Plato’s Forms as powers

This chapter introduces Plato’s fundamental entities, the Forms. It focuses on his view that the Forms are causal powers, and his innovative stance that the Forms are transcendent entities; it argues that Plato’s Forms are transcendent powers. This raises the (difficult) question of what kind of causal efficacy transcendent entities can have on things in the physical world. By showing that Plato’s Forms are causal powers having constitutional causal efficacy, as difference-makers, like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, the chapter begins to build the case for what I call Plato’s Anaxagoreanism. If the Forms operate like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, by constitutional causal efficacy, except that they are transcendent, how can features of objects in the physical world be constitutionally derived from features of transcendent entities, the Forms? The chapter argues that Plato thinks of the causal efficacy of the Forms on the model of the normativity of mathematics and geometry over the sensible world.

Anaxagoras’s metaphysical foundations

This chapter introduces Anaxagoras’s metaphysics and the relations of fundamentality and composition that hold between entities in his ontology: the Opposites (properties), stuffs, objects, the so-called seeds (i.e., reified structures), and nous with its vortex. The chapter argues that the crux of Anaxagoras’s metaphysics, which will also influence Plato the most, is the stance that parts of properties are parts of objects. Objects are qualified by properties by having parts of properties (in preponderance) within their constitution. Thus, constitutional overlap is the ‘mechanism’ by which Anaxagoras accounts for the qualification of objects. The chapter provides an account of Anaxagoras’s Opposites as causal powers and explains the type of causal efficacy the Opposites have in the world: constitutional causal efficacy.

A mechanism that realizes strong emergence

The causal efficacy of a material system is usually thought to be produced by the law-like actions and interactions of its constituents. Here, a specific system is constructed and explained that produces a cause that cannot be understood in this way, but instead has novel and autonomous efficacy. The construction establishes a proof-of-feasibility of strong emergence. The system works by utilizing randomness in a targeted and cyclical way, and by relying on sustained evolution by natural selection. It is not vulnerable to standard arguments against strong emergence, in particular ones that assume that the physical realm is causally closed. Moreover, it does not suffer from epiphenomenalism or causal overdetermination. The system uses only standard material components and processes, and is fully consistent with naturalism. It is discussed whether the emergent cause can still be viewed as ‘material’ in the way that term is commonly understood.

Representationalism and Panpsychism

A solution is offered to the paradox presented in Chapter 1. This solution requires us to embrace a qualified form of panpsychism for consciousness, or rather for a key element of consciousness I call “consciousness*”. Consciousness, I claim, is inherently representational and did indeed evolve. This is not true for consciousness*. Three problems are discussed for the hybrid view I develop: the problem of undirected consciousness; the problem of combination; and the problem of tiny psychological subjects. Solutions are offered for each of these problems. The final section of the chapter takes up the question of the causal efficacy of consciousness.

Ethical Emergentism and Moral Causation

This paper focuses on a recently articulated, emergentist conception of ethical naturalism and its commitment to causal efficacy, or the idea that moral properties have causal powers, along with its supporting commitment to moral causation. After I reconstruct the theory, I explain how it offers some interesting theoretical benefits to moral realists in virtue of its commitment to causal efficacy. Then, after locating some examples of moral causation in support of this commitment, I present and respond to five objections to such causation, which all threaten to undermine this support. Lastly, I consider a very serious problem that the theory faces in virtue of positing emergent moral properties as responsible for moral causation – namely, the problem of downward moral causation. I describe this problem in detail and argue that, as it stands, it does not spell doom for the theory.

The Intractable Malaise: Understanding the Patterns That Maintain the Terrorist Stronghold in Nigeria

The global manifestation of terrorism has been evident in Africa, with a significant allusion to Boko Haram jihadists in Nigeria. A critical corollary of this manifestation is a decade of humanitarian crisis that threatens human security in the country. Following Boko Haram’s re-emergence in Nigeria, the group has taken pre-eminence to present itself as the most intractable malaise ever known to ravage the peace and social fabric of the northern Nigerian state. The undue supremacy of the sect has not only earned it global notoriety but has also generated a continuum of controversial academic debates on the patterns that maintain the sect as a terrorist stronghold in Nigeria. However, rather than dwell on the questions of “who Boko Haram terrorists are” or “what the nature of their modus operandi and the number of casualties of their activities in Nigeria have been,” the study focuses on determining the influential factors that have fueled the burning flame of the insurgency in the affected region. It contends that submerging the problem in the traumatized region would have to do with resolving the causal efficacy of each of the foregoing triggering factors that are known to be fanning the flames of the insurgency. Accomplishing this aim, the study recommends provision and implementation of more effective research designs and policy recommendations to address the challenges and reposition the fight for better results.

