Shoemaker, Causality and Properties

1
Shoemaker, Causality and Properties

• Events are the terms involved in causal
  relations. But all causal relationships seem to
  involve a change of properties of the constituent
  objects.
• An account of causality, therefore, should
  involve an account of change of properties.
• But that doesnt mean that causality should be
  explained away in terms of properties.
• Rather, the relevant notion of property is itself
  to be explained in terms of causality (253b)

2

• A property is genuine if and only if its
  acquisition or loss by a thing constitutes a
  genuine change in that thing.
• See Cambridge properties, relations, etc.
• If it turns outthat in order to give a
  satisfactory account of the distinction between
  real and mere Cambridge properties, changes,
  similarities, and differences, we must make use
  of the notion of causality, the Humean project of
  defining causality in terms of regularity or
  constant conjunction, notions that plainly
  involve the notion of resemblance, is seriously
  undermined. (254b)

3

• John Locke power and substance.
• It is in virtue of a things properties that the
  thing has the powers that it has.
• Properties are second-order powers they are
  powers to produce first-order powers if combined
  with certain other properties.
• What makes a property the property it is,
  what determines its identity, is its potential
  for contributing to the causal powers of the
  things that have it. (256a)
• Conditional powers (256b)

4

• My reasons for holding this theory of
  properties are, broadly speaking,
  epistemological. Only if some causal theory of
  properties is true, I believe, can it be
  explained how properties are capable of engaging
  our knowledge, and our language, in the way they
  do. (257a)
• We know properties by their effects.

5

• There is a circularity involved in the
  definition of property and cause. Is this a
  problem? Perhaps not. Perhaps they preclude
  reductive analysis.
• As I see it, the notion of a property and the
  notion of a causal power belong to a system of
  internally related concepts, no one of which can
  be explicated without the use of the others
  (261b)

6

• Causal necessity is a species of logical
  necessity. (261b)
• Are there different properties across possible
  worlds?
• Two ways of reconciling this.
• (a) Total cluster theory
• (b) Core cluster theory
• Both reconciliations fail.