Causal Powers

Author:

Cartwright Nancy

Abstract

Hume urged that there is no difference between the obtaining of a power and its exercise; others, that there is no difference between its exercise and the result that occurs. This chapter reinforces the reasons, based in the success of the analytic method in a variety of sciences and often in daily life, for taking exercisings to be real and separate from both the obtaining (along per-haps with triggering if needed) of a power and the overall result. If exercisings are real, the chapter urges, then the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view of laws is in trouble, at least if laws are going to account for much of what happens, since ex-ercisings of powers surely should not be admissible into any ontology the view allows. One might hope to rescue the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account by retaining the demand that laws and theories cover as much as possible as simply as possible but give up the requirement that they be true. In that case laws could involve exercisings but not as true features of the world, rather as part of an instrument for predicting facts that the view lets in to its ontology. This chapter adumbrates this proposal and argues that it will not work. If laws are to cover much of what we think they do, we will have to have exercisings in our ontology, and, the chapter argues (contrary to a proposal floated by Richard Corry), we can’t have exercisings without powers. So we had best accept that powers have full citizenship in the world that science presents to us.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Cited by 5 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Dated Truths Without Dated Powers;Erkenntnis;2024-01-19

2. Testing Joint Sufficiency Twice: Explanatory Qualitative Comparative Analysis;Texts in Quantitative Political Analysis;2023

3. Can Causal Powers Cause Their Effects?;Metaphysica;2022-09-01

4. Modeling configurational explanations;Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica;2021-02-16

5. How (not) to judge a theory of causation;Synthese;2020-11-09

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3