Given my recent interest in the idea of naturalized biological agency (the topic of my last post), I was excited to read Kevin Mitchell’s book—Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will—which develops this notion and connects it to the debate over human free will. Mitchell is a neurogeneticist at Trinity College (Dublin); he blogs… Continue reading Biological Agency and Free Will
Tag: Causation
The Enactive Approach to Agency
Introduction Explaining the properties and behaviors of organisms leads us to introduce a repertoire of concepts foreign to the world of non-living things. Arguably the most important of these is agency. Agency implies that behaviors are structured by intrinsic goals or purposes, and this brings with it further notions, such as those of norms and… Continue reading The Enactive Approach to Agency
New Work on Causation and Conserved Quantities
I read an interesting and thought-provoking paper: “Causation and the conservation of energy in general relativity” by Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez, James Read, and Andrés Páez (forthcoming in The BJPS[1]). The paper is about the apparent problems the general theory of relativity (GR) presents for Phil Dowe’s conserved quantity theory of causation (CQTC). The authors examine… Continue reading New Work on Causation and Conserved Quantities
The “Causal” in a Causal Theory of Spacetime
Across several posts, I have outlined how a causal process theory can provide an attractive ontology for phenomena described by the natural sciences, from quantum physics to biology. An exception, mentioned in a recent post, is that I haven’t had much to say about the spacetime of general relativity (GR). This topic is complicated by… Continue reading The “Causal” in a Causal Theory of Spacetime
The Causal Roots of Consciousness
In this post I recap my preferred framework for tackling the hard problem of consciousness, and then try to extend the analysis a bit deeper. I have favored a “divide and conquer” strategy that recognizes two dimensions to the problem. Our conscious experience has both a qualitative character and a subjective character, and both can… Continue reading The Causal Roots of Consciousness
What Scientific Understanding Implies About Causation
The last post discussed the idea that understanding is an epistemic achievement distinct from knowledge. In particular, some philosophers have made the case that understanding doesn’t require truth. I focused in on one corollary of this idea: scientific understanding can be achieved via causal explanations that utilize idealization. This is possible because false characterizations in… Continue reading What Scientific Understanding Implies About Causation
Thoughts on Scientific Understanding and Realism
I think one of the most helpful recent developments in philosophy has been the increased focus on understanding as an epistemic aim distinct from knowledge. For an overview, see Stephen Grimm’s new entry in the SEP. While I don’t specialize in epistemology, thinking about understanding has made some things clearer to me when it comes… Continue reading Thoughts on Scientific Understanding and Realism
RQM and Molecular Composition
According to the last post, the constitution of complex natural systems should be understood using a theory of composite causal processes. Composite causal processes are formed from a pattern of discrete causal interactions among a group of smaller sub-processes. When the latter sustains a higher rate of in-group versus out-group interactions, they form a composite.… Continue reading RQM and Molecular Composition
Composing Natural Systems
[Originally published May 31, 2021] An interesting feature of Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM), the subject of the last post, is its implication that discrete measurement-like interaction events are going on between natural systems (unobserved by us) all the time. It turns out that this offers a way to incorporate quantum phenomena into an attractive account of how… Continue reading Composing Natural Systems
Metaphysics and the Problem of Consciousness
[Originally published April 16, 2020] In a recent post I talked about different frameworks for addressing the subjective dimension of consciousness. One path used ideas from philosophy of mind, the other looked to evolutionary biology. Of course, many who ponder solving this and related aspects of the mind-body problem take a more overtly metaphysical turn.… Continue reading Metaphysics and the Problem of Consciousness