On the Reality and Causal Efficacy of Familiar Objects
Abstract. What caused the event we report by saying “the window shattered”? Was it the baseball, which
crashed into the window? Causal exclusionists say: many, many microparticles collectively caused that
event—microparticles located where common sense supposes the baseball was. Unitary large objects
such as baseballs cause nothing; indeed, by Alexander’s dictum, there are no such objects. This paper
argues that the false claim about causal efficacy is instead the one that attributes it to the many
microparticles. Causation obtains just where there is an “invariance”, a true generalization to the effect
that had things been different with the putative cause, things would have been correspondingly different
with the putative effect. But “correspondingly” here requires a rough metric. There must be a fact as to
which alternative group events, involving many microparticles, would have departed less from the
putative cause of the shattering, and which would have departed more. Surprisingly, there is no such fact.
Causal exclusionists argue that whenever it appears that a unitary familiar object has brought
about some outcome, it can with at least equal justice be said that many many microparticles have,
between them, brought about that same outcome (Merricks 2001; cf. Kim 1998, pp. 77-87, and Bontly
2002). The causally responsible microparticles, exclusionists say, are just those that collectively populate
a certain volume of space—that volume, namely, which common sense supposes to be occupied by the
familiar object. But the causal efficacy of these microparticles in no way depends on their collectively
coinciding with a familiar object, say these philosophers. They would still be the many microparticles
that they are, and would still cause whatever outcome they do cause, even if there did not even exist the
large-scale objects that seem so familiar to us. Hence proponents of a common-sense ontology—any
ontology which takes there to be in the world such things as desks and dogs, trees and cells and stars, and,
oh yes, people1—are apparently trapped in the idea that there is, in the world, widespread causal
overdetermination. Their favored objects cause countless outcomes, say common-sense ontologists, and
yet every single one of these outcomes would have gotten caused anyway, even if those favored objects
did not exist—or so the exclusionists say.
From this point the exclusionists’ story proceeds with pitiless rapidity.
If common sense
ontologists retract the contention that familiar objects cause any outcomes, they are skewered by
Alexander’s Dictum, which holds that for concrete objects, to be is to have causal powers (Kim 1993, p.
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348). If they credit familiar objects with causal efficacy, they affirm ubiquitous causal overdetermination,
and that is too bizarre a position to be believed (Heil and Mele 1993, and Merricks 2003). We simply
must treat any appearance of widespread overdetermination as mere appearance, and must seek to dispel
it. Suppose that, as common sense would put it, a young baseball player swings his bat with exceptional
force and accuracy, the baseball flies off the bat, traces a long and graceful arc, and shatters a window.
We must ask which has the better claim to have caused the outcome we report by saying “the window
shattered”—the unitary baseball by virtue of its trajectory, or the many microparticles by virtue of their
several microphysical doings. And if causation has anything to do with laws and lawfulness, it is
predictable which of these parties will win out (cf. Davidson 1970). Microphysical interactions involving
microparticles are governed in every respect by highly precise laws that come close to being
exceptionless. In contrast, if there are any generalizations at all that codify how baseballs behave, they
are rough and shot through with ceteris paribus clauses. Why believe that the baseball does any causing
at all—especially since anything that it supposedly does cause would have gotten caused anyway, even if
the baseball didn’t exist? And now it’s “game over” for familiar objects, since to be is to have causal
powers.
A central contention of my recent book (Elder 2011) is that when exclusionists assign to many,
many microparticles causal responsibility for outcomes such as the one we report by saying “the window
shattered” or “the man walked to the grocery store”, they are projecting downwards, onto the level of the
microparticles, shadows of familiar objects. This is inconsistent, since only a real object can cast a
shadow. The shadow-projection I have in mind does not occur in the specification of the outcome. I am
willing, arguendo, to allow my opponents to say that when we affirm the words “the window shattered”,
we are really reporting a hugely complex “group event” involving microparticles. No, the shadowprojection I most object to occurs on the side of the alleged cause, not the alleged effect. A mild but
remediable case of shadow-projection occurs when exclusionists tacitly help themselves to the idea that
what unites the many many microparticles that cause some familiar outcome, what ties them together as a
group, is their joint occupancy of the volume taken up by some familiar object. The serious, nearly
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indetectable, but absolutely fatal instance of shadow-projection occurs when exclusionists attribute causal
efficacy to any sprawling plurality of microparticles, however its boundaries may be drawn.
