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The chapter presents a version of the causal exclusion challenge to non‐reductive physicalism regarding mental states, one that is explicitly directed at non‐reductive physicalists who adopt an ontology of causal powers. It considers whether a satisfying reply to the argument can be fashioned on the basis of Sydney Shoemaker's novel account of the mental–physical realization relation, most recently in his book Physical Realization. It is argued that Shoemaker's strategy does not provide a plausible reply to the argument. Three broad alternatives to non‐reductive physicalism available to the causal powers metaphysician are then discussed: reduction, elimination, and ontological emergence. It is contended that while all of them are at present viable approaches to special science properties generally, there is special reason to affirm the irreducibility and efficacy of mental properties and so to conclude that mental properties are unrealized, ontologically emergent features of their subjects.

The sense in which laws are necessary is reviewed. The relationship between natural laws and natural kinds is emphasized. The relationship between natural laws and causal powers is further explored, focusing on the advantages of an approach based on the four-category ontology over alternative theories of these matters. The claim of scientific essentialists that natural laws are metaphysically necessary is reviewed in the light of the problem known as ‘Bradley’s regress’, and is accepted in the case of fundamental laws but not in other cases. The idea that so-called natural or nomic necessity constitutes a genuine kind of necessity is challenged.

This chapter presents a version of the causal exclusion challenge to non-reductive physicalism, one that is explicitly directed at non-reductive physicalists who adopt an ontology of causal powers. After reviewing some considerations in favor of a causal powers metaphysic, it presents its exclusion argument and defends it against recent attempts by Shoemaker and Gillett to overcome exclusion without sacrificing causal powers or non-reductive physicalism. The lesson is that if irreducible mental properties are to be efficacious in a way that is consonant with a causal powers metaphysic, these properties cannot be the realized entities postulated by the non-reductive physicalist. The chapter ends with a sketch of an alternative to non-reductive physicalism that preserves both the causal powers ontology and the irreducibility and efficacy of mental properties. On this alternative, mental properties are unrealized, ontologically emergent features of their subjects.

The causal power of C over E is (roughly) the degree to which changes in C cause changes in E. A formal measure of causal power would be very useful, as an aid to understanding and modelling complex stochastic systems. Previous attempts to measure causal power, such as those of Good (1961), Cheng (1997), and Glymour (2001), while useful, suffer from one fundamental flaw: they only give sensible results when applied to very restricted types of causal system, all of which exhibit causal transitivity. Causal Bayesian networks, however, are not in general transitive. The chapter develops an information‐theoretic alternative, causal information, which applies to any kind of causal Bayesian network. Causal information is based upon three ideas. First, the chapter assumes that the system can be represented causally as a Bayesian network. Second, the chapter uses hypothetical interventions to select the causal from the non‐causal paths connecting C to E. Third, we use a variation on the information‐theoretic measure mutual information to summarize the total causal influence of C on E. The chapter's measure gives sensible results for a much wider variety of complex stochastic systems than previous attempts and promises to simplify the interpretation and application of Bayesian networks.

“Two Concepts of Realization, Mental Causation, and Physicalism” compares and evaluates two accounts of realization, the standard second‐order account and Sydney Shoemaker's new “subset” account. According to the standard account, a property realizes another just in case it fills the causal role that defines the realized property. On the subset account, a property realizes another if and only if its causal powers include the causal powers of the realized property as a subset. In his recent book Physical Realization (2007), Shoemaker uses this subset account to vindicate mental causation within nonreductive physicalism. The essay argues that Shoemaker's attempt does not succeed, and that the physicalist framework he defends is best viewed as a form of type physicalism, not nonreductive physicalism.

This chapter's particular concern is to identify and describe the way in which Hume's discussion of our idea of necessity (T,1.3.14) is intimately and intricately related to a number of theological issues and controversies that were of considerable interest and importance for Hume and his contemporaries. Not only does Hume present a skeptical challenge to the fundamental theological doctrines of omnipotence and Creation, he also suggests a comprehensive, integrated naturalism in respect of the causal relations governing matter and thought—doing away with the suggestion that spiritual agents are the only possible source of real activity in the world. In pursuing these various irreligious themes Hume is following a tradition and pattern of “atheistic” thought that was readily identified by his own contemporaries. These specific lines of argument are entirely consistent with the wider irreligious program that Hume pursues throughout the Treatise as a whole.

Chapter 7 sets out a robust conception of nonreductive physicalism in which mental entities, either type or token, are not identical with neural or microphysical entities, and mental causes are causally efficacious as mental. I then examine whether nonreductive physicalism can finesse the causal exclusion problem that Jaegwon Kim has pressed. I claim that it can, and that one way it to do so is by grounding the mental in the neural and the microphysical by a constitution relation. I then set out my version of this position and differentiate it from other nonreductive physicalist views. Subsequently I argue that there are significant differences between the controversial sort of emergentism and a plausible sort of nonreductive physicalism, and that nonreductive physicalist need not be emergentist in this sense.

