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Single Idea 14568

[filed under theme 14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / i. Explanations by mechanism ]

Full Idea

Knowing the structure that something has does not in itself causally explain that thing's behaviour unless we also know what sorts of behaviour a thing of that structure can cause.

Gist of Idea

A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure

Source

S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.2)

Book Ref

Anjum,R.J./Mumford,S.: 'Getting Causes from Powers' [OUP 2011], p.133

A Reaction

I agree with this. If you focus on the lowest possible levels of causal explanation, I can see only powers. Whatever you come up with, it had better be something active. Geometry never started any bonfires.

The 47 ideas from S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum

17535 Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [Mumford/Anjum]
14533 Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum]
14535 Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
14536 We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum]
14538 Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum]
14537 Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum]
14539 Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum]
14541 Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum]
14542 If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum]
14549 Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum]
14550 We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum]
14551 If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum]
14546 Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum]
14548 There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum]
14553 Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum]
14555 Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum]
14554 Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum]
14556 Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum]
14557 Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum]
14558 A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum]
14559 Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum]
14564 If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum]
14562 A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
14561 Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum]
14563 Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum]
14565 Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum]
14566 Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum]
14567 Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum]
14568 A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum]
14569 It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum]
14571 The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum]
14570 Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum]
14575 A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum]
14572 Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum]
14573 Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum]
14574 Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum]
14552 Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum]
14576 Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum]
14577 Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum]
14584 The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum]
14578 Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum]
14579 Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum]
14580 Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum]
14582 Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum]
14583 Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum]
14585 We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum]
14587 We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum]