Supervenience and the Problem of Downward Causation

Resumo

It seems that higher-level, nonbasic properties can only manifest their
causal powers by exerting causal influence on lower-level, physically basic
phenomena in the first place. A very influential line of reasoning conceives of this
form of downward causation as either reducible to causation by physical properties
or as ultimately untenable, because incompatible with the causal closure of physical
reality. The paper argues that this is not so. It examines, first, why it is that a
recent attempt by Noordhof to substantiate the notion of supervenