Abstract
In his recent book, The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers an updated account of his two-category (substance and property) ontology. One of his major goals is to avoid including relations in his basic ontology. While there can still be true claims positing relations, such as those of the form “x is taller than y” and “x causes y,” they will be true in virtue of substances and their monadic, non-relational properties. That is, Heil’s two-category ontology is deployed to provide non-relational truthmakers for relational truths. This paper challenges the success of Heil’s project with respect to causation. The arguments here are not entirely negative, however. An option is made available to Heil’s ontology so that it might, at least to some extent, regain non-relational causings.
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Notes
As Heil indicates (with an admittedly opinionated history), this has historically been a well-respected goal among metaphysicians. Sensitive to the perplexities/difficulties of ontologically robust relations, Heil prefers to put his resources into avoiding ontological commitment to relations rather than working out a coherent place for relations in his ontology. See Heil (2012, chap. 7).
Heil’s account of causation approximates that of his long-time collaborator, Martin (2008).
It is worth noting that Heil takes powers to be multi-track, in that they will manifest themselves differently given different disposition partners. See Heil (2012, p. 121).
One might be tempted to defend Heil’s approach by applying an alternative formulation of internal relations. In addition to characterizing internal relations as “relations founded on nonrelational features of their relata,” Heil also states that “if you have the relata as they are, you thereby have the relation” (Heil 2012, p. 146). So, even if spatial relations are ontologically robust, one might respond, the causal relation between the salt and the water can nonetheless be internal, for when the salt is located in the water it is true that if you have the salt and the water as they are (complete with their monadic properties and spatial relations), you thereby have the dissolving. Notice, however, that so applying this alternative formulation comes at a grave cost. Given that the point of founding relations on non-relational features is to exclude ontologically robust relations from one’s basic ontology, one must be careful to avoid being too permissive when applying the “as-they-are” characterization of internal relations. If this characterization were allowed to go beyond the monadic properties of the relata and include ontologically robust relations, then it would not be effective in securing only non-relational truthmakers. Hence, despite any initial appeal it might have, this line of defense appears to be a non-starter.
See Heil (2012, p. 54), where he makes clear this balance between his ontology and science.
For anyone tempted here to abandon the spatial proximity requirement because we are here concerned with substances that are themselves spaces, notice that you would then be thrown back into the difficulty of making sense of causings as mutual, interactive affairs.
Campbell makes a similar claim: “So there is a sense in which a monistic cosmology has no use for cause and effect; it has variegation and patterning across a single field-like entity spread through space–time” (1990, p. 125).
See Heil (2012, chaps. 2–3) for his position that substances are simple in that they do not have any substantial proper parts.
As noted earlier, in footnote 8, Campbell also claims that there is no room for causation within a single substance. Perhaps, then, he similarly failed to appreciate the point made here, namely, that a property need not express the entire nature of the substance to which it belongs. In any event, our discussion here suggests that a monist might have some use for causings after all, and not settle for simply “variegation and patterning” across the single substance.
References
Campbell, K. (1990). Abstract particulars. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Heil, J. (2012). The universe as we find it. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Martin, C. B. (2008). The mind in nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mumford, S. (2004). Laws in nature. New York: Routledge.
Mumford, S. (2009). Passing powers around. The Monist, 92, 94–111.
Mumford, S., & Anjum, R. L. (2011). Getting causes from powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to John Heil and Adam Podlaskowski for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Baltimore, J.A. Heil’s Two-Category Ontology and Causation. Erkenn 80, 1091–1099 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9707-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9707-9