Brains, Persons, and Society *** ABSTRACTS    Cervelli, Persone e Società ***ABSTRACTS

Causal Realism Without Causal Relations

Imagine a world where a causal activity gives birth not just to the effect, but to the cause as well; where a cause depends for its existence on its effect.  This world is unfamiliar to us.  Yet, this is Aristotle’s world, which I want to explore.

 Aristotle’s position on causation is a puzzle that sets a challenge to ancient philosophy scholars and contemporary metaphysicians as well, to interpret and evaluate. 

 I argue for a solution to this puzzle.  Aristotle understands the causal bond between cause and effect in terms of two natures which are ontologically interdependent requiring a mutual realisation process, as for example the activity that grounds teaching and learning.  According to him, agency and patiency are two potentialities (e.g. for teaching and learning) whose interdependent realisations binds them together.  Their interdependence takes the form of the diatopic realisation of the agent’s potentiality in the patient, when certain conditions obtain – namely when the potentiality of the patient is realised together with it.  Yet the two potentialities belong, respectively, to two different substances, the agent and the patient, and so do their coincident realisations. 

 The interpretation I develop of Aristotle’s theory of causation reveals Aristotle had in his ontology a type of potentiality which has not been recognised by historians of philosophy, nor has it surfaced in contemporary accounts.  What has been recognised is that Aristotle improved on Plato’s metaphysical account of change by observing that the potentialities which explain causal change can have a temporal, diachronic dimension, namely their realisation can take place in stages over a period of time (e.g. the effect of the sculptor’s carving the marble is realised in stages).  What I argue for is that Aristotle introduced a second, new metaphysical tool for dealing with causation, namely that the potentialities for causal change have a diatopic dimension as well.  Namely, these potentialities are realised externally to the subject to which they belong.  The teacher’s potentiality to teach, although it belongs to the teacher, is realised in the pupil, not in the teacher.  The causal efficacy of the teacher as the agent of teaching is actualised exactly where the teaching takes effect, in the pupil; this is where the agent becomes, ultimately, an agent.  My claim in a nutshell is this: the potentiality/actuality distinction, and the diatopic actualisation of causal potentialities are Aristotle’s two ontological tools that explain the causal union between the agent and the patient, without introducing any extra metaphysical cement to do the job. 

 I argue that Aristotle introduced a unique realist account of causation, which has not hitherto been appreciated in the history of philosophy: causal realism without a causal relation.  In his account, cause and effect are unified by the diatopic actualization of the agent’s potentiality in the patient.  His breakthrough consists in the introduction of a property that belongs to one subject but is realized in another subject, on whose state this realization depends.  I identify and analyze the multiple ontological dependencies between the causal state of the agent and that of the patient during their causal activity.