Abstract
By a macro-level feature, I understand any feature that supervenes on, and is thus realized in, lower-level features. Recent discussions by Kim have suggested that such features cannot be causally relevant insofar as they are not classically reducible to lower-level features. This seems to render macro-level features causally irrelevant. I defend the causal relevance of some such features. Such features have been thought causally relevant in many examples that have underpinned philosophical work on causality. Additionally, in certain typical biological cases, we conceive of causally relevant features at various compatible levels of analysis. When elaborated, these points make a strong prima facie case for macro-level causal relevance. However, we might abandon both the philosophical guideposts and the corresponding explanatory practice in the special sciences were we convinced that no reflective philosophical account could provide for the causal relevance there supposed. I show that such drastic measures are not necessary, for we can make sense of macro-level causal relevance by drawing on Paul Humphreys' recent work in ways suggested by the concrete examples considered here.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Collins, B. and J. Quinn: 1982, ‘Displacement of Andropogon on the New Jersey Piedmont by the Successional Shrub Myrica Pensylvanica’,American Journal of Botany 5, 680–9.
Cummins, R.: 1975, ‘Functional Analysis’,Journal of Philosophy 72, 741–60.
Cummins, R.: 1983,The Nature of Psychological Explanation, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA.
Eells, E.: 1991,Probabilistic Causality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Henderson, D.: forthcoming,Interpretation and Explanation in the Human Sciences, State University of New York Press, Albany.
Humphreys, P.: 1989a, ‘Scientific Explanation: The Causes, Some of the Causes, and Nothing But the Causes’, in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds.),Scientific Explanation. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 283–306.
Humphreys, P.: 1981, ‘Aleatory Explanation’,Philosophy of Science 48, 225–32.
Humphreys, P.: 1989b,The Chances of Explanation: Causal Explanation in the Social, Medical and Physical Sciences, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Kim, J.: 1984, ‘Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation’,Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9, 257–70.
Kim, J.: 1988, ‘Explanatory Realism, Causal Realism, and Explanatory Exclusion’,Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12, 225–38.
Kim, J.: 1989a, ‘Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion’,Philosophical Perspectives 3, 77–108.
Kim, J.: 1989b, ‘The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism’,American Philosophical Association Proceedings 63, 31–47.
Kitcher, P.: 1984, ‘1953 and All That. A Tale of Two Sciences’,Philosophical Review 43, 335–74.
Kitcher, P.: 1989, ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’, in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds.),Scientific Explanation, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 410–505.
Lewis, D.: 1973, ‘Causation’,Journal of Philosophy 70, 556–72.
Salmon, W.: 1984,Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Salmon, W.: 1989, ‘Four Decades of Scientific Explanation’, in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon, (eds.),Scientific Explanation, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,13, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 3–219.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Some of the work on this paper was undertaken at the 1991 NEH Summer Seminar on Causality, directed by Paul Humphreys. I wish to thank my fellow participants, and Paul Humphreys, John Tienson, and Terry Horgan for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Henderson, D.K. Accounting for macro-level causation. Synthese 101, 129–156 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01064014
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01064014