Making Sense of Simultaneity: A Reply to Wahlberg
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Caio Cézar Silva
Abstract
In this paper I object some of the criticisms Wahlberg (2017. “Meso-Level Objects, Powers, and Simultaneous Causation.” Metaphysica 18 (1): 107–25) wages against Mumford and Anjum's (2011. Getting Causes from Powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press) account of simultaneous causation. A brief outlook on Wahlberg’s argument in favour of sequential causation is introduced. A first objection is presented and it is shown that sequential causation cannot deal with one of Mumford and Anjum’s argument: the possibility of prevention. When sequential and simultaneous causation are put side by side and how the causal process in each of them interact with a subtractive preventer is analysed, sequential causation becomes visibly flawed while simultaneous causation accommodates the prevention. Then, a second objection argues that the solution Wahlberg puts forward is defective and the time intervals marking the beginning of the cause or effect merely change where the problem appears. Finally, I retort a series of concerns Wahlberg stresses about the structure of simultaneous causation: temporal directedness, causal configuration and non-negligible change and time.
Funding source: Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Award Identifier / Grant number: Finance Code: 0001
Acknowledgments
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Papers
- Change and Location: A New and Old Case against Functionality
- The Dualist Metaphysics of the Incarnation and the Too Many Thinkers Problem
- The Transcendent and Causal Dimensions of Aquinas’s Action Theory: Insights from Metaphysics
- Aspectual Compresence
- Why Trope Metaphysics is Better than the Theory of Universals?
- Free Will: Evidence for the Existence of Soul
- The Same F 1 but a Different F 2 – with Absolute Identity
- The Subtraction Argument in an Infinite World
- Making Sense of Simultaneity: A Reply to Wahlberg
- Events and Facts in the Image of Modes
- Why There is No Us in Consciousness: You Are Simple, a Bodily Soul
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Original Papers
- Change and Location: A New and Old Case against Functionality
- The Dualist Metaphysics of the Incarnation and the Too Many Thinkers Problem
- The Transcendent and Causal Dimensions of Aquinas’s Action Theory: Insights from Metaphysics
- Aspectual Compresence
- Why Trope Metaphysics is Better than the Theory of Universals?
- Free Will: Evidence for the Existence of Soul
- The Same F 1 but a Different F 2 – with Absolute Identity
- The Subtraction Argument in an Infinite World
- Making Sense of Simultaneity: A Reply to Wahlberg
- Events and Facts in the Image of Modes
- Why There is No Us in Consciousness: You Are Simple, a Bodily Soul
