According to Jaegwon Kim, Samuel Alexander proposed that “to be is to have causal powers.” I haven't found exactly where Alexander said that (apparently not in Space, Time and Deity), but I trust Kim on this matter.
Just to be on the safe side, but having nothing to do with my argument here, I wish to modify Alexander's Dictum. I wish to assert merely that to be causal is to have ontological status. Inverting the dictum thusly avoids commitment to the proposition that only those phenomena that are causal are ontological, that is, that producing effects is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for something to be. As of right now, I do not wish rule out the claim that something exists even though it may not be causal or cannot be determined by humans to produce effects. The metaphysics of causation is a very complex subject matter where it seems the most essential issues (e.g., the nature of the causal relata; the nature of the causal relation) remain unresolved. It is entirely plausible that a phenomenon or entity does produce effects, but humans cannot determine that it does. And I am also willing to entertain the idea that something lacking causal power could be said to exist.
Nevertheless, for purposes here, it is sufficient to agree that all phenomena that are causal enjoy ontological status.
Macroscopic objects and/or spatially and temporally extended events or processes can be causal such that their effects are not reducible to the properties of their constituent parts. Look at what a tornado can cause. That swath of destruction is not accounted for by the properties of the elementary particles that might be claimed to constitute the tornado at any given time. (Indeed, exactly which elementary particle or speck of dust might be said to constitute a tornado changes constantly and would be largely indeterminate at any given time.) “ . . . a tornado is a self-organizing entity caught up in a global pattern behavior that seems to be autonomous with respect to the massive aggregation of air and water molecules which constitute it.” There are myriad such examples of downward causation.
Robert Bishop defends the claim that Rayleigh-Bénard convection is an example of a nonlinear system that exhibits downward causation. Reflecting the method by which downward causation is commonly identified as achieving its effects, Bishop explains, “. . . in the context of Rayleigh-Bénard convection, higher-level physical structures (Bénard cells) constrain and modify the behaviors of the lower-level system constituents (fluid elements).”
In a comprehensive paper (and its revision published in 2010), Richard J. Campbell and Mark H. Bickhard begin by highlighting the seemingly uncontroversial arguments for the failures of both non-reductive and reductive physicalism, indeed the failure of substance metaphysics wholly. They ultimately appeal to the facts of quantum field theory in arguing against the thesis that the realm of microphysical particles is somehow fundamental, and for a process model of emergence, with the ineluctable element of downward (and horizontal) causation.
Unbeknownst to or simply unacknowledged by many people, in recent decades there has been a rather robust debate among biologists regarding the role of natural selection in the evolutionary process, namely whether natural selection is purely a negative mechanism, merely filtering and distributing the frequency of traits already existing in a population, or plays a creative function in the generation of organismal traits. Maximiliano Martínez and Andrés Moya dissect this debate and advocate for the latter, taking their cue from Donald Campbell in arguing that downward causation exerts an essential influence of higher level phenomena on those of lower levels:
Martinez and Moya go on to explicate the “revision” of natural selection that they propose, in which downward causation is clearly and unavoidably involved in the creative functioning of natural selection:
In any case, I probably should have stopped with the tornado example above. It's only out of perversity that I wanted to further discuss and point out additional examples of downward causation. In all of the above, the point is that macroscopic phenomena are causal, therefore, according to Alexander's dictum, they be. Their causal powers do not drain down to the effects of properties of elementary particles. Tornadoes are real; they produce real effects that are not accounted for by the properties their constituent elementary particles. Indeed, the world is made up of a variety of such real macroscopic entities--they are real because, according to Alexander's dictum, they have causal powers of their own. In such a world, where there exist multitudinous objects or entities with their own causal powers, the metaphysical thesis of pluralism is true, not the thesis of any sort of monism.
In the same way that tornadoes are not trees or bicycles, tornadoes are not elementary particles (even if substance metaphysics were not refuted by quantum field theory)--they each have have causal powers. All of these items exist in their own right.
To try to preempt a commonplace response to such argument: a xylophone and a spoon may both be made of wood, but that doesn't mean that one is conceptually or functionally reducible to the other, or that either the xylophone or spoon is conceptually or functionally reducible to the wood it's made of. Again, all of these phenomena exist. That's how, on the premise of Alexander's dictum, we deduce that the thesis of pluralism is true and all forms of monism are false.
Just to be on the safe side, but having nothing to do with my argument here, I wish to modify Alexander's Dictum. I wish to assert merely that to be causal is to have ontological status. Inverting the dictum thusly avoids commitment to the proposition that only those phenomena that are causal are ontological, that is, that producing effects is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for something to be. As of right now, I do not wish rule out the claim that something exists even though it may not be causal or cannot be determined by humans to produce effects. The metaphysics of causation is a very complex subject matter where it seems the most essential issues (e.g., the nature of the causal relata; the nature of the causal relation) remain unresolved. It is entirely plausible that a phenomenon or entity does produce effects, but humans cannot determine that it does. And I am also willing to entertain the idea that something lacking causal power could be said to exist.
Nevertheless, for purposes here, it is sufficient to agree that all phenomena that are causal enjoy ontological status.
Macroscopic objects and/or spatially and temporally extended events or processes can be causal such that their effects are not reducible to the properties of their constituent parts. Look at what a tornado can cause. That swath of destruction is not accounted for by the properties of the elementary particles that might be claimed to constitute the tornado at any given time. (Indeed, exactly which elementary particle or speck of dust might be said to constitute a tornado changes constantly and would be largely indeterminate at any given time.) “ . . . a tornado is a self-organizing entity caught up in a global pattern behavior that seems to be autonomous with respect to the massive aggregation of air and water molecules which constitute it.” There are myriad such examples of downward causation.
Robert Bishop defends the claim that Rayleigh-Bénard convection is an example of a nonlinear system that exhibits downward causation. Reflecting the method by which downward causation is commonly identified as achieving its effects, Bishop explains, “. . . in the context of Rayleigh-Bénard convection, higher-level physical structures (Bénard cells) constrain and modify the behaviors of the lower-level system constituents (fluid elements).”
In a comprehensive paper (and its revision published in 2010), Richard J. Campbell and Mark H. Bickhard begin by highlighting the seemingly uncontroversial arguments for the failures of both non-reductive and reductive physicalism, indeed the failure of substance metaphysics wholly. They ultimately appeal to the facts of quantum field theory in arguing against the thesis that the realm of microphysical particles is somehow fundamental, and for a process model of emergence, with the ineluctable element of downward (and horizontal) causation.
Unbeknownst to or simply unacknowledged by many people, in recent decades there has been a rather robust debate among biologists regarding the role of natural selection in the evolutionary process, namely whether natural selection is purely a negative mechanism, merely filtering and distributing the frequency of traits already existing in a population, or plays a creative function in the generation of organismal traits. Maximiliano Martínez and Andrés Moya dissect this debate and advocate for the latter, taking their cue from Donald Campbell in arguing that downward causation exerts an essential influence of higher level phenomena on those of lower levels:
Campbell (1974, 180ff) asserts that nature is organized hierarchically into different levels: molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, populations, species and ecosystems. Each of these levels has a factual reality and organizes the actual existing units present in the lower level. He proposes the principle of downward causation to refer to the influence that higher levels exert on lower ones and links it with the operation of natural selection.
To make the matter clearer we shall reconstruct the example that Campbell (1974, 181) uses to illustrate the action of downward causation and its relationship with natural selection. If we consider the anatomy of the jaws of a worker termite or ant, we note that the ligaments and muscle surface obey the laws of mechanics (Archimedes lever), and are designed optimally to apply maximum force at a determined distance from the joint. This fact agrees with physics, but is different from that implied by molecular processes, which are those that govern the production of specific proteins building the muscle and shell of the mandibular system. Such macro-mechanical laws operate at the level of organisms. Thus, according to Campbell, in order to understand and explain the particular and exact distribution of proteins that make up the jaw as well as the corresponding specific DNA sequence, which are at the lower level (molecular), it is necessary to determine the laws of the lever at the higher level (organisms). For Campbell, this is one of the processes that involves both directions of causation, as it is organism-scale natural selection that determines (causes) what specific types of proteins are present at the molecular level, although the immediate microdetermination (cause) is in the direction of DNA→protein→jaw. Thus the events at a higher level of organization (individuals) partly determine the permanence, formation, and distribution of the organization of entities at lower levels (DNA), which in turn will subsequently reproduce, through upward causation, new higher-level entities.
In other words, the adaptive success or failure of certain higher-level entities has a decisive effect on the future presence and distribution of the lower-level entities that (re)produce them. The adaptive role of ants’ jaws determines the continuity or disappearance of the DNA strands that produce them. It is in this sense that higher-level entities, through downward causation, have an impact on future events in both entities of the same level (individuals) and the lower levels that compose them (DNA).
[The principle of downward causation]: Where natural selection operates, through life and death at a higher level of organization, the laws of the higher-level selective system determine in part the distribution of lower-level events and substances ... All processes at the lower levels of a hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity to the laws of the higher levels (Campbell 1974, 180).