I
My argument takes for granted a particular position on causation, namely the one advocated by
Woodward and by Hitchcock (Woodward and Hitchcock 2003a, 2003b; Woodward 2003; Hitchcock
2001). This position takes its cue from which events actually get treated as causes in actual sciences.
Sciences as diverse as economics, medicine, evolutionary biology, mechanics, and agronomy take
themselves to have found a causal connection between two types of events just when they have identified
an invariance between events of the two types. An invariance is a relation such that to variations on a
putative cause there correspond, or there would correspond, variations on the putative effect. There is a
variable that subsumes the putative cause—typically2 a multi-valued variable—and alterations on the
value of that variable produce answering alterations in the variable that subsumes the putative effect.
(“Produce” is of course a causal locution, but Woodward and Hitchcock do not purport to offer a
reduction of causation to non-causal phenomena.) To put it metaphorically, by intervening on the value
of the cause variable one can manipulate the value taken by the effect variable. The precise function that
takes values of the cause variable over into values of the effect variable can vary. It can be continuous, so
that every small alteration in the cause variable produces an equally small alteration in the effect variable.
It can be discontinuous, so that before any alteration occurs in the effect variable one must run through a
number of small variations in the cause variable (Woodward 2003, p. 66). It might even be non-linear.
But this much seems clear: if there is to be any function at all, by which alterations in the cause variable
entrain answering alterations in the effect variable, there must be a fact of the matter as to which
variations in the cause variable are smaller and which are greater. That much is required by the very
concept of “answering alterations”: this phrase says that had things been different to one degree or
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another with the actual value of the cause variable, the value taken by the effect value would have
differed accordingly.
II
What caused the window to shatter? Common sense says: the baseball did, by virtue of its mass
and solidity, and the speed and angle at which it struck the window. This claim of causation appears to
conform to the Woodward/Hitchcock model. We can readily envision the baseball’s speed or angle
assuming different values from the actual values, and can readily believe that there would have been
answering variations in the particular shattering that ensued.
The exclusionist’s answer is that many, many microparticles, by virtue of their several
microphysical states and doings, collectively caused the shattering. (To speak more precisely, the many
microparticles caused an equally complex “group event” involving microparticles in the glass, and it is
precisely this complex group event that we report by saying “the window shattered”.) But how does this
answer square with the Woodward/Hitchcock model? Can we name or articulate a variable that subsumes
the putative cause, in the exclusionist’s account? Indeed how can we speak of “the putative cause”, when
precisely what the exclusionist says is that many, many microphysical doings collectively cause the
outcome in question?
These questions are less formidable than at first they seem to be. I have offered the locution
“group event”, and this is one way to see how the exclusionist might respond to the question “what if
things had been different, to one degree or another, with the putative cause?” True, some philosophers
might think there is something fictitious, something artificially stitched-together, in the concept of a
“group event”. But one can still identify something unitary about the exclusionist’s putative cause. The
putative cause is an event that consists in the instantiation of a particular “structural property”. A
“structural property” is a property that is picked out by a conjunctive predicate that joins together
descriptions of individual parts (Armstrong 1997, pp. 32-38)—for example, “contains a microparticle of
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type A at location l1 moving at such-and-such speed, and contains a microparticle of type B at l2 bearing
such-and-such energy state, and contains a triad of quarks at l3 bearing thus-and-so description, and
contains….”. Just as we can think of variants on a particular structural property, so can we think of
variants on the causing event to which the exclusionist assigns responsibility for the shattering. That we
do not have a name for a variable that subsumes these variants is unimportant, so long as we operate with
the concept of variants at all.
But this much is crucial.