The Proportionality Argument and the Problem of Widespread Causal Overdetermination

The consensus is that repeatable artworks cannot be identified with particular material individuals. A perennial temptation is to identify them with types, broadly construed. Such identification, however, faces the so-called “Creation Problem.” This problem stems from the fact that, on the one hand, it seems reasonable to accept the claims that (1) repeatable artworks are types, (2) types cannot be created, and (3) repeatable artworks are created, but, on the other hand, these claims are mutually inconsistent. A possible solution to the Creation Problem is to argue that claim (2) can be rejected because (a) the only motivation for it is that a type, being abstract, cannot stand in causal relations, but (b) this motivation is ungrounded, since types can, in fact, stand in such relations. Clearly, in order for this solution to be successful, it is necessary to substantiate the possibility of types to be causally efficacious. In this essay, I examine an attempt to do this with the help of Yablo’s principle of proportionality, which has been undertaken by Walters (2013) and, more recently, Juvshik (2018). Although the argument they advance may seem to provide strong support for the causal efficacy of types, I think it actually fails to do this. To explain why this is so, I first show that this argument commits us to the existence of widespread causal overdetermination involving types and then argue that this commitment is both epistemically and ontologically problematic.

Young children’s sensitivity to priors in causal inference reflects their mechanistic knowledge

This manuscript examines the relation between preschoolers’ ability to integrate base rates into their causal inferences about objects with their understanding that objects have stable properties that deterministically relate to their causal properties. Three- and 4-year-olds were tested on two measures of causal inference. In the first, children were shown a pattern of ambiguous data that could be resolved by appealing to base rate information. In the second, children’s mechanistic assumptions about the same causal system were tested, specifically to determine if they recognized that an object’s causal efficacy was related to it possessing a stable internal property. Children who possessed this mechanism information were more likely to resolve the ambiguous information by appealing to base rates. The results are discussed in terms of rational models of children’s causal inference.

The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness

Mental causation is vitally important to the integrated information theory (IIT), which says consciousness exists since it is causally efficacious. While it might not be directly apparent, metaphysical commitments have consequential entailments concerning the causal efficacy of consciousness. Commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and the nature of causation determine which problem(s) a view of consciousness faces with respect to mental causation. Analysis of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind has brought several problems to the fore: the alleged lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem. This article surveys the threat each problem poses to IIT based on the different metaphysical commitments IIT theorists might make. Distinctions are made between what I call reductive IIT, non-reductive IIT, and non-physicalist IIT, each of which make differing metaphysical commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and nature of causation. Subsequently, each problem pertaining to mental causation is presented and its threat, or lack thereof, to each version of IIT is considered. While the lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening for all versions, reductive IIT and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining a commitment to the causal closure principle. Yet, non-physicalist IIT denies the principle but is therefore threatened by the pairing problem, to which I have elsewhere provided a response that is briefly outlined here. This problem also threatens non-reductive IIT, but unlike non-physicalist IIT it lacks an evident response. The ultimate aim of this survey is to provide a roadmap for IIT theorists through the maze of mental causation, by clarifying which commitments lead to which problems, and how they might or might not be overcome. Such a survey can aid IIT theorists as they further develop and hone the metaphysical commitments of IIT.

Consciousness and Action

In its classical form, epiphenomenalism is the view that conscious mental events have no physical effects: while physical events cause mental events, the opposite is never true. Unlike classical epiphenomenalism, contemporary forms do not hold that conscious mental states always lack causal efficacy, only that they are epiphenomenal relative to certain kinds of action, ones we pre-theoretically would have thought consciousness to causally contribute to. Two of these contemporary, empirically based challenges to the efficacy of the mental are the focus of this chapter. The first, originating in research by Libet, has been interpreted as showing that the neural events initiating voluntary actions precede our conscious willing of them, meaning the conscious will cannot be what causes them. The second challenge, originating in studies by Milner and Goodale, consist of instances in which the content of visual consciousness and motor action dissociate, casting doubt on the intuitive view that visual consciousness guides visually based motor action.