Max Kistler

In E.J. Lowe's ontology, objects are property-bearers which 1) have identity and 2) are countable. This makes it possible to become or cease to be an object, by beginning or ceasing to fulfil one of these conditions. But the possibility of switching fundamental ontological categories should be excluded. Furthermore, Lowe does not show that “quasi-individuals” can exist. I argue against Lowe that kinds cannot be property-bearers in a more genuine sense than properties, that they are not absolutely countable, whether conceived according to science or common sense, and that they are dependent on individual objects.

La philosophie des sciences de l'empirisme logique avait discredite la causalite comme etant un concept du sens commun irremediablement vague et confus, pour lui substituer le concept d'explication scientifique. Cependant, dans nombre de theories contemporaines, notamment en philosophie de l'esprit et du langage, le concept de causalite continue a jouer un role de premier plan. Ce livre montre qu'il est possible de concevoir la causalite d'une maniere compatible avec des connaissances scientifiques contemporaines. La relation causale fondamentale a lieu entre evenements en fonction de la transmission d'une quantite determinee d'une grandeur conservee; mais ce qui rend vraie une explication causale, ce n'est pas seulement une relation causale entre deux evenements, mais une relation de responsabilite causale. Le concept de loi de la nature qui intervient dans cette analyse s'avere fructueux non seulement dans le cadre de la causalite, mais aussi pour l'eclairage qu'il permet d'apporter a la philosophie des sciences.

Kim attribue aux émergentistes un modèle de « réduction logique » dans lequel la prédiction ou l’explication d’une occurrence de la propriété réduite ne requiert, outre des informations sur le niveau réducteur, que des principes logiques et mathématiques. Sur la base de cette interprétation, je conteste deux thèses de Kim. La première concerne la légitimité du modèle émergentiste de réduction. J’essaie de montrer, à l’aide de l’exemple de l’addition des masses, que l’adoption de la réduction logique rendrait irréductibles certaines propriétés qui sont clairement réductibles. La deuxième est la thèse selon laquelle la réduction fonctionnelle correspond aux exigences émergentistes sur la réduction. Telle que Kim la caractérise, la réduction fonctionnelle comporte, outre une définition fonctionnelle de la propriété à réduire, l’indication des propriétés réalisatrices. Or cette information, qui correspond à la découverte d’une loi de correspondance , est empirique et non seulement logique.I read Kim as attributing to the emergentists a model of “logical reduction” in which the prediction or explanation of an occurrence of the reduced property requires, beyond information on the reducing level, only logical and mathematical principles. On the basis of this interpretation, I argue against two theses of Kim's. The first concerns the legitimacy of the emergentist model of reduction. I try to show by the example of the addition of masses that according to logical reduction certain properties which are clearly reducible come out as irreducible. The second is the thesis that functional reduction as construed by Kim satisfies the emergentist constraints on reduction. Functional reduction implies, over and above a functional definition of the reduced property, the indication of its realizers. But this information corresponding to the discovery of a bridge law is empirical and not only logical

The key idea of the interventionist account of causation is that a variable A causes a variable B if and only if B would change if A were manipulated in the appropriate way. This paper raises two problems for Woodward's (2003) version of interventionism. The first is that the conditions it imposes are not sufficient for causation, because these conditions are also satisfied by non-causal relations of nomological dependence expressed in association laws. Such laws ground a relation of mutual manipulability that is incompatible with the asymmetry of causation. Several ways of defending the interventionist account are examined and found unsatisfying. The second problem is that it often seems to be impossible, in a model that contains variables linked by an association law, to satisfy the conditions imposed on interventions on such variables. Various ways to solve this second problem, most importantly the analysis of manipulability in terms of difference making, are examined. Given that none solves the problem, I conclude that the interventionist conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for causation. It is suggested that they provide an analysis of nomological dependence, which may be supplemented with the notion of a causal process to yield an analysis of causation

It has been argued that most truths about macroscopic states of affairs are entailed by a (hypothetical) complete descriptionPof the world in microscopic terms. In principle, micro-reductive explanations of non-microphysical truths could be constructeda priori.Against this claim, I show that reductive explanation requires knowledge about the phenomena to be reduced which cannot bea prioriextracted from microphysical information alone. Such reductions proceed in two steps: a “reductionR0” (“role-occupant”) establishes that a macroproperty M plays a certain causal role (specified in macro-terms), while a “reductionMM” (“micro-macro”) establishes that some microproperty gives rise toM.