If the exclusionist’s position on causation is to conform to the
Woodward/Hitchcock model, there must be a fact of the matter as to which variants on the actual “group”
causing event—call this event “c”—would be just slightly different from it, c, and which would be fairly
different from c, and which would be markedly different from c, etc.3 The core of my argument against
the exclusionist is that there can be no such fact of the matter.
III
Initially, I realize, this core contention seems to be just wrong. It seems easy to envision complex
group events that would depart from c to different, and hence comparable, degrees. The most natural
recipe for envisioning graded departures is probably this: just consider variant events in which all the
same microparticles as figure in c are involved, but are moving just a bit faster than they are in c, or are in
just slightly higher energy states. Then increase the rate of motion gradually, or increase gradually the
energy states.
Are we really sure, however, that all and only those microparticles that figure in c itself must
likewise be the subjects of all the relevant alternative group events? Why not start the description of
departures from c with a group event featuring a huge plurality of microparticles that very largely
overlaps with the microparticles involved in c, but includes some microparticles not numerically identical
to any in c, and excludes some microparticles that are involved in c? Or why not an alternative group
event that involves just slightly more microparticles than c itself does, or just slightly fewer? This
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question cannot be dismissed by simply claiming that the whole question of variant group events is a
question about how matters might have stood differently with “those microparticles” or with “the
microparticles”. The demonstrative “those” will fail to pick out a particular plurality unless we help
ourselves, tacitly or explicitly, to an associated description such as “those over there, within the
boundaries of that baseball”. Similarly, “the microparticles” serves to pick out a usefully delimited
plurality only if treated as elliptical for “the microparticles within that baseball”. Either way, we have the
problem that the baseball could have contained fewer microparticles than it actually did, or more. So we
still have the question whether slightly “smaller” or “larger” group events are relevant to specifying how
the actual group event, involving microparticles, might have been different from what it was.
To face this question squarely, we must ask:
is there some distinctive feature which the
microparticles actually involved in c all have in common, that would furnish reason to suppose that just
those same microparticles (and only those microparticles) must populate any group events that are
properly comparable with c? Now in fact there is a distinctive feature common to the microparticles
involved in c, and I think that it often plays an unacknowledged role in our thinking about causal
exclusion. This feature is joint occupancy of the volume of space taken up by a baseball. But causal
exclusionists cannot explicitly appeal to this feature, in forming an ordering of group events that are
properly comparable with c. They are barred from even mentioning this feature, both by their ontology
and by their position on causation. Their ontology will ultimately say that there are no baseballs, from
which it will follow that there are no such things as volumes of space taken up by baseballs, nor any such
phenomenon as microparticles’ joint occupancy of such a volume. The position on causation by which
exclusionists will claim to arrive at this ontology is that the many microparticles involved in c bring about
the event we report (misleadingly) as the shattering of the window in a way that simply bypasses any
putative macro-level causation; the microparticles cause the shattering independently of composing into a
baseball, if indeed they do compose into a baseball.
But there might seem to be a different feature that unites all and only the microparticles involved
in c, a feature that is salient from the standpoint of microphysics itself, and that involves no invocation of
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a shadow cast downward by a possibly nonexistent baseball. This different feature is causal integration.
Perhaps causal interactions visible at the level of microphysics connect every microparticle involved in
c—every microparticle that, as we so confusedly put it, occupies the volume of a baseball—with every
other microparticle in c, or in confused terms, every other microparticle that occupies the volume of that
same baseball. That there is such volume-spanning causal integration seems strikingly obvious to many
participants in the debate over causal exclusion. I think that it is false, and a striking example of wishful
thinking. Experience has shown me that it is very hard to change anyone’s mind on this question—and
yes, I’m just as stubborn as my opponents are—but I can sketch the argument that I would give.
My first claim would be that microparticles are, in general, “local operators”. They exert causal
influence over other microparticles nanometers away, and hence over only a limited number of other
microparticles. An individual microparticle does not in general causally influence other microparticles
entire inches away, nor does it causally influence billions upon billions of other microparticles. Causal
interactions do not, in general, connect any microparticle in a baseball to all the other microparticles in
that baseball.
