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70Physics' Contribution to CausationKriterion - Journal of Philosophy (AO): 21-46. 2020.Most philosophers of physics are eliminativists about causation. Following Bertrand Russell’s lead, they think that causation is a folk concept that cannot be rationally reconstructed within a worldview informed by contemporary physics. Against this thesis, I argue that physics contributes to shaping the concept of causation, in two ways. 1. Special Relativity is a physical theory that expresses causal constraints. 2. The physical concept of a conserved quantity can be used in the functional red…Read more
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Causation and laws of natureIn Jennifer A. McMahon (ed.), Aesthetics and Material Beauty: Aesthetics Naturalized, Routledge. 2007.
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Causation and laws of natureIn Heather Dyke (ed.), Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy, Routledge. 2007.
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5What makes a capacity a disposition?In Max Kistler & Bruno Gnassounou (eds.), Dispositions and Causal Powers, . pp. 195-206. 2007.One of the major attempts to avoid this problem is to claim that the subject matter of laws are ascriptions of dispositions, powers, capacities etc., and not the regular behaviour we find in nature. 'Causal capacities can be measured as surely or unsurely as anything else that science deals with. Sometimes we measure capacities in a physics laboratory'. Many philosophers of science think that many laws of nature are so called ceteris paribus laws. Take the following statements for examples: 'All…Read more
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5Espèces naturelles, profil causal et constitution multipleLato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 3 (1): 17-30. 2016.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
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10Analysing Causation in Light of Intuitions, Causal Statements, and ScienceIn B. Copley & F. Martin (eds.), Causation in Grammatical Structures, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.The aim of this paper is to provide an account of causation that is compatible with both common sense intuition and science. In the next section, I briefly rehearse the most important philosophical strategies for analysing the concept of causation. Then I investigate, in the third section, criteria of correctness for a philosophical theory of causation. In the fourth section, I review some important counterexamples to the traditional accounts mentioned in the second section, and suggest, in the …Read more
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18Laws, Exceptions and DispositionsJOLMA 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
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8L'esprit matériel: réduction et émergenceIthaque. 2016.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
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150Physics’ Contribution to CausationKriterion - Journal of Philosophy 35 (1): 21-46. 2021.Most philosophers of physics are eliminativists about causation. Following Bertrand Russell’s lead, they think that causation is a folk concept that cannot be rationally reconstructed within a worldview informed by contemporary physics. Against this thesis, I argue that physics contributes to shaping the concept of causation, in two ways. (1) Special Relativity is a physical theory that expresses causal constraints. (2) The physical concept of a conserved quantity can be used in the functional r…Read more
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29Models of Downward CausationIn 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
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9Causation and Laws of NatureRoutledge. 2006.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
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60Natural Kinds, Causal Profile and Multiple ConstitutionMetaphysica 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
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Les Dispositions en philosophie et en sciences (edited book)Presses Universitaires de France. 2006.
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255Causation and laws of natureRoutledge. 2006.Causation is important. It is, as Hume said, the cement of the universe, and lies at the heart of our conceptual structure. Causation is one of the most fundamental tools we have for organizing our apprehension of the external world and ourselves. But philosophers' disagreement about the correct interpretation of causation is as limitless as their agreement about its importance. The history of attempts to elucidate the nature of this concept and to situate it with respect to other fundamental co…Read more
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37Naturphilosophie AlS metaphysik der natur – by Michael EsfeldDialectica 63 (1): 99-103. 2009.No Abstract
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Higher-Level, Downward and Specific CausationIn Michele Paolini Paoletti & Francesco Orilia (eds.), Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation, Routledge. 2016.
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252Mechanisms and downward causationPhilosophical 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
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409Powers, dispositions and laws of natureIn Meincke (ed.), Dispositionalism: Perspectives from Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Synthese Library), Springer. pp. 171-188. 2020.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
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119Source and Channel in the informational theory of mental contentFacta 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
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5Esfeld's new book is a powerful and well-argued statement for an original position in the metaphysics of science. In Esfeld's view, rational reflection on relativity theory and quantum theory leads to a metaphysical conception of reality as built on powerful structures: first, the fundamental building blocks of reality are structures rather than properties of space-time points or of matter localized at such points; second, these structures are not categorical or inert but inherently powerful and…Read more
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111Reduction and emergence in the physical sciences: Reply to RuegerSynthese 151 (3). 2006.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
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124Laws of nature, exceptions and tropesPhilosophia 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
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9Zur Transfer-Theorie der KausalitätIn Julian Nida-Rümelin & Georg Meggle (eds.), Analyomen 2, Volume I: Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, De Gruyter. pp. 405-413. 1997.Causation can be reduced to transmission in the following way: Two events c and e are linked as cause and effect iff there is a conserved quantity P which is exemplified in both events and of which an amount Q is transferred from c to e. This conception permits to overcome difficulties faced by earlier versions of the transference theory and by "process theories" of causation, such as Salmon's and Dowe's. In particular, it can explain the asymmetry of causality without relying on the asymmetry o…Read more
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University of Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneDepartment for Teaching and Research in Philosophy (UFR10)Regular Faculty
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Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueInstitute for the History and Philosophy of Science and TechnologyRegular Faculty