Causation is a basic category, not reducible to anything else. Intentional causation is a species of causation of which we are aware when we try to move our limbs. Talk of ‘laws of nature’ is reducible to talk of the causal powers and liabilities of substances. A perfectly free (and so rational) agent will inevitably do only (what he believes to be) good actions – the best action or one of a number of equal best actions, if there are such.

In this chapter, the following are explained in detail and evaluated: (1) Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism; (2) Schopenhauer's metaphysics of Will, which may be described as a kind of animism or panpsychism; and (3) Schopenhauer's views on freedom and determinism, which are probably best described as compatibilist. Realism, anti-realism, and idealism are discussed. It is argued that anti-realism about x always presupposes realism about y, and that to be real is to be mind independent. A novel interpretation of the ontological argument is defended, according to which the argument proves not the existence of God, but the existence of mind-independent reality. Panpsychism, characterized as neutral monism or the idea that the mental/physical dichotomy is not ontologically deep, is defended. Schopenhauer's doctrine of the “Platonic Forms” is interpreted as emergentism—novel causal powers appear at different ontological levels. The idea that properties are causal powers is defended, and it is argued that this is the main idea behind Schopenhauer's metaphysics of Will. The chapter also gives an account of quantum indeterminacy and argues that such indeterminism does not defeat Schopenhauer's views on freedom and responsibility because determinism still prevails above the quantum level.

The authors bring together human and animal studies, with a particular focus on causal learning. Whereas the traditional associative approach to learning views learning contingencies as basic, and the learning of causality (if it is considered at all) to be secondary, they take the goal of the agent to infer the ‘causal powers’ of aspects of the world. Contingencies are primarily of interest to the degree that they provide evidence for such causal relationships. The degree to which the same rational model may be applied to learning, from rat to human, puts a new complexion on the behaviourist's project of building general principles of learning across species.

This chapter develops the basic metaphysics of agent causation. The author analyzes causal notions generally in terms of the notion of ’causal power’ or ’causal capacity.’ The difference between event (or broadly mechanistic) causation and agent (or personal) causation concerns the way in which causal capacities are exercised. With event causation, the capacity to generate a particular effect (in some cases, from a range of possible effects) is exercised ’as a matter of course’: having the capacity in the right circumstances directly gives rise to what is either its unique characteristic effect or one of the effects within its characteristic range. By contrast, having the properties that subserve an agent‐causal capacity doesn’t produce an effect; rather, it enables the agent to freely determine an effect (within a circumscribed range).

This Essay defends the view that freedom to act is a causal power. Davidson believes that an agent is free to act if he can act intentionally, and he can so act in virtue of having beliefs and desires that rationalize and cause his action; thus, freedom of act is a causal power necessarily defined in terms of intention, even though the agent could not have caused the causal conditions of so acting viz. his desires and beliefs. Davidson demotes the view that freedom to act requires that one ‘could have done otherwise’: choosing something to do and doing it suffices for the action to be free, no matter what would have happened if we hadn’t chosen (besides, if as Essay 1 argued there are no distinct acts of will, it follows that ‘could have done otherwise’ could not even be analysed as withholding such an act). After addressing various objections to analysing ‘can’ and ‘is free to’ in terms of causal conditionals, Davidson ends on a sceptical note: unless we can spell out the ‘right way’ in which attitudes must cause actions if they are to rationalize them (for beliefs and desires may rationalize an action in one way and cause it in another; see Essay 5) our notions of rationalization and freedom to act must remain programmatic.

Addresses two outstanding worries about ethical non‐naturalism. The first, developed primarily by Simon Blackburn, is that this form of moral realism cannot provide an adequate account of the supervenience of the moral upon the non‐moral. The second, prompted by Gilbert Harman, is that moral facts lack any independent causal power, and so we have excellent reason to regard them as unreal.

This chapter presents the tale of two individuals, Moll and Ott, who share a religious vision that includes thinking of the creation of the inanimate parts of creation terms of God's imparting certain causal powers to things. From these causal powers arise whatever laws of nature govern such entities, and the causal powers thus support counterfactual claims as well. In a deterministic world with nothing but inanimate things, God can create by creating things with causal powers. These powers perhaps even correlate perfectly with the truth of various conditionals, conditionals about what will happen given the original conditions and conditionals about what would happen had things been slightly different from what they in fact are. Moll and Ott's happy moment of sharing is interrupted by Occ. Occ says that God created the things in question together with their characteristic behaviour patterns. Occ insists that we not talk of creating things that have power until and unless we can show some need for such talk and we can show that such a creation is even possible.

In his early work (1747‐56), Kant is Leibnizian in his commitment to a distinction between things in themselves and phenomena, grounded on a contrast between intrinsic and relational properties. He is anti‐Leibnizian in his argument that there is Receptivity, since there is real causal influence; and anti‐Leibnizian in his argument that there is Irreducibility, since relations fail to supervene on intrinsic properties. The latter argument is of considerable interest, and open to interpretation: whether it moves illicitly from unilateral to bilateral reducibility; which notions of intrinsicness are appropriate; whether it concerns relations in general, or causal power (specifically attraction and impenetrability in a pioneering field theory). Irreducibility here yields a doctrine of superadded force: since ‘substance never has the power, through its own intrinsic properties, to determine others’, such power is added by God.