My opponents will invoke at this point a claim that causation is transitive. So overlapping
spheres of “local operation” will eventually tie each individual microparticle in a baseball to every other
microparticle in that baseball. Now I think, and have argued, that Woodward’s work on causation gives
us reason to dispute the idea that causation is always or even usually transitive (Elder 2011, Chapter 6, §4;
cf. Hitchcock 2001). But for present purposes I can leave the thesis of transitivity unchallenged. For if
true it ties each microparticle involved in c—each microparticle located within a baseball—to far more
other microparticles than just the rest involved in c, the rest that are located in that baseball. Here’s a
jocular analogy that may, I hope, jostle preconceptions. It is not as if, at the level of the microparticles,
there are “border police”—for example, quarks at the boundaries of a baseball who snarl at quarks lying
outside those boundaries, saying “say, you don’t look like a baseball quark at all; I’ll have to see some
papers, please”. Chains of transitive causation, if chains there are, shoot right through the borders of
familiar objects. And almost never do they ricochet around enough, within those borders, to ensnare
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every single other microparticle within the borders. At the level of microphysics, the microparticle
membership of a familiar object is causally invisible.
So I dispute the idea that the microparticles involved in c are causally united with one another,
and collectively set off from microparticles not involved in c—microparticles that, as we would
confusedly put it, lie outside the borders of the destructive baseball. The idea is wishful thinking. But I
believe I understand what motivates the wish. When we envision ways that things could have gone
differently, at the level of the microparticles—when we envision complex group events that depart, to one
degree or another, from c—we want to be considering, in a sophisticated scientific manner, ways that
things could have gone differently with some baseball. What if the baseball had traveled faster, or at a
different angle—how would that have altered the shattering? So sophisticated will our consideration of
the variant events be, that we won’t even say that they are variants that involve a baseball. But we will
retain the thought that, though the variant events are hideously complex group events involving
independent microparticles, they feature groups that could be said to compose into baseballs.
But of course once this motive is identified, exclusionists must disavow it, along with anything it
motivates. Their thesis is that many microparticles bring about some outcome, quite independently of
composing into any putative macro-agent.
We’re now ready for the first important step in my argument. We have asked what unites the
microparticles involved in group event c, because we’ve thought the answer would tell us what sorts of
other group events are properly comparable to c itself. We have seen that we must not answer by
projecting downwards the shadow of any familiar object, whether with an eye to its borders or to its
alleged ways of acting. But once we forswear the projection of shadows, I submit, very little is left. The
microparticles that figure in c are identifiable only by brute enumeration, not by some feature that they
have in common. Or, as I have put it elsewhere, they are united only by iterations of “and”. Group event
c is the instantiation of some fathomlessly complex structural property, one that can be specified only by a
conjunctive predicate of unutterable length: “contains a microparticle of type A moving at such-and-such
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a rate, AND a microparticle of type B in thus-and-so energy state, located thus far from the first
microparticle, AND a microparticle of type C…”.
Let me say it again. If we view group event c strictly at the level of the microparticles, and view
it with the ontological asceticism of the causal exclusionist, we must judge that the microparticles
involved in c are tied together by only a thin and watery unity—indeed a maximally thin and watery
unity. So we must judge that the group events that are properly comparable with c need only be
characterized by a similarly thin and watery unity. The components involved in the variant events, that is,
may be tied together only by iterations of “and”, only by brute enumeration. That is, they may be tied
together only in the way that members of any arbitrary mereological sum are tied together.
So it is relevant, and fair, to consider all the weird variants on c that I soon will mention. Some of
these are bigger group events than c, some far smaller. Some involve microparticles that are located
light-years away from the other microparticles in that same group event; some involve microparticles that
are spatially integrated with one another. Some are specified by conjunctive predicates the conjuncts of
which can only be satisfied at quite different times from other conjuncts—this yields group events that are
temporally sprawling and decentralized—and others require that the components in the group satisfy
certain descriptions all at the same time. Some of the group events are causally integrated, some just the
opposite.
