Physical Causation
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Author | : Phil Dowe |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 238 |
Release | : 2000-07-03 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 0521780497 |
This book, published in 2000, discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation.
Author | : Karl Svozil |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 214 |
Release | : 2020-10-08 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 9781013269837 |
This book addresses the physical phenomenon of events that seem to occur spontaneously and without any known cause. These are to be contrasted with events that happen in a (pre-)determined, predictable, lawful, and causal way.All our knowledge is based on self-reflexive theorizing, as well as on operational means of empirical perception. Some of the questions that arise are the following: are these limitations reflected by our models? Under what circumstances does chance kick in? Is chance in physics merely epistemic? In other words, do we simply not know enough, or use too crude levels of description for our predictions? Or are certain events "truly", that is, irreducibly, random? The book tries to answer some of these questions by introducing intrinsic, embedded observers and provable unknowns; that is, observables and procedures which are certified (relative to the assumptions) to be unknowable or undoable. A (somewhat iconoclastic) review of quantum mechanics is presented which is inspired by quantum logic. Postulated quantum (un-)knowables are reviewed. More exotic unknowns originate in the assumption of classical continua, and in finite automata and generalized urn models, which mimic complementarity and yet maintain value definiteness. Traditional conceptions of free will, miracles and dualistic interfaces are based on gaps in an otherwise deterministic universe. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Author | : Terry Horgan |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 283 |
Release | : 2015-03-05 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 1107077834 |
A collection of new essays that develop themes from the work of the philosopher Jaegwon Kim.
Author | : Jaegwon Kim |
Publisher | : MIT Press |
Total Pages | : 166 |
Release | : 2000 |
Genre | : Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | : 9780262611534 |
This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.
Author | : Thomas Kroedel |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 235 |
Release | : 2020 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 1108487149 |
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.
Author | : Michael J. Loux |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | : 740 |
Release | : 2005-09-08 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 9780199284221 |
Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.
Author | : Douglas Kutach |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | : 349 |
Release | : 2013-10 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 019993620X |
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.
Author | : Anthony Dardis |
Publisher | : Columbia University Press |
Total Pages | : 213 |
Release | : 2008 |
Genre | : Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | : 0231144164 |
Two thousand years ago, Lucretius said that everything is atoms in the void; it's physics all the way down. Contemporary physicalism agrees. But if that's so how can we--how can our thoughts, emotions, our values--make anything happen in the physical world? This conceptual knot, the mental causation problem, is the core of the mind-body problem, closely connected to the problems of free will, consciousness, and intentionality. Anthony Dardis shows how to unravel the knot. He traces its early appearance in the history of philosophical inquiry, specifically in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and T. H. Huxley. He then develops a metaphysical framework for a theory of causation, laws of nature, and the causal relevance of properties. Using this framework, Dardis explains how macro, or higher level, properties can be causally relevant in the same way that microphysical properties are causally relevant: by their relationship with the laws of nature. Smelling an orange, choosing the orange rather than the cheesecake, reaching for the one on the left instead of the one on the right-mental properties such as these take their place alongside the physical "motor of the world" in making things happen.
Author | : Mathias Frisch |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 265 |
Release | : 2014-10-09 |
Genre | : Mathematics |
ISBN | : 1107031494 |
This book argues, partly through detailed case studies, for the importance of causal reasoning in physics.
Author | : Sydney Shoemaker |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 162 |
Release | : 2007-07-19 |
Genre | : Philosophy |
ISBN | : 0199214395 |
How can physicalism be true? How can all facts about the world be constituted by facts about the distribution in the world of physical properties? Shoemaker's answer to this question involves showing how the mental properties of a person can be 'realised' in the physical properties of that person.