Events causal powers

A non-Humean response is to maintain that state and event types have at least some of their causal powers essentially, namely, the (conditional) powers to produce their manifestations. I will not attempt to determine here whether we should be Humeans or non-Humeans about causation. Suffice it for the moment just to note that even if event types endow causal powers essentially, the question remains whether functional state and event types endow causal powers. Thus, suppose that the Humean view is indeed wrong, and that some structures are essentially killer structures, and so essentially endow the power to kill. The question would still remain why the state of having some or other killer structure is a state that is itself a killer state - a state that endows the power to kill — given that it is not identical with any of the killer structures. Why think that the property of having some property or other that essentially endows the power to kill is itself a property that endows the power to kill Similarly, even if all the bases or core realizers of a functional property, water solubility, essentially endow the (conditional) power to cause dissolvings in water, what reason is there to think that the functional property does - that water solubility itself does For the moment, suffice it to note that these questions deserve answers. 

Of course, if the core physical realizer has the causal role essentially (an idea Lewis would reject), then the core realizer will imply the functional event. Shoemaker (2001) holds that the way to go in responding to Kims exclusion problem is to embrace essential causal powers. But that invokes causal oomph, and we are now focused on the Humean conception of causation. As 1 mentioned earlier, I discuss Shoemaker s view in McLaughlin (2006b) it faces problems different from those of the view under discussion here. 

This is in fact the view Jaegwon Kim has advanced in several places about instances of second-order properties and instances of their first-order realizers.As Kim has noted, such an identification requires a revision of his property-exemplification account of events assuming that mental properties are second-order properties, it requires the exclusion of mental properties as constitutive properties of events. This instance-identity thesis is supposed to support reductionism about the mental. But there is a tension between this thesis and Kim s formulation in several places of his causal inheritance principle, which says that the causal powers of an instance of a higher-order property are identical with or are a subset of [emphasis mine] the causal powers of the instance of its realizer. Clearly, if the causal powers of the realized property instance were... 

Davidson, I think, is led to this particular line of defense because of his views about causation. Davidson holds an extensionalist view of causation - i.e., that causation is a relation between non-abstract particular events. Thus he says, But it is also irrelevant to the causal efficacy of physical events that they can be described in the physical vocabulary. It is events that have the power to change things, not our various ways of describing them (Davidson 1993 12). Since it is events that are causes, then any properties that are relevant to what a particular event causes are causal properties. Davidson says, But properties are causally efficacious if they make a difference to what individual events cause, and supervenience ensures that mental properties do make a difference to what mental events cause (1993 15). So since mental properties supervene on physical properties, and physical properties make a difference to what an event causes, mental properties also make a causal difference. 

So, for example, if a specific physical cause, in terms of only physical variables, were a sufficient actual cause for an event, then we can create a causal model Afp framed in only physical variables. If this causal model is effectively closed with respect to, say, mental variables from vocabulary M, then using mental variables that correspond to mental properties will do nothing to further our predictive power of the causal event in question. Our best way to predict the causation of the event in question will be to restrict ourselves to the physical vocabulary P within the model Afp. Employing mental properties in our prediction of the event will do nothing to further our predictive power. 

For some systems with structural changes such as a clutch, storage elements may temporarily become dependent for the duration of a system mode. In such a case, a residual sink may be switched on that delivers a power variable so that the conjugate power variable vanishes and storage elements can keep integral causality. As their state variables jump to a new joint value, numerical integration has to be re-initialised at such a discrete event. 

After all the causal events are listed on a fault tree, the FTA allows the analyst to evaluate each event separately or in combination with other events on the tree. This provides the user with a powerful tool capable of determining, through deduction, which event or set of events led to the top event. When more than one contributing event is identified, as is usually the case, their respective locations on the fault tree are collectively referred to as a cutset. Identification and qualification of one or multiple cutsets within a fault tree facilitates the evaluation process. Essentially, the cutset isolates specific events in the system and allows for a qualitative examination of the relationship between the cutset, as a whole, and its effect on the top event. 

Causal factors for low-probability/high-consequence events are rarely represented in the analytical data on incidents that occur frequently, and the uniqueness of serious injury potential must be adequately addressed. However, accidents that occur frequently may be predictors of severity potential if a high-energy source was present (e.g., operation of powered mobile equipment, electrical contacts). 

A loss of off-site power should be assumed coincident with any extreme DBEE if a direct or indirect causal relationship cannot be excluded. Particularly, for DBEEs that are expected to affect the entire site and, therefore, to give rise to a potential for a common cause failure mode, a loss of off-site power should be combined with the DBEE. For other events, a loss of off-site power should be assumed if the location of the transmission lines or the switchyard is such that the direct effects on them of the DBEE could cause a loss of off-site power. For external events such as ship collisions and internal events such as fire or anticipated operational occurrences, a coincident loss of off-site power should be assumed if the event could be expected to result in an unplanned turbine trip or reactor trip that would increase the potential for grid instability. 

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