Anna Marmodoro

I argue that there is a post-Parmenidean systematic approach to causation, adopted and developed by different philosophers of antiquity, which I call the Mereological Model of causation. According to the Mereological Model, a cause transfers its properties to what is causally affected by it, by coming to be part of its constitution, rather than by interaction with it. On the alternative approach, something changes something else by interacting with it. I call the latter the Interactive Model of causation; this is Aristotle’s account, which we have inherited and still by and large uphold today. I show that it is the Mereological Model that is dominant in antiquity, and that it even resurfaced after Aristotle, for instance in Stoic metaphysics. It is Aristotle who is the ‘outlier’ in this period of the history of metaphysics, with his Interactive Model of causation. This chapter is a contribution to systematic metaphysics in the sense that it studies a single philosophical model of causation adopted systematically in different metaphysical systems of antiquity, which reveals thus far understudied ties between such systems on account of their shared approach to causation.

In this chapter, it is argued that Plato was the first to introduce emergence in the history of Western thought, in his dialogue the Theaetetus. Emergence serves to address what would have otherwise been left as an open problem within Plato’s metaphysical system. He conceives of his Forms, for example, of Beauty, Goodness, and so on, as each being one, and assumes that what is one cannot have parts, because what has parts is as many as its parts. Yet he admits in his ontology some Forms that we would call ‘structural’, and thus complex, for example the Forms of Duality and of Equality. If they are complex, do they have parts, and are they thereby many, instead of one each? Plato’s insight, it is argued, is that something can be complex and yet partless. On the strength of this insight, Plato introduces an account of composition in the Theaetetus such that, when it obtains, the resulting entity is complex, arising from many parts/elements, but being itself without parts and hence one. This chapter argues that this is a case of emergence (even if Plato does not have the terminology and conceptual apparatus to identify it as such), since the emergent entity has numerical novelty in relation to its base. It is further argued that Plato’s account of emergence, which is different from modern alternatives, was foundational for Aristotle’s successive theory of substance, particularly with respect to question of the unity of his substance.

In this paper I argue against the view that essences are related to the things that have them as properties those things cannot lose without losing their identity. If things have their essences, regresses develop and unravel the ontology. Both Modal Essentialism and Kit Fine’s Definitional Essentialism are open to such regresses. By contrast, I advocate a type of essentialism according to which things do not have essences and are not qualified by their essences, but rather, they are constituted by their essences.

This chapter introduces the reader to Aristotle’s account of causal powers and highlights the conceptual innovations he introduced in relation to the accounts of his predecessors, most notably Anaxagoras and Plato. The chapter argues that Aristotle’s predecessors had a distinctive account of powers, different from Aristotle’s in that their powers exist as always exercising and not interacting with each other. Aristotle famously introduces the distinction between being in potentiality and being in actuality, and between active and passive powers; and provides a definition of powers that has remained mainstream in current philosophy too.

A number of contemporary metaphysicians find Aristotle’s hylomorphism a promising and yet wanting account of what there is, and have engaged in ‘reconditioning’ it into a sound metaphysics (e.g. Jaworski 2016, Koons 2014, Rea 2011, among others). Jonathan Lowe’s four-category ontology aligns with this way of thinking, notwithstanding its explicit rejection of the notion of matter that is typically attributed to Aristotle. This chapter offers a taxonomy of the most recent versions of hylomorphism that have been developed in the literature, and locates Lowe’s views within it. It further addresses the question of whether Aristotle’s hylomorphism does in fact need the ‘reconditioning’ it has recently received in the literature; the chapter argues for a negative answer. It finally focuses on the thorny issue of matter: here the questions addressed are: what Aristotle meant by ‘matter’; how many kinds of matter did he introduce into his system; and how does his system compare to Lowe’s matterless four-category ontology. As a version of hylomorphism, Lowe’s ontology is more Aristotelian than Lowe believed.

This paper puts powers to work by developing a broadly Aristotelian account of causation, built on the fundamental idea (which Aristotle found in Plato, attributed by him to Heraclitus) that causation is a mutual interaction between powers. On this Aristotelian view, causal powers manifest them-selves in dependence on the manifestation of their mutual partners. (See also Heil, this volume; Mumford, this volume; and Martin 2008.) The manifestations of two causal power partners are co-determined, co-varying, and co-extensive in time. (See Marmodoro 2006.) Yet, causation has a direction and is thus asymmetric. This asymmetry is what underpins metaphysically the distinction between causal agent and patient. The proposed Aristotelian analysis of the interaction between mutually manifesting causal powers is distinctive, in that it pays justice to the intuition that there is agency in causation. That is, agency is not a metaphorical way of describing what causal powers do. For some powers, it is a way of being that instantiates the non-anthropomorphic sense in which powers are causal agents. This point is brought out in the paper in relation to the explanation of the concept of change. In an Aristotelian fashion, the paper argues that the distinction be-tween agent and patient in causation is pivotal to offering a realist account of causation that does not reify the interaction of the reciprocal causal partners into a relation. On the proposed view, the interaction between mutually manifesting causal partners consists in the power of one substance being realized in another substance. Specifically, the agent’s causal powers metaphysically belong to the agent, but come to be realized in the patient. The significance of this is that the interaction of the agent’s and the patient’s powers is not a relation; rather, it is an ex-tension of the constitution of the agent onto the patient, which occurs when agent and patient interact and their powers are mutually manifested. Thus the proposed Aristotelian account of causation explains the mutual interaction between manifestation partners—potentiality, agency, and change—as irreducible to one another, but interconnected.

