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Dispositions and Causes Toby Handfield (Monash University)

Dispositions and Causes By Toby Handfield (Monash University)

Dispositions and Causes by Toby Handfield (Monash University)


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Summary

Dispositions and Causes contains ten new essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, examining the relation between causal relations and dispositional properties. The introductory chapter contains a detailed overview of recent work in the area, providing a helpful entry to the literature for non-specialists.

Dispositions and Causes Summary

Dispositions and Causes by Toby Handfield (Monash University)

In recent decades, the analysis of causal relations has become a topic of central importance in analytic philosophy. More recently, dispositional properties have also become objects of intense study. Both of these phenomena appear to be intimately related to counterfactual conditionals and other modal phenomena such as objective chance, but little work has been done to directly relate them. Dispositions and Causes contains ten essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, examining the relation between dispositional and causal concepts. Particular issues discussed include the possibility of reducing dispositions to causes, and vice versa; the possibility of a nominalist theory of causal powers; the attempt to reduce all metaphysical necessity to dispositional properties; the relationship between dispositions, causes, and laws of nature; the role of causal capacities in explaining the success of scientific inquiry; the grounding of dispositions and causes in objective chances; and the type of causal power required for free agency. The introductory chapter contains a detailed overview of recent work in the area, providing a helpful entry to the literature for non-specialists.

Dispositions and Causes Reviews

ten authors tackle an impressively wide range of topics. * D. H. Mellor, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science *

About Toby Handfield (Monash University)

Toby Handfield is Lecturer in Philosophy and an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Monash University. He works both in metaphysics and in moral theory.

Table of Contents

1. The metaphysics of dispositions and causes ; 2. Dispositions, causes, and reduction ; 3. Causal structuralism, dispositional actualism, and counterfactual conditionals ; 4. Leaving things to take their chances: Cause and disposition grounded in chance ; 5. Causal laws, policy predictions, and the need for genuine powers ; 6. How is scientific analysis possible? ; 7. Agent-causal power ; 8. Structural properties revisited ; 9. Causal nominalism ; 10. Why do the laws explain why? ; References

Additional information

NPB9780199558933
9780199558933
0199558930
Dispositions and Causes by Toby Handfield (Monash University)
New
Hardback
Oxford University Press
2009-02-05
368
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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