Aristotelian powers at work: reciprocity without symmetry in causation

Book section : Chapter

This paper puts powers to work by developing a broadly Aristotelian account of causation, built on the fundamental idea (which Aristotle found in Plato, attributed by him to Heraclitus) that causation is a mutual interaction between powers. On this Aristotelian view, causal powers manifest them-selves in dependence on the manifestation of their mutual partners. (See also Heil, this volume; Mumford, this volume; and Martin 2008.) The manifestations of two causal power partners are co-determined, co-varying, and co-extensive in time. (See Marmodoro 2006.) Yet, causation has a direction and is thus asymmetric. This asymmetry is what underpins metaphysically the distinction between causal agent and patient. The proposed Aristotelian analysis of the interaction between mutually manifesting causal powers is distinctive, in that it pays justice to the intuition that there is agency in causation. That is, agency is not a metaphorical way of describing what causal powers do. For some powers, it is a way of being that instantiates the non-anthropomorphic sense in which powers are causal agents. This point is brought out in the paper in relation to the explanation of the concept of change. In an Aristotelian fashion, the paper argues that the distinction be-tween agent and patient in causation is pivotal to offering a realist account of causation that does not reify the interaction of the reciprocal causal partners into a relation. On the proposed view, the interaction between mutually manifesting causal partners consists in the power of one substance being realized in another substance. Specifically, the agent’s causal powers metaphysically belong to the agent, but come to be realized in the patient. The significance of this is that the interaction of the agent’s and the patient’s powers is not a relation; rather, it is an ex-tension of the constitution of the agent onto the patient, which occurs when agent and patient interact and their powers are mutually manifested. Thus the proposed Aristotelian account of causation explains the mutual interaction between manifestation partners—potentiality, agency, and change—as irreducible to one another, but interconnected.

Authors: Marmodoro, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: Causal Powers
• Pages: 57–76
• Chapter number: 5
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2017-04-01
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198796572.003.0005
• EISBN: 9780191837838
• ISBN: 9780198796572
• Language: English
• Keywords: causation; mutual partners; powers; mutually manifesting causal powers; Aristotle
• Subtype: Chapter