This volume is a collection of papers that advance our understanding of the metaphysics of powers — properties such as fragility and electric charge. The metaphysics of powers is a fast developing research field with fundamental questions at the forefront of current research, such as Can there be a world of only powers? What is the manifestation of a power? Are powers and their manifestations related by necessity? What are the prospects for dispositional accounts of causation? The papers focus on questions concerning the metaphysics of powers that cut across any particular subject-specific ontological domain -- whether philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology – investigating the metaphysical structure of powers, the nature of the manifestation of powers, the necessity or contingency of a power’s relation to its manifestations, and powers and causation. A number of authors also engage in discussion with Humean and neo-Humean treatments of causation, thereby making contributions to a larger metaphysical debate beyond powers. Additionally, the authors engage critically with the latest contributions to the debate on powers in the literature, thereby bringing together in a wholesome and analytical way the most recent and noteworthy theoretical developments in this research field.

This introduction presents a brief overview of the concept of ‘mental power’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and focuses on the issue of how a sample of influential thinkers of that period conceptualized the human agent’s mental abilities and skills as governing perception, action and moral behaviour. This leads to innovative accounts which partially ground, in a broad sense, modern psychology. The representative thinkers included in this special issue are: Descartes, Cudworth, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume and Kant.

This chapter introduces a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics of powers, drawing on various of his works, and putting it in dialogue with alternatives in contemporary metaphysics, thus assessing its relative strengths. The chapter argues that Aristotle held what is currently known as a “pure” power ontology, with no categorical properties at the Mental level and no categorical base to the fundamental powers. In Aristotle’s system, there are no relations relating a power with its manifestation, or with its Manifestation partners. Power for Aristotle are relatives, that is, monadic properties of a special kind, whose nature is discussed in the chapter. Their manifestation is governed by conditional necessity. Instances of physical powers are for Aristotle all there is at the foundations of reality.

The idea that something can be present at every place has engendered much discussion both in the past and at present. Typically, omnipresence is thought to be a divine attribute, but the question as to how something can be omnipresent has not been historically confined to the status of a divine being. The Oxford Handbook of Omnipresence offers an insight into historical accounts of omnipresence and its developments in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary thought. It further widens the study of omnipresence by including less widely studied strands of thought on this topic from mystical, process theological, feminist theological, and phenomenological perspectives. Additionally, whilst the study of omnipresence has typically focused on Christian thinkers, the volume broadens the range of voices on this attribute further by including Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Sanskrit, and Donghak accounts. The Handbook provides an introduction to the main facets of omnipresence, both historical and contemporary, and opens up new avenues for research that are yet to be fully explored.

L'A. offre l'analisi del libro D della Metafisica mettendo a confronto l'impostazione esegetica dei commentatori moderni con quelli medievali, in particolare è presa in esame la Lectura super librum Metaphysicorum di Paolo Veneto tradita dai mss. Pavia, BU, Aldini 324 e Casale Monferrato, Seminario Vescovile, I.a.3-6. Dopo aver analizzato le due principali linee interpretative della nozione di Essere negli esegeti moderni e la molteplicità dei suoi significati nel corpus aristotelico, l'A. passa ad esaminare in maniera specifica la soluzione interpretativa proposta da Paolo Nicoletti in merito alla nozione di Essere focalizzando l'attenzione sulla definizione di ente e sulla questione di essere come vero e non essere come falso e le soluzioni proposte dall'autore. Si evidenzia come alcuni spunti interpretativi possono essere riscontrati sia Alberto Magno sia in Averroè. Il testo del Nicoletti, edito dall'A. nella parte conclusiva dell'articolo, corrisponde al Libro V, tr. II, c. 2.

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do--and what can happen to them--is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic.

This book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues. Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This volume introduces readers to a selected number of core issues in metaphysics that have been central in the history of philosophy and remain foundational to contemporary debates, that is: substances; properties; modality and essence; causality; determinism and free will. Anna Marmodoro and Erasmus Mayr take a neo-Aristotelian approach both in the selection and presentation of the topics. But Marmodoro and Mayr's discussion is not narrowly partisan-it consistently presents opposing sides of the debate and addresses issues from different philosophical traditions, and encourages readers to draw their own conclusions about them.