And it gets even worse! What I am examining, in this very long discussion, is an argument made
by exclusionists against the reality of familiar objects. Until that argument successfully reaches its
conclusion, we must grant a presumption of innocence to the ontological credentials of familiar objects.
We must provisionally assume, that is, that there are in the world, not just microparticles, but baseball
players and automobiles and frogs. And just as there exists (or so we are told) a mereological sum
comprising my pet frog, a particular individual quark in this sheet of paper, a hydrogen atom on Pluto,
and the restaurant “Djakarta”, so there can be a group event involving just these components. Or a group
event involving four fewer microparticles than c does, but involving, in place of those four microparticles,
four people in this room.
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Let me now put things briskly. The group events that are properly comparable to c itself—that
are relevant alternatives to c—are a highly diverse lot.
They depart from c on many different
dimensions—dimensions not just numerous but ill-assorted, incongruously diverse. The consequence, as I
will explain in the next section, is that though these many dimensions define a vector space, vectors that
obtain within this space do not reliably measure difference. Vectors of different length, that is, do not
indicate greater and lesser degrees of difference between c itself and the numerous group events that are
relevant variants on c. Indeed there simply is no phenomenon of greater and lesser difference from c.
Consequently, there is no invariance that links c to the complex group event that we report as the
window’s shattering; consequently, no causation.
The key to this argument is the diversity, indeed wild heterogeneity, in the dimensions of
difference on which group events that are properly comparable with c depart from c, that is, contrast with
c. There are natural motivations for ignoring many of these dimensions, and thus for finding the
argument unpersuasive. In particular, if you want to make it salient which of these alternative group
events look to common sense like macro-events that feature unitary, organized familiar objects, and
which are too dispersed and diffuse to look like anything to common sense, you’ll favor dimensions such
as departure from c with respect to spatial integration, departure from c with respect to causal integration,
departure with respect to size and complexity, etc. But remember: what we’re asking is whether c’s claim
to causal efficacy can be vindicated—c by itself, c as a complex group event, not c as something that
looks to common sense like a unitary event involving a unitary baseball. If c’s efficacy is to be
vindicated, that will be because group events that are variants on c, diverging from c to lesser or greater
extent, would have entrained answering variations on the group event that we confusedly report as the
shattering of a window. But the exclusionist has to keep all mention of macro-objects out of the story
here. For if he says that there are graded divergences from c insofar as those diverging group events
compose into diverging episodes involving macro-objects, he’ll be saying that c itself has causal efficacy
insofar as c composes into a unitary episode involving a unitary baseball (cf. “claim (5)” in Merricks
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2001, pp. 100-101). Then he is projecting shadows downward—projecting onto microparticles shadows
cast by objects that, according to his ultimate position, do not exist. More on this later.
IV
But, please, decide the matter for yourself. I’m now going to present you with ten group events
that are, I claim, legitimate variants on c itself. You’ll be able to judge on which dimensions these
variants diverge from c. Feel free to reject these dimensions and propose others. (I’ll explain the reasons
for my jaunty confidence in the next section.) Just remember: for the exclusionist, all apparent macrocausation is causation by group events, and the group events cause outcomes in a way that simply
bypasses any truths about macro-entities.
Here is what I need to establish. There is no fixed and stable phenomenon of “more and less
different from” that relates the group events that are variants on c to c itself. On some one dimension,
variant cy might diverge more than variant cx does from c itself—it might lie at a greater distance from c.
Also on some second dimension, cy might again lie at a greater distance from c itself than cx does. But in
case after case, it will seem that this second departure makes cy less different from c itself than cx is. The
vector that cuts across the vector space has gotten longer, thanks to the second departure, but the real
difference has shrunk. Until, that is, we get to the relative positions of cx and cy on yet another dimension.
No dimension trumps all the rest. There is no final, stable product of cy’s and cx’s relative differences
from c itself along all the applicable dimensions of difference.
Event c: our starting point; it is the instantiation, by the many many microparticles
that occupy the volume of the baseball, of a complex structural property, that depicts
the nature and state of each of those microparticles.
Event c1: it is the instantiation of a structural property, the description of which
differs from the description of c’s structural property with respect to 1000 conjuncts
belonging in the latter description.
