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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.
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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 doesn’t 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)
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 out…that 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)
John Locke: power and substance. It is in virtue of a thing’s 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. “[W]hat 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)
“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.
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)
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.
