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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Causal connection alone is insufficient for a process to count as a constituent part of another process.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Coupling arguments require that process X be more than simply causally connected to process Y of type j for X to be part of the j process.
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    • 2.The sound of a pencil leaving graphite is causally connected to the production of a written paragraph.
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    • 3.The sound of the pencil does not contribute to the loop—neural events, scribbling, reading—from which the paragraph emerges.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Mechanistic constitution, as defended by Machamer, Darden, and Craver, requires that a part contribute to a mechanism's organized activity, not merely influence it.
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    • 2.Craver's 'mutual manipulability' criterion holds that a component must be interventionally relevant to the phenomenon at multiple levels, not merely downstream in a causal chain.
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    • 3.Causal relevance is transitive and ubiquitous, so any criterion admitting all causal connections collapses the distinction between environment and mechanism entirely.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Salmon's process ontology distinguishes genuine causal processes, which transmit marks and conserved quantities, from mere causal interactions that produce no structural modification in a persisting process.
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    • 2.A pencil's sound transmits no conserved quantity into the writing loop and leaves no mark on the neural-motor-graphite process, failing Salmon's criterion for genuine process membership.
      ?

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    • 3.Only processes that can receive and transmit modifications internal to a system's productive continuity qualify as constituents under a Salmon-Dowe transference account.
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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.