Event c2:
conjuncts.
instantiates a structural property which differs with respect to 5000
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Event c3: with respect to every conjunct where its description differs from c’s
description, a microparticle bears a markedly different charge or energy-state from
that of the microparticle described in the corresponding conjunct of c’s description.
Event c4: with respect to every conjunct where its description differs from c’s
description, a microparticle bears only a slightly different charge from that of the
microparticle described in the corresponding conjunct of c’s description.
Event c5: its description requires only 1100 conjuncts—that is, c5 is a less complex
microparticle event than c—but differs at 1000 of those conjuncts from c’s
description.
Event c6: its description is the same, conjunct-for-conjunct, as c’s, and requires no
more conjuncts than c’s description does, but its conjuncts are satisfied at regions far
more spread out from one another, spatially, than are c’s conjuncts.
Event c7: the first 100 conjuncts in its description depict just the same sorts of
microparticles as do the first 100 conjuncts in c’s description, and depict them as
being in just the same states of energy and motion; but the next seven conjuncts depict
c7 as involving, in states of good health, the first seven players on the alphabetized
roster of the Manchester United football team.
Event c8: its description incorporates every conjunct in c’s description, but requires
18000 more conjuncts as well—c7 is a far more complex microparticle event than c.
Three of its conjuncts depict it as involving injured football players who play for Real
Madrid.
Event c9: thirty-six conjuncts within its description depict the microparticles which
they describe as lying within a volume which common sense would suppose to be
occupied by a dog.
Event c10: three hundred conjuncts depict the microparticles which they describe as
lying within a volume which common sense would suppose to be occupied by a pond.
Event c1 seems, at first blush, to differ from c itself less than c2 does. (One thousand differences
are fewer than five thousand.) But if c1 also differs from c in the way that c5 differs from c, c1 may be
more different from c than c2 is. (For then almost all of c1 will be different from c.) This will especially
be true if c1 further differs from c in the way that c3 does. (Almost all of c1 will differ a lot from c.) But
if c2 likewise differs from c in the way that c3 does, c1 may after all be less different from c than c2 is.
(Five thousand big differences are worse than one thousand big differences.) Of course, that will all
depend on whether c1 further differs from c in the way that c6 does. (If c1 is spread out across two
galaxies, it is going to be way different from c.) Event c7 appears to be far smaller than c, but just like c
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so far as it extends—except for the unnerving inclusion of seven healthy football players. What then
about c8? First off, is it more different from c than c2 is, if c2 itself differs from c in the way that c3
does? (If c8 is massively complex, is it more different from c than a variant that is lots different from c at
five thousand places?) And secondly, how does the inclusion of three injured Real Madrid players affect
c8’s relative placement? The point that these questions illustrate is that there is systematic interference
among the various dimensions along which variants on c can differ from c itself. The dimensions do not
relate additively to one another. The consequence is that relative distances from c, along any dimension
that affords an ordering of “more and less different” for complex microparticle events that are variants on
c, will not in general amount, in and of themselves, to degrees of difference for those complex
microparticle events themselves from c itself.
The crucial claim here, again, is that the dimensions do not relate additively to one another. Let
me provide one further illustration. Suppose that the microparticles in c6 are just a bit more spatially
removed from one another than are those in c itself, and that the microparticles in event c6A, which I now
introduce, are just like those in c6 except even more spatially removed from one another. Greater
distance from c to c6A, then, than to c6. Now look at the “degree of charge” dimension, the one on which
c3 departs from c. Let the microparticles in c6 bear charges and energy-states just like the corresponding
microparticles in c—so that c6 is basically not removed from c at all, on this other dimension. But let the
microparticles in c6A bear markedly stronger charges. Now the vector from c to c6A has gotten even
longer. But if the stronger charges in c6A make the microparticles attract one another and act in concert,
in just the way we find in the microparticles of closely-packed event c, and do not find in the
microparticles of dispersed event c6, then perhaps the right thing to say is that c6A is more like c than c6
is. Distance on the second dimension has interfered with distance on the first, insofar as the distances
measure difference.
