Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-966468-9
Verlag: OUP UK

Buch, Englisch, 274 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 421 g

Some philosophers think physical explanations stand on their own: what happens, happens because things have the properties they do. Others think that any such explanation is incomplete: what happens in the physical world must be partly due to the laws of nature. Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy examines the debate between these views from Descartes to Hume.

Ott argues that the competing models of causation in the period grow out of the scholastic notion of power. On this Aristotelian view, the connection between cause and effect is logically necessary. Causes are 'intrinsically directed' at what they produce. But when the Aristotelian view is faced with the challenge of mechanism, the core notion of a power splits into two distinct models, each of which persists throughout the early modern period. It is only when seen in this light that the key arguments of the period can reveal their true virtues and flaws.

To make his case, Ott explores such central topics as intentionality, the varieties of necessity, and the nature of relations. Arguing for controversial readings of many of the canonical figures, the book also focuses on lesser-known writers such as Pierre-Sylvain Régis, Nicolas Malebranche, and Robert Boyle.

Zielgruppe

Advanced students and scholars of philosophy

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ott, Walter

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Wissenschaften: Theorie, Epistemologie, Methodik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- Part I: The Cartesian predicament

- 1: What mechanism isn't

- 2: The rejection of Aristotelianism

- 3: The nude wax: Cartesian ontology

- 4: The laws of nature

- 5: Force

- 6: Occasionalism

- Part II: The dialectic of occasionalism

- 7: Malebranche and the cognitive model of causation

- 8: Laws and divine volitions

- 9: Causation and explanation

- 10: A scholastic mechanism

- 11: Régis against the occasionalists

- Part III: Power and necessity

- 12: 'A dead cadaverous thing'

- 13: Relations and powers

- 14: Boyle's paradox

- 15: Boyle and the concurrentists

- 16: Locke on relations

- 17: Locke on powers: The geometrical model

- 18: Locke's mechanisms

- 19: Conclusion

- Part IV: Hume

- 20: The Two Humes

- 21: Intentionality

- 22: Necessity

- 23: Relations

- 24: The definition of causation

- 25: Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Ott, Walter
Walter Ott holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He is the author of Locke's Philosophy of Language (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and is currently assistant professor of philosophy at Virginia Tech.