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Causes as powers

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum: Getting causes from powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 272pp, £35 HB

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Notes

  1. Note that here and elsewhere the examples are about substances, not powers. Mumford and Anjum leave unexplained the details of how such examples illustrate the case of powers.

  2. It is Molnar (2003, 173) who called it the “Always packing, never travelling” argument. .

  3. For an account of the model in ancient thought with particular reference to Aristotle, see e.g. Scaltsas (1989). The contagion model was also revived in early modern philosophy; see for reference e.g. O’Neill (1993, 44).

  4. Marmodoro (2007, 2013a, 2013b, unpublished)

  5. See Marmodoro, “Aristotelian Powers at work: reciprocity without symmetry in causation”, forthcoming.

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Correspondence to Jennifer McKitrick.

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McKitrick, J., Marmodoro, A., Mumford, S. et al. Causes as powers. Metascience 22, 545–559 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-013-9783-5

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