Getting Causes from Powers 1st Edition

by Stephen Mumford (Author),‎ Rani Lill Anjum (Author)

2 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0198709626

ISBN-10: 0198709625

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Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we truly understand it? Do we know what it means to say that one thing is a cause of another and do we understand what in the world drives causation? Getting Causes from Powers develops a new and original theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. Others have already suggested that this ought to be possible, but no one has yet performed the detailed work. Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum argue here that the completed theory will not look exactly as anyone has yet anticipated, and that a thoroughly dispositional theory of causation has some surprising features, for instance with respect to modality. The book is not restricted to the metaphysics of causation, but treats a variety of topics such as explanation, perception, modelling, the logic of causal claims, transitivity, and nonlinearity, and the empirical credentials of the theory are tested with reference to biology.

Getting Causes from Powers

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Editorial Reviews

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"bold and innovative"

--Jennifer McKitrick, Analysis

About the Author

Stephen Mumford is Professor of Metaphysics and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Nottingham. He gained his PhD from Leeds in 1994 and then wrote Dispositions (OUP 1998), Laws in Nature (Routledge 2004), and David Armstrong (Acumen 2007), as well as editing Russell on Metaphysics (Routledge 2003) and George Molnar's Powers (OUP 2003). He was co-investigator in the AHRC-funded project Metaphysics of Science and has been Chair of the British Philosophy of Sport Association. He is currently writing a book on sport: Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotions.

Rani Lill Anjum is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She received her doctorate from the University of Tromso, funded by the FRIHUM program at the Norwegian Research Council (NFR). Anjum has recently finished a three-year postdoctoral project at Tromso and Nottingham on causation and dispositions (also funded by FRIHUM).

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (February 1, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0198709625
ISBN-13: 978-0198709626
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.7 x 5.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,023,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #810 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > Epistemology
- #900 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > Metaphysics
- #1898 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Epistemology

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Polo

A Premiere Read for Those Interested in Powers

September 3, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book is an essential read for anyone interested in powers. I'm a huge fan of Mumford's writing style. He writes with the clarity and precision only found in premiere philosophical writing. Although I don't agree with the overarching thesis of the book - that all properties are dispositional -, I do find the argument's compelling, and forceful.

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Steve

A Creative and Compelling Theory of Causation

January 9, 2012

Format: Hardcover

In this book, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum present their theory of causal dispositionalism, that is, causation based on dispositional properties, or powers. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the philosophy of causation.

Powers do the causal work in our world, according to the authors: effects are brought about by powers manifesting themselves, and the manifestation is itself a further power or set of powers.

A central idea is that powers don't necessitate their manifestations - they dispose toward them. Causality has long been associated with the idea of necessity, and necessity (and the sense of constant conjunction) is too strong to describe causation. The main insight here is that other factors can prevent or interfere with the expected manifestation (and, indeed, they often do).

To help demonstrate how a disposition can be enhanced or, importantly, hindered by other powers, the authors develop a vector addition diagram. Only when the sum of vectors (with various strengths and directions) exceeds some threshold do we get the manifestation. They extend the model to more complex scenarios to argue that the model is robust enough to explain non-linear and even "emergent" behavior.

In addition to arguing strongly against necessity, the authors want to overthrow another usual notion. The authors reject as misguided the typical "two-event" conception of causation, where cause is temporally prior to effect, in part because no one has a compelling account of how you get from one to the other. Instead causes and effects are simultaneous - they are two aspects of a temporally extended process which brings about a change.

An important and creative part of the book explores the distinctive modality of dispositions in more depth. Dispositional modality (weaker than necessity but stronger than "pure" contingency) is the primitive and fundamental modality of nature. We derive necessity and possibility from our prior experience with dispositionality. Mumford and Anjum argue that we do indeed perceive causation, and present what they see as the clearest examples of this in the case of bodily sensation and specifically proprioception.

The book concludes with a compelling application: showing how the theory fits with processes studied in biology and genetics.

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