Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation

This is the first volume of essays devoted to Aristotelian formal causation and its relevance for contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. The essays trace the historical development of formal causation and demonstrate its relevance for contemporary issues, such as causation, explanation, laws of nature, functions, essence, modality, and metaphysical grounding. The introduction to the volume covers the history of theories of formal causation and points out why we need a theory of formal causation in contemporary philosophy. Part I is concerned with scholastic approaches to formal causation, while Part II presents four contemporary approaches to formal causation. The three chapters in Part III explore various notions of dependence and their relevance to formal causation. Part IV, finally, discusses formal causation in biology and cognitive sciences. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation will be of interest to advanced graduate students and researchers working on contemporary Aristotelian approaches to metaphysics and philosophy of science. This volume includes contributions by José Tomás Alvarado, Christopher J. Austin, Giacomo Giannini, Jani Hakkarainen, Ludger Jansen, Markku Keinänen, Gyula Klima, James G. Lennox, Stephen Mumford, David S. Oderberg, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Sandeep Prasada, Petter Sandstad, Wolfgang Sattler, Benjamin Schnieder, Matthew Tugby, and Jonas Werner.

Introducing Formal Causation Ludger Jansen and Petter Sandstad Part I: Scholastic Approaches to Formal Causation Form, Intention, Information: From Scholastic Logic to Artificial Intelligence Gyula Klima Formal Causation: Accidental and Substantial David S. Oderberg Part II: Contemporary Approaches to Formal Causation A Non-hylomorphic Account of Formal Causation Petter Sandstad and Ludger Jansen Formal Causes for Powers Theorists Giacomo Giannini and Stephen Mumford Away with Dispositional Essences in Trope Theory Jani Hakkarainen and Markku Keinänen Functional Powers Michele Paolini Paoletti Part III: Formal Causation and Dependence An Aristotelian Approach to Existential Dependence Benjamin Schnieder and Jonas Werner Finean Feature Dependence and the Aristotelian Alternative Wolfgang Sattler A Problem for Natural-Kind Essentialism and Formal Causes José Tomás Alvarado and Matthew Tugby Part IV: Formal Causation in Biology and Cognitive Sciences Form as Cause and the Formal Cause: Aristotle’s Answer James G. Lennox Form, Cause, and Explanation in Biology: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective Christopher J. Austin Formal Explanation and Mechanisms of Conceptual Representation Sandeep Prasada

Ludger Jansen teaches philosophy at the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Münster and at the University of Rostock, where he was head of the project “Formal Causation in Aristotle and Analytic Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science” funded by the German Research Foundation. He is the author of Gruppen und Institutionen (2017) and Tun und Können (2015); and co-editor with Barry Smith of Biomedizinische Ontologie (2008) and with Christoph Jedan of Philosophische Anthropologie in der Antike (2010). Petter Sandstad is a doctoral student at the University of Rostock working on Aristotelian formal causation, and was a researcher on the project “Formal Causation in Aristotle and Analytic Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science” funded by the German Research Foundation. He has published papers on Socrates and Aristotle, as well as on contemporary metaphysics.