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Full Idea
The most serious objection to any account of causation in terms of nomological relations alone is that it can't provide any account of the direction of causation.
Clarification
'Nomological' means concerned with laws
Gist of Idea
Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation
Source
Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.1)
Book Ref
'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.407
A Reaction
Cf. Idea 8393. I am not convinced that there could be an 'account' of the direction of causation, so I am inclined to take it as given. If we take 'powers' (active properties) as basic, they would have a direction built into them.
Related Idea
Idea 8393 We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley]
| 8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
| 8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
| 8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
| 8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
| 8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
| 8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
| 8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
| 8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
| 8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |