What Can Causal Powers Do for Interventionism? The Problem of Logically Complex Causes

Hoffmann-Kolss, Vera (2023). What Can Causal Powers Do for Interventionism? The Problem of Logically Complex Causes. In: Austin, Christopher J.; Marmodoro, Anna; Roselli, Andrea (eds.) Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers (pp. 130-141). Routledge

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Analyzing causation in terms of Woodward's interventionist theory and describing the structure of the world in terms of causal powers are usually regarded as different projects in contemporary philosophy. Interventionists aim to give an account of how causal relations can be empirically discovered and described, without committing themselves to views about what causation really is. Causal powers theorists engage in precisely the latter project, aiming to describe the metaphysical structure of the world. This chapter argues that interventionism can benefit from incorporating considerations about causal powers. The chapter describes a previously undiscussed problem for Woodward’s definition of an intervention variable that arises when interventionist causal models include disjunctive variables. This problem is solved not by excluding disjunctive (or logically compound) variables per se but by excluding variables whose values represent disjunctions of overly disparate causal powers. This suggests that interventionism and causal powers theories may be less distant from each other than is often assumed.

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