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V
My discussion has suggested that the best we can do, in order to determine degrees to which
variants on c differ from c itself, is to compare vectors leading from c to those variants across a space
characterized by some very strange dimensions. For starters, variant group events depart from c along a
dimension that measures total number of conjuncts needed to record the component parts of those
variants—the total number of local goings-on, in other words, that are incorporated in the variant group
events. There is, additionally, a dimension that measures the degree to which component local goings-on
within the variants differ qualitatively from the most closely similar component local goings-on in c.
Would it have made better sense to just arrange the variants on a single dimension that measures
percentage of component local goings-on that differ qualitatively from ones in c? My discussion further
suggests that we need to keep track of how many component small events, incorporated in the variant
group events, involve how matters stand with objects much bigger than microparticles—with football
players, for example—and that we also need to note where these macro-objects are located in the
landscape recognized by common sense. Many philosophers will suppose that I am simply having too
much silly fun in discussing dimensions on which variant group events may depart from c. “If only we
began with a responsible inventory of dimensions on which variants on c might relevantly depart from c
itself,” these philosophers will say to themselves, “we might have good prospects of ending up with
vectors that truly measure relative differences”.
I think this reaction is confused, but I understand it well, and have a good idea of how to
implement it. We should locate variants on c along a dimension that measures departure from c with
respect to causal integration; along another dimension, I suppose, which measures departure from c with
respect to spatial integration; and yes, there should indeed be a dimension that measures departure from c
with respect to “size” and complexity; perhaps another dimension that measures departure from c with
respect to uniformity in the sorts of entities involved in the component local goings-on; and, finally, a
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dimension that measures qualitative departure from c—dissimilarity in the properties attributed to entities
that can be regarded as “counterparts” to the microparticles picked out by the conjuncts that describe c.
When we place complex group events that are variants on c at points along these dimensions, we
place them at distances from c that measure quite visibly the degree to which those variants appear to be
episodes in the career of some unitary macroscopic object or other. For that is what these supposedly
“serious” and “responsible” dimensions of difference do: they make salient the degree to which the
microparticles involved in the component local goings on compose into some unitary familiar object—
just as the microparticles involved in c compose into a baseball. Or, to speak more cautiously, these
“responsible” dimensions of difference make salient the degree to which the microparticles involved
appear to compose into a unitary familiar object. Very well—but who cares about that? Why is that
relevant? What the position that I take from Woodward and Hitchcock says is this. Causation only where
there is an invariance; invariance only where there is contrariety, that is, differing but commensurable
degrees of difference from a putative cause. If we can vindicate the idea of differing but commensurable
degrees of difference from a group event involving microparticles only by seeing that event as amounting
to an episode in the career of a macro-object, we are saying that the many microparticles in the group
event have a legitimate claim to causal efficacy only insofar as together they compose into a macroobject—a macro-object that itself is doing something. That’s not an argument for causal exclusion. It’s
an argument for causal parasitism.
15
Footnotes
1
Merricks argues that people and dogs are not like the other familiar objects on this list:
conscious living agents, he contends, can be credited with causing outcomes that are not also caused by
the component microparticles (though see “claim (5)” at pp. 100-101 of Merricks 2001). But this
exceptionalism concerning living agents is widely regarded as especially questionable; see for example
Carroll and Carter 2005.
2
Both Woodward and Hitchcock take there to be cases of genuine causation where only a single-
valued variable subsuming the putative cause is linked to a single-valued variable subsuming the putative
effect. In the case of the putative causation excercised by the complex event involving microparticles that
is identified (below) at the end of section II, the single-valued variable would have as its values {microlevel structural property c is instantiated, micro-level structural property c is not instantiated}. I have
argued however that causation as depicted by a connection between single-valued variables cannot really
be kept separate from an overarching case of causation involving multi-valued variables. (See my 2011,
Chapter 6, §4, and 2004, Chapter 2, §§3-4.) But the argument here is complex, and in the present paper I
must, to my regret, simply duck the issue.
3
See note 2.
16
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