•  93
    Laws, Exceptions and Dispositions
    JOLMA 1 (1): 53-74. 2020.
    Can laws of nature be universal regularities and nevertheless have exceptions? Several answers to this question, in particular the thesis that there are no laws outside of fundamental physics, are examined and rejected. It is suggested that one can account for exceptions by conceiving of laws as strictly universal determination relations between (instances of) properties. When a natural property is instantiated, laws of nature give rise to other, typically dispositional properties. In exceptiona…Read more
  •  47
    Nous sommes des êtres à la fois spirituels et corporels. Mon poids est un attribut corporel, tandis que ma capacité d'imaginer un paysage marin relève d'un attribut mental. Or, une fois admise cette dualité des attributs, comment concevoir l'interaction entre le corps et l'esprit? Face aux doctrines dualistes qui échouent à répondre à cette question, Max Kistler défend ici une variante du matérialisme réductionniste qui fait droit à la notion d'émergence : corps et esprit se logent…Read more
  •  79
    Models of Downward Causation
    In Jan Voosholz & Markus Gabriel (eds.), Top-Down Causation and Emergence, Springer Verlag. pp. 305-326. 2021.
    Two conceptual frameworks – in terms of phase space and in terms of structural equations – are sketched, in which downward causal influence of higher-level features on lower-level features is possible. The “Exclusion” principle, which is a crucial premise of the argument against the possibility of downward causation, is false in models constructed within both frameworks. Both frameworks can be supplemented with conceptual tools that make it possible to explain why downward causal influence is no…Read more
  •  30
    Paul Needham's Macroscopic Metaphysics (review)
    BJPS Review of Books. 2020.
  •  94
    Introduction: new trends in the metaphysics of science
    Synthese 197 (5): 1841-1846. 2020.
  •  317
    Causation and Laws of Nature
    Routledge. 2011.
    This is the first English translation of _Causalite´ et Lois de La Nature,_ and is an important contribution to the theory of causation_._ Max Kistler reconstructs a unified concept of causation that is general enough to adequately deal with both elementary physical processes, and the macroscopic level of phenomena we encounter in everyday life. This book will be of great interest to philosophers of science and metaphysics, and also to students and scholars of philosophy of mind where concepts o…Read more
  • Les Dispositions en philosophie et en sciences (edited book)
    with Gnassounou Bruno
    Presses Universitaires de France. 2006.
  •  100
    Natural Kinds, Causal Profile and Multiple Constitution
    Metaphysica 19 (1): 113-135. 2018.
    The identity of a natural kind can be construed in terms of its causal profile. This conception is more appropriate to science than two alternatives. The identity of a natural kind is not determined by one causal role because one natural kind can have many causal roles and several functions and because some functions are shared by different kinds. Furthermore, the microstructuralist thesis is wrong: The identity of certain natural kinds is not determined by their microstructure. It is true that …Read more
  •  107
    No Abstract
  •  394
    Mechanisms and downward causation
    Philosophical Psychology 22 (5): 595-609. 2009.
    Experimental investigation of mechanisms seems to make use of causal relations that cut across levels of composition. In bottom-up experiments, one intervenes on parts of a mechanism to observe the whole; in top-down experiments, one intervenes on the whole mechanism to observe certain parts of it. It is controversial whether such experiments really make use of interlevel causation, and indeed whether the idea of causation across levels is even conceptually coherent. Craver and Bechtel have sugg…Read more
  •  1189
    Metaphysics should follow science in postulating laws alongside properties. I defend this claim against the claim that natural properties conceived as powers make laws of nature redundant. Natural properties can be construed in a “thin” or a “thick” way. If one attributes a property in the thin sense to an object, this attribution does not conceptually determine which other properties the object possesses. The thin construal is underlying the scientific strategy for understanding nature piecemea…Read more
  •  197
    Source and Channel in the informational theory of mental content
    Facta Philosophica 2 (2): 213-36. 2000.
    With the aim of giving a naturalistic foundation to the notion of mental representation, Fred Dretske (1981;1988) has put forward and developed the idea that the relation between a representation and its intentional content is grounded on an informational relation. In this explanatory model, mental representations are conceived of as states of organisms which a learning process has selected to play a functional role: a necessary condition for fulfilling this role is that the organism or some pro…Read more
  •  91
    Erklärung und Kausalität
    Philosophia Naturalis 39 (1): 89-109. 2002.
    Causation is analysed in terms of transference of amounts of conserved quantities between events. Such amounts are tropes. However, causal explanations are directly made true, not by transmission relations but by relations of causal responsibility, of a fact Fc about the cause event c for a fact Ge about the effect event e. Causal responsibility is analysed in terms of causation between events c and e and a law of nature holding between the properties F and G. This account overcomes many objecti…Read more
  •  192
    I analyse Rueger’s application of Kim’s model of functional reduction to the relation between the thermal conductivities of metal bars at macroscopic and atomic scales. 1) I show that it is a misunderstanding to accuse the functional reduction model of not accounting for the fact that there are causal powers at the micro-level which have no equivalent at the macro-level. The model not only allows but requires that the causal powers by virtue of which a functional predicate is defined, are only a…Read more
  •  75
    Causation as Transference and Responsibility
    In Wolfgang Spohn, Marion Ledwig & Michael Esfeld (eds.), Current Issues in Causation, Mentis. pp. 115-133. 2001.
    During the last decades there has been a remarkable renewal of interest in theories of causation which is linked to the decline of the orthodoxy of the Logical empiricist school. A number of alternatives to the traditional covering-law account have been proposed. I shall defend a version of an approach that has been undeservedly neglected: the Transference Theory of causation. Accounts of this type elaborate the intuition that there is a material link between the cause and the effect, consisting…Read more
  •  179
    Laws of nature, exceptions and tropes
    Philosophia Scientiae 7 (2): 189-219. 2003.
    I propose a realist theory of laws formulated in terms of tropes that avoids both the problems of the "best-systems-analysis" and the "inference problem" of realism of universals. I analyze the concept of an exceptional situation, characterized as a situation in which a particular object satisfies the antecedent but not the consequent of the regularity associated with a law, without thereby falsifying that law. To take this possibility into account, the properties linked by a law must be conceiv…Read more
  •  33
    Sur la notion de cause
    with Bertrand Russell, Georges Bourgin, and Jérôme Sackur
    Philosophie 89 (2): 3-20. 2006.
  •  106
    Review of Markus Schrenk, The Metaphysics of Ceteris Paribus Laws (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (10). 2007.
  •  161
    Causes as events and facts
    Dialectica 53 (1). 1999.
    The paper defends the view that events are the basic relata of causation, against arguments based on linguistic analysis to the effect that only facts can play that role. According to those arguments, causal contexts let the meaning of the expressions embedded in them shift: even expressions possessing the linguistic form that usually designates an event take a factual meaning.However, defending events as fundamental relata of causation turns out to be possible only by attributing a – different …Read more
  •  184
    Multiple realization, reduction and mental properties
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 (2). 1999.
    This paper tries to remove some obstacles standing in the way of considering mental properties as both genuine natural kinds and causally efficacious rather than epiphenomena. As the case of temperature shows, it is not justified to conclude from a property being multiply realizable to it being irreducible. Yet Kim's argument to the effect that if a property is multiply realizable with a heterogeneous reduction base then it cannot be a natural kind and possesses only derivative “epiphenomenal” c…Read more
  •  94
    Strong Emergence and Freedom: Comment on A. Stephan
    In Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 240--251. 2010.