Formale Verursachung bei Aristoteles und in der Analytischen Metaphysik und Wissenschaftsphilosophie
Geschichte der Philosophie
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Causation is a basic feature of the structure of nature and thus in the centre of much research in both contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. Hitherto, however, the distinctive role and applicability of formal causation has been underappreciated. Formal causation is at play whenever a thing has a certain essential property because it is of a certain kind, e.g. that a particle has negative charge because it is an electron. Formal causation has an ineliminable place not only in our common day linguistic and pragmatic practises, as evidenced by the ubiquitous reference to kinds, but also in the sciences. In this project we have developed a non-hylomorphic account of formal causation, building especially upon Aristotle’s account in his Posterior Analytics. A key benefit of our account, compared with other hylomorphic accounts, is that our account requires much fewer ontological commitments. Because of this, a much greater number of researchers can adopt our account. Further, since our account allows for exceptions to essential properties, formal causation is also applicable to many more domains, including biology and the social sciences. We have also connected our accounted with the literature on related issues, such as essentialism, dependence, grounding. And applying our account of formal causation, we have also developed an account of laws of nature. Our project has also contributed to closing the gap between historical work on Aristotle and contemporary work on metaphysics and philosophy of science. During the project, we have encountered some complications. (1) We identified three variants of formal causation to be found in Aristotle and his successors, and decided to focus on the under-explored non-hylomorphic variant. (2) Our original ambitious plan to discover the exact dependence-relations involved in formal causation had to be adjusted. We were able to prove the less ambitious view that formal causation involves modal-existential and counterfactual dependence, which is sufficient for formal causation to classify as causation on a difference-making account. Our project, and some of its results, has been mentioned a few times in the media: (1) Laborjournal 5/2019. (2) Ostsee Zeitung 05.02.2019. (3) Ostsee Anzeiger 04.09.2019. And we have written a short piece on formal causation for non-specialists (for Information Philosopie).
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- (2021) “Introducing Formal Causation”, in L. Jansen, P. Sandstad (Eds.) Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation. Routledge 2021: 1- 16
L. Jansen, P. Sandstad
- “Formal Causation Regained: A Non-Hylomorphic Account”, in: L. Jansen, P. Sandstad (Eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, (Routledge Studies in Metaphysics), London: Routledge 2021, 65-86
P. Sandstad, L. Jansen