Grouping together numerous generations of temporarily successive self-replicating entities is useful for understanding the central point that the concept of downward causation attempts to reflect: the states and events of entities at a higher level exert causal influence (in the future) on their own subsequent replications. This is the way in which generationally successive entities of a higher level establish a causal connection; i.e., through the influence exerted on future lower-level entities, which, in turn, are responsible for the construction of new higher-level entities (in a typical process of upward causation). In this case, Campbell is considering the reciprocal causal relationship between two levels (through a replication process): the organismal (phenotype) and the molecular (genotype).
To make the matter clearer we shall reconstruct the example that Campbell (1974, 181) uses to illustrate the action of downward causation and its relationship with natural selection. If we consider the anatomy of the jaws of a worker termite or ant, we note that the ligaments and muscle surface obey the laws of mechanics (Archimedes lever), and are designed optimally to apply maximum force at a determined distance from the joint. This fact agrees with physics, but is different from that implied by molecular processes, which are those that govern the production of specific proteins building the muscle and shell of the mandibular system. Such macro-mechanical laws operate at the level of organisms. Thus, according to Campbell, in order to understand and explain the particular and exact distribution of proteins that make up the jaw as well as the corresponding specific DNA sequence, which are at the lower level (molecular), it is necessary to determine the laws of the lever at the higher level (organisms). For Campbell, this is one of the processes that involves both directions of causation, as it is organism-scale natural selection that determines (causes) what specific types of proteins are present at the molecular level, although the immediate microdetermination (cause) is in the direction of DNA→protein→jaw. Thus the events at a higher level of organization (individuals) partly determine the permanence, formation, and distribution of the organization of entities at lower levels (DNA), which in turn will subsequently reproduce, through upward causation, new higher-level entities.
In other words, the adaptive success or failure of certain higher-level entities has a decisive effect on the future presence and distribution of the lower-level entities that (re)produce them. The adaptive role of ants’ jaws determines the continuity or disappearance of the DNA strands that produce them. It is in this sense that higher-level entities, through downward causation, have an impact on future events in both entities of the same level (individuals) and the lower levels that compose them (DNA).
Martinez and Moya go on to explicate the “revision” of natural selection that they propose, in which downward causation is clearly and unavoidably involved in the creative functioning of natural selection:
We think that the notion of downward causation proposed by Campbell helps enormously in capturing the positive action of natural selection between levels. Linking this notion of downward causation (which focuses on the organismal level) with the proposed positive selection of Ayala, Neander, and Dobzhansky (which focuses on the genetic level), we can better understand how the selective events that occur at a time t at a higher level determine certain entities that later appear at the lower level, all in a reproductive chain. Natural selection at the individual (higher) level determines which genetic material (lower level) will prevail and which will disappear in the following generation(s). The relationship between downward causation and natural selection is possible thanks to the phenomenon of heredity. It is precisely this type of top-down causation that allows natural selection to determine and channel the material upon which future variation will emerge, where it will again subsequently operate. As noted above, the main selective factor promoting the channeling of the genetic material does not operate directly at the genetic level; it does so at the level of the individual. But the top-down connection between the two levels is possible through downward causation. The selection of specific individuals progressively influences, through downward causation, the composition of the genetic pools, making the appearance of successful genetic combinations more probable. In our view, this fundamental multilevel fact demands a revision of the concept of natural selection; we must incorporate the notion of downward causation into our conception of natural selection. This reformulation would enable us to define more clearly the positive causal role that natural selection plays in the production and pattern that organismal form takes.
In any case, I probably should have stopped with the tornado example above. It's only out of perversity that I wanted to further discuss and point out additional examples of downward causation. In all of the above, the point is that macroscopic phenomena are causal, therefore, according to Alexander's dictum, they be. Their causal powers do not drain down to the effects of properties of elementary particles. Tornadoes are real; they produce real effects that are not accounted for by the properties their constituent elementary particles. Indeed, the world is made up of a variety of such real macroscopic entities--they are real because, according to Alexander's dictum, they have causal powers of their own. In such a world, where there exist multitudinous objects or entities with their own causal powers, the metaphysical thesis of pluralism is true, not the thesis of any sort of monism.
In the same way that tornadoes are not trees or bicycles, tornadoes are not elementary particles (even if substance metaphysics were not refuted by quantum field theory)--they each have have causal powers. All of these items exist in their own right.
To try to preempt a commonplace response to such argument: a xylophone and a spoon may both be made of wood, but that doesn't mean that one is conceptually or functionally reducible to the other, or that either the xylophone or spoon is conceptually or functionally reducible to the wood it's made of. Again, all of these phenomena exist. That's how, on the premise of Alexander's dictum, we deduce that the thesis of pluralism is true and all forms of monism are false.
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