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Substantial Causes and Nomic Determination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Henry Byerly
Henry Byerly*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Abstract

I characterize a notion of causal agency that is the causitive component of many transitive verbs. The agency of what I call substantial causes relates objects physically to systems with which they interact. Such agent causation does not reduce to conditionship relations, nor does it cease to play a role in scientific discourse. I argue, contrary to regularity theories, that causal claims do not in general depend for their sense on generalities nor do they entail the existence of laws. Clarification of the relationships among substantial causes, causal processes, and explanatory conditions separates the analysis of causal connection from that of nomological connection. This clarification is then applied to a variety of issues in the analysis of causality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 57 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1979

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Keith Lehrer, Francis Raab, Wesley Salmon and Susan Sack for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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