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The hypothesis is that space‐time is what there is. W.V. Quine's ‘abstract objects’ are rejected. What exists should play some causal role (Graham Oddie's Eleatic Principle). The nature of space‐time is subject to scientific investigation (Wilfrid Sellars' distinction between the manifest and the scientific image of the world). Is there room for metaphysics? Yes, because a number of topic neutral notions (of which causality is an important instance) are contested by philosophers and scientists. As argued by C.B. Martin, metaphysics seeks a more abstract model of the world than that provided by science.

This chapter considers property monism. It considers the requirements for the defeat of property dualism and advances an argument for the identity of dispositional and categorical property tokens which is an adaptation from a similar argument in the philosophy of the mind. The second section clarifies the nature of the monist claim. The third and fourth sections justify the claim that the argument from identity of causal role is a sound argument. The fifth section considers epistemic counterparts and the world-relative ascriptions. The sixth section examines the variable realization argument and instantiations of properties. The seventh section discusses identity conditions derived from the argument for the identity of the causal role. The eighth section presents the supplementary claims of property monism. The last two sections discuss two special cases of problematic dispositions: abstract dispositions and ungrounded dispositions.

The doctrine of materialism, or physicalism, is articulated and defended, based on the causal role of conscious states. Three objections are dealt with: epiphenomenalism, the explanatory exclusion argument, and an argument to the effect that naturalization is not required to secure the causal role of the mental.

Aristotle claims in Metaphysics Z.17 that form is both a cause and principle of c‐substances. In this chapter, Wedin argues that the explanatory, or causal, role of form is in the background of the entire discussion, and indeed directs much of the argumentation of Metaphysics Zeta. Form is the cause of some matter being a unity and not a heap, because form alone explains how the material parts of a thing are united in a single whole. Wedin draws together the main results of the preceding investigation of Zeta—that form is essence, that form must not contain matter or actual parts, and that form must not be a certain kind of universal—and he argues that these constraints on form are designed to serve the explanatory role that Aristotle explicitly gives to form in Z.17. Wedin emphasizes that the notions isolated in the examination of the earlier chapters, such as the purity of form, weak proscription, and dual complexity, each contribute to the account of form as the explanatory principle of c‐substance.

This chapter discusses cognitive-behavioral models for therapy. It illustrates a field that is deeply divided over fundamental questions such as the causal role of cognitions and the effectiveness of the cognitive therapies. Disagreements also persist about a wide range of less immediately practical questions, including postulating unobservables, the goals of science, epiphenomenalism, and the nature of truth, logic, explanation, and causation.

Chapters 10 and 11 are critical to the argument of Metaphysics Zeta: these chapters are concerned with the purification of form. Z.10 introduces the apparatus of part and whole and consists of an argument to the end that form and its parts have priority over the other internal structural components of c‐substances, i.e. matter and the compound of form and matter; while in Z.11 Aristotle argues that form and its parts cannot involve any admixture of matter. Wedin argues that the causal role of form presupposes its purity: if form is to explain why a certain portion of matter constitutes a c‐substance of a given kind, then matter—whether this latter is understood as functional, or remnant matter—cannot already be contained in the form. This is the ‘purity thesis’, as Wedin calls it: matter cannot be included in the definitions of natural organisms, Wedin points out, because that would make the explanandum a part of the principle that explains it. Wedin also argues that form must be sufficiently complex to provide definitions of the natures of particular compounds, which are complex, even though form itself is a kind of universal.

It is typical to refer to cancer as a “genetic” or “genomic” disease. This claim is ambiguous; one of the central goals of this chapter is to disambiguate this claim. I first distinguish different types of causal claims: claims about causal relevance, causal role, and causal specificity. As a backdrop to this discussion, I introduce what I call the “mechanistic research program” in cancer, according to which progression to cancer involves breakdowns in regulatory controls on gene expression in ways that affect cell birth and death. While this research program has been successful, it has downplayed the role of context in cancer progression, and the fact that disorderly cellular growth is affected by many pathways. I conclude by considering several philosophers’ accounts of “causal selection” and argue that ultimately the causal selection problem is not one but several different problems, requiring different, context-specific solutions.

This chapter presents a theoretical discussion of how predicting policy outcomes is really betting that the policy can play the right causal role in a given situation and that the given situation will have the right support factors to allow it to do so. It provides an abstract, high-level framework to justify the conclusion that we should look for causal roles and support factors.

Many contemporary thinkers see a challenge to teleology that accompanied Darwin’s proposal of modern evolutionary theory. This chapter articulates this challenge, and reviews the two primary contemporary approaches to teleology: etiological versus causal role accounts of biological function. Both approaches attempt to naturalize teleology—to analyze teleology in a way consistent with the natural sciences, especially biological science. While this is an enormously productive endeavor, there are some reasons to be skeptical about the ultimate success of this approach to teleology.

