Institute
of Philosophy, Research
Centre for the
Humanities, Budapest
Causation,
Physical Closure and the
Causal Exclusion Argument
Recent debates
concerning the so-called Causal
Exclusion Argument (CEA)
highlighted the importance of the
chosen interpretation of causation
with respect to the validity of
the argument. Many philosophers
raised concerns about the notion
of a sufficient cause employed in
the formulation of the Causal
Closure of the Physical (CCP)
premise in the original CEA and
urged for an approach more
consistent with the literature on
causation, but the results of
these investigations also proved
to be problem-ridden. It seems
that in case the relevant premises
of CEA are interpreted on grounds
of the same theory of causation we
end up with some uneasy tension.
If causation is the transference
of conserved physical quantities
the argument becomes an empty
truism. If causation is
difference-making, the picture is
less clear, but we might end up
with the rejection of CCP, as only
the higher-level causes are proper
difference-makers for the
higher-level effects we are
interested in.
This talk aims to show that the
problems encountered in
discussions of CEA might be
circumvented by the utilization of
a new theory of causation that
constructs causal notions from
non-causal concepts utilized by
most fundamental physical
theories. This theory allows for
the reformulation of CCP as
Physical Closure and it has the
potential to create a new kind of
conceptual space for the seamless
accommodation of higher-level
causal talk into a physicalist
outlook.
