causation of irreducible non-closed higher levels. Whether there is a step-by-step collapse or whether causation drains directly to the bottom, causal powers will continue to drain away until there is fullblown closure at some bottom level to stop the drainage. If there is no bottom closed level, then causation will continue to drain away endlessly, with the result that there is no causation anywhere. This is what Kim and Block refer to as drainage . 

Kim rightly recognizes the need to argue that even if matter is infinitely divisible, causal powers do not drain away. He points to David Bohm s observation that each time we descend to a lower microlevel, we do so because the current level is not causally closed ( explanatorily complete may be a better term in this context) that is, because... 

On Kim s view, we need a bottom closed level to stop the seepage and drainage of causal powers of irreducible higher-level properties. According to Kim, causal powers of irreducible higher-level properties get preempted by causal powers at a bottom closed level or union of levels. In addition, on Kim s view, it seems we need a bottom closed level or union of levels to groimd the causation of reducible properties. Properties at reducible levels are causal because they are grovmded in sufficient causation at some lowest level. 

In addition to all closed levels being irreducible, it seems that as long as Kim accepts the exclusion principle, no closed irreducible level can supervene on any other levels. Any closed irreducible level must either be the lowest level, or if there are levels below it, it cannot supervene on any of these levels. On Kim s view of closure at L, if a closed irreducible level supervened on a lower level, it seems that we would be left with incoherence. Recall that a result of the exclusion principle is the problem of seepage Seepage. If property Q supervenes on a property Q at a lower level without being reducible to it, Q s causal powers are pre-empted by those of Q (Kim 2005 60). 

Say that level L is a elosed irreducible level and supervenes on level L -1. Now imagine that Q is a property at level L and Q is a property at L - 1 upon whieh Q supervenes. Since L is irreducible, seepage applies, and thus Q s causal powers would have to be preempted by the causal powers of Q. But if L is closed, then we have sufficient causation at L. Thus Q must be a causally efficacious property and eannot have its causal powers preempted. Thus, on Kim s view, if we try to imagine a closed irreducible level supervening on a lower level, we seem to be left with the contradiction that property Q is both causally eflBcacious and causally impotent at the same time. 

However, if matter is infinitely divisible, and the union of all die microlevels at and below the Standard Model is where closure occurs, then seepage would stop at the union of all these levels (assuming we can even make sense of closure occurring at the union of microlevels). But what about drainage What stops the causal powers at each microlevel from draining away endlessly ... 

Unless we have reason to think that irreducibility will hold all the way down, we have no reason to think that the causal drainage will go on forever. Reduction is the stopper that will plug the cosmic hole through which causal powers might drain away. In fact, there appear to be presumptive reasons for thinking that reducibility will hold for the kind of infinite series Block has in mind (Kim 2005 68). 

So it is not as if we can just define, say, a brown-eye gene in terms of its causal powers at the lower level. Being a particular gene is much more complex than simply being a particular DNA strand. 

Block, N. (2003). Do Causal Powers Drain Away Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61l 133-50. 

Now, on Kim s view, a property with no distinctive causal powers is no property at all. If one accepts this principle, then the challenge to the reality of mental properties is quite direct no uniquely mental causal powers, no mental properties. But even if one rejects this principle — and there are some reasons for doing so — the crisis is not averted. The problem is not just that there are no distinctively mental causal powers — the problem is incoherence between the claims made for the nomicity of MR properties and the assumption needed to secure their autonomy. The assumption that, for every MR property, its set of realizer properties is wildly disjunctive has been taken to be crucial to the demonstration that MR properties are irreducible. But how can a property that is nomologically - perhaps necessarily - coextensive with a wildly disjunctive property itself be nomic, a fit property for scientific taxonomies ... 

What we have, then, is a pair of objections — I ll call them the incoherence objection and the conventionality objection — that must be met whatever else is said about the causal powers of the mental. 

But movement from order to order does not - indeed, cannot - bring new causal powers into existence. Movement to a higher-order property. 

By existential quantification over a given domain of properties, we do not literally bring into being a new set ofproperties. That would be sheer magic, especially if we adopt the plausible view that distinct properties must represent distinct causal powers, (p. 103)... 

If we are prepared to go for a functionalization of all mental properties, we will be embracing an all-encompassing reductionism about the mental, and this will solve the problem of mental causation. That s the good news. On a reductionist picture of this sort, however, the causal powers of mental properties turn out to be just those of their physical realizers, and there are no new causal powers brought into the world by mental properties. Many will consider that bad news. But the real bad news is that some mental properties, notably phenomenal properties of conscious experiences, seem to resist functionalization, and this means there is no way to account for their causal efficacy within a physicalist scheme. These properties are not able to overcome the supervenience argument, (pp. 118—19)... 

When we reduce water to H2 O, we do not vindicate the causal efficacy of water as against that of we say that the causal powers of the one property simply are the causal powers of the other property. Indeed,... 

The question at bottom has always been this if mental properties are physically irreducible and remain outside the physical domain, then, given that the physical domain is causally closed, how can they exercise causal powers, or enjoy any kind of causal relevance, in the physical domain (pp. 58-9)... 

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