This chapter focuses on arguments for intentional omissions as presented by Randolph Clarke, which has two main claims, the first of which states that, in order for an agent’s omitting to A to be intentional, some intention with the appropriate content must play a causal role in the situation. The second claim presents the notion that the relevant intention’s causal role in each case is causing the agent’s subsequent thought and action. This is followed by a few remarks regarding both claims individually. The first presented claim made by Clarke is, however, the main source of dissent here. The chapter argues that the agent’s omitting to intend to A causes his omitting to A, and that this is enough to explain why the agent’s omitting to A is intentional. It is not required to state that the agent’s formation of a certain intention also plays a causal role.

This chapter discusses the most glaring problems faced by emergentism, specifically those that challenge the alleged causal role of conscious properties and the causation by the mental in general. The Causal Exclusion Argument (CEA) is a prominent topic in this discussion because it is the most prevalent argument presented in opposition to mental causation. Consequently, the Redundancy Argument (RA) is considered next, as it shares some steps with CEA. Each are treated as separate arguments, however, since they are fundamentally different in the sense that CEA rejects mental causation on the grounds that it leads to massive overdetermination, whereas RA prescribes mental causation as superfluous. After expositions on each argument, their critical examination follows.

Ecosystem function is the central use of function in ecology. In this work we examine the light that can be shed on ecosystem functions by three philosophical analyses of the concept of function: the causal role theory, the teleological theory, and the organizational theory. While the causal role theory provides a natural explication of many of the uses of ecosystem function, it does not underwrite either the teleological or normative aspects of functional discourse. The etiological approach has the potential to account for the teleology and normativity of ecosystem function but presupposes that ecosystem properties are, in some sense, shaped by natural selection. It is not obvious that this presupposition can be satisfied. The organizational approach has much in common with the causal role approach and also offers an alternative strategy for grounding teleology and normativity. Perhaps the biggest challenge for the organizational approach stems from the necessity to reach a historical account of how functional systems come into existence in the first place that is in sufficient agreement with a Darwinian understanding of evolution. Given the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches, we suggest that a pluralistic approach might have some attraction.

The rejection of certain Scholastic doctrines nevertheless enabled seventeenth‐century writers to reconsider the interpretations of activity and passivity that they had inherited, and to generate new conceptions of the passions. This chapter introduces the kinds of innovations they introduced, and the arguments they offered for them. It focuses on general claims about the causal role of the passions, their relation to the soul's other powers, and their connection with the body.

This chapter is a response to the arguments presented in the previous one. The previous chapter’s criticisms were directed against philosophers who argue that deficiencies in the standard story of action are to be addressed through the addition of states of different sorts from beliefs and desires to the causes of bodily movements. These philosophers fail to address the question of whether their story contains the causal notions that belong in an account of human agency or not. According to Michael Smith, this argument charges the standard story with incompleteness, which is a misleading notion. It was never suggested that the story required completion, even if it was posited that the causal role of agents ceases to exist in an events-based conception of the causal order. This chapter aims to show that the standard story stops making sense once it is accepted that a person’s acting is a matter of exercising a capacity he or she possesses as agent.

Argues that all of the behaviours that we share with non-human animals can, and should, be explained in terms of the first-order, non-phenomenal, contents of our experiences. So, although we do have phenomenally conscious experiences when we act, most of the time it is not by virtue of their being phenomenally conscious that they have their role in causing our actions. In consequence, the fact that my dispositional higher-order thought theory of phenomenal consciousness might withhold such consciousness from most non-human animals should have a minimal impact on comparative psychology. The explanations for the behaviours that we have in common with animals can remain shared also, despite the differences in phenomenally conscious status.

This chapter discusses causal roles, especially finding the right causal roles, ones that will travel from there to here, in order to make failures like those of the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Program less likely. It describes what a vertical search is and explains its importance.

This chapter begins by presenting the three main principles of essentialism. The first principle is that all and only members of a natural kind have some essential properties. The second is that these essential properties play a causal role. The third and final principle is that they are explanatorily relevant. Questions that arise regarding these principles are examined and it is argued here that arguing against the first and the second principles of kind-essentialism would involve taking part in some of the grand debates of philosophy. However, if the scope of discussion is restricted to the biological realm, the third principle can be questioned more successfully. Essentialism about natural kinds can have different meanings; for one, it can refer to being essentialist about individuals and kinds. There are also a variety of possible definitions for essentialism about kinds, the most general of which is utilized in this chapter.