METAPHYSICS – AN OVERVIEW : Causation: Realist Versus Reductionist Views

Realist Versus Reductionist Views of Causation:  (1) Strong reductionism:  Causal relations between events are logically supervenient upon the non-causal properties of events, and the non-causal relations between them;
(2) Weak reductionism:  Causal relations between events are logically supervenient upon causal laws plus the non-causal properties of events, and the non-causal relations between them.

Arguments for a Realist View of Causation:  (1) The problem of giving an account of the direction of causation: (a) Simple worlds that are time symmetric as regards the events they contain;  (b) 'Temporally inverted' worlds.  (2) Underdetermination objections: (a) The problem posed by indeterministic laws;  (b) The possibility of uncaused events;  (c) Uncaused events plus probabilistic laws;  (d) The possibility of exact replicas

Freedom of the Will:  Logical Fatalism

Logical Fatalism: it follows from logical principles alone that whatever happens could not have not happened.

Important Distinctions:  (1) The law of bivalence (For any proposition p, either p is true or p is false.) versus the law of excluded middle (For any proposition p, either p or ~p);  (2) Truth versus truth at a time.

Two Distinct Arguments in Aristotle's On Interpretation:  (1) An argument that involves the law of bivalence;  (2) An argument that involves, instead, only the law of excluded middle.

Implications of Aristotle's Solution with Respect to Logic:  (1) There is a third truth-value- indeterminateness;  (2) Propositions can change their truth-values; (3) Propositions can also change modally from not being inevitable to being inevitable.

Implications of Aristotle's Solution with Respect to Time:  (1) Time is real;  (2) A static view of time cannot be correct: one must adopt a dynamic view.

Criticisms of Cahn's Discussion:  (1) The analytic law of excluded middle entails what Cahn refers to as the synthetic law of excluded middle i.e., the law of bivalence;  (2) The second argument for logical fatalism set out above does not involve even the analytic law of excluded;  (3) Cahn is mistaken in thinking that acceptance of a static view of the world makes the argument for logical fatalism unanswerable;  (4) Cahn's discussion is faulty because he fails to distinguish between the classical notion of truth simpliciter and the temporally-indexed notion of truth at a time.

A Sound Version of Aristotle's Own Response to the Argument:  (1) One must distinguish between truth simpliciter and truth at a time;  (2) The principle of bivalence must be accepted in the case of truth, but rejected in the case of truth at a time; (3) If a proposition about the future is true at an earlier time, that does generate a fatalistic conclusion;  (4) But a proposition's being true simpliciter does not generate any fatalistic conclusion,

An Important Objection to Aristotle's Response to the Argument for Logical Fatalism:  (1) If one admits a third truth-value in the case of truth at a time, it turns out that disjunction is not a truth functional connective;  (2) It is, however, possible to answer this objection;  (3) The key ideas needed are, first, a distinction between a proposition's being true because there is a state of affairs in the world that makes it true, and a proposition's being true because of its logical form, and secondly, that the idea that what are normally referred to as the truth functional connectives can be defined in terms of tables whose entries record factual truth status, where a proposition is factually true if and only if there is some state of affairs external to it that makes it true