0262050757.The.MIT.Press.Real.Natures.and.Familiar.Objects.Apr.2004

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causing collection, in virtue of its component Mc, causes,
albeit indirectly and via many steps, microphysical event o?
Might he not in this way claim that the causing collection,
in virtue of its other components, causes every other indi-
vidual event in the complex microphysical outcome that
subvenes the spread of the trait?
This is a far more promising suggestion than the one con-
sidered in 5.2. I now argue that it fails but the argument
requires some care.
What I am granting to the physicalist (for the sake of argu-
ment; cf. 4.5) is that microparticle Mc causes, via many inter-
vening steps, microphysical event o. Of course this is a
shorthand expression: what I am really granting (and what
the physicalist claims) is that something that happens to Mc
causes, indirectly, o. The cause is some state of affairs involv-
ing Mc, or some Kim event featuring Mc.
But should we grant on the strength of this concession
that the entire causing collection, in virtue of its component
Mc, causes o? Or, to unpack the shorthand, should we grant
116 Chapter 5
that the complex and protracted microphysical event under-
gone by the causing collection causes, by virtue of its com-
ponent event c featuring Mc, microphysical event o?
The danger is that in granting this we will have given in
to a misleading verbal trick. For we will have licensed the
conclusion that the complex microphysical event undergone
by the causing collection itself causes microphysical event o.
Yet that conclusion may very well be false, or so we should
suspect. For it is not in general reliable to infer that if event
a undeniably causes event b, a complex event comprising
event a together with event x likewise causes event b. Barry
Bonds s performance in baseball in 2001, let us allow, caused
the record book to be rewritten in a way that will stand for
many years to come. It does not follow that Bonds s hitting
as he did together with my publishing articles as I did in
2001 caused the record book of baseball to be rewritten for
many years to come. It is in fact false that Bonds and I
together rewrote the record book.
Precisely why the conclusion of such an inference is often
false depends on what the correct analysis of causation is
although on any of the analyses currently defended, the con-
clusion will often be false. The analysis I endorsed in chapter
4 is (to simplify) that for event a to be a cause of event b is
for a to be an NS condition of b. But was some complex,
sprawling, protracted microphysical event involving all of
the physicalist s causing collection an NS condition for o?
The suggestion seems implausible at first blush, and even
more implausible the longer one ponders it.
At first blush it seems clear that whatever the lines of cau-
sation were, that led from one mutant antelope s success
at high-meadow foraging to the birth of his tenth great-
grandchild, those lines did not embroil the entire careers of
all the antelopes originally blessed with the mutation.
Causes in the Special Sciences 117
Perhaps the lines of causation were just those envisioned by
biology, or perhaps they were really the ones that would be
narrated by microphysics. Either way it seems clear that
they involved only events in that one ancestor s career up
to the time he sired the grandfather of his tenth great-
grandchild, and not afterwards. They did not involve events
in the careers of other ancestor antelopes, if any, in whom
the lucky mutation also originally occurred. And even if the
original mutation occurred in but a single ancestor, the rel-
evant lines of causation involved only events in the life of
the offspring of that ancestor who was to become the grand-
father of that tenth great-grandchild. They did not involve
events in the lives of every last other offspring of that
ancestor even though events in all these other lives did
figure in the early success at foraging provided by that
mutation. Hence the lines of causation leading to o did not
run through some events that did figure in the physicalist s
cause event. The lines did not embroil at least some
microparticles in the causing collection.
But let us consider the suggestion more closely. What
would it have taken for a complex protracted microphysical
event involving all of the physicalist s causing collection to
have caused microphysical event o? How could that entire
event have been an NS condition for o? What we have so far
granted is just that the individual microphysical event c, in
the one mutant ancestor s stomach, started a causal chain
that eventually produced individual microphysical event o.
So this causal chain would have had to follow a long and
winding path. To it, every last other microparticle in the
physicalist s causing collection would have had to make an
indispensable contribution. Somehow that chain would
have had to intersect the careers of (virtually) every
microparticle in the body of every mutant antelope who
118 Chapter 5
enjoyed the early success at foraging which the mutation
enabled. Indeed it may even have had to intersect the
careers of every microparticle in every nutrient molecule in
every blade of high-meadow grass, the consumption of
which figured in this early success at foraging.
This suggestion is far closer to being laughable than to
being believable. So it is, after all, just a cheap verbal trick
for the physicalist to say that by virtue of containing
microparticle Mc, the entire causing collection brings about
individual microphysical event o. Thus even the more
promising route fails to provide a defense of the claim that
the causing collection as a whole causes anything. (A fortiori
it cannot be claimed that the causing collection is a common
cause of every individual event which, like o, figures in the
microphysical realization of the spread of the altered hemo-
globin. So that realization can after all be said to be, in the
sense of chapter 4, a coincidence.)
Modest physicalism fails to be plausible for a typical case [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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