Reconsidering Causal Powers Historical and Conceptual Perspectives

by Hill, Benjamin; Lagerlund, Henrik; Psillos, Stathis

• ISBN13: 9780198869528
• ISBN10: 0198869525
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-04-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Henrik Lagerlund, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Stockholm University,Benjamin Hill, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The University of Western Ontario,Stathis Psillos, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics, University of Athens

Henrik Lagerlund is Professor of the History of Philosophy at Stockholm University. He works primarily on medieval and renaissance philosophy, and has written several articles and books. He is the author of Skepticism in Philosophy: A Comprehensive, Historical Introduction (2020) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Sixteenth Century Philosophy (2017) and editor of The Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, second edition (2020).


Benjamin Hill is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Western Ontario. His main areas of research are 16th and 17th metaphysics and epistemology, especially regarding the philosophy of mind and language. He is the editor-in-chief of Locke Studies and most recently the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Sixteenth Century Philosophy (2017) and Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language (2017).


Stathis Psillos is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics at the University of Athens. He is an editor of Metascience and a founding member and former President of The European Philosophy of Science Association.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Benjamin Hill, Henrik Lagerlund, and Stathis Psillos
1. The Inherence and Directedness of Powers, Stathis Psillos
2. Powers, Possibilities and Time: Notes for a Program, Calvin G. Normore
3. Aristotelian Powers, Mechanism, and Final Causes in the Late Middle Ages, Henrik Lagerlund
4. Agency, Force, and Inertia in Descartes and Hobbes, Deborah Brown
5. The Ontological Status of Causal Powers: Substances, Modes, and Humeanism, Benjamin Hill
6. The Case Against Powers, Walter Ott
7. The Return of Causal Powers?, Andreas H?ttemann
8. Qualities, Powers, and Bare Powers in Locke, Lisa Downing
9. Hume on Causation and Causal Powers, Peter Millican
10. Resurgent Powers and the Failure of Conceptual Analysis, Jennifer McKitrick
11. Causal Powers and Structures, Brian Ellis
12. Induction and Natural Kinds Revisited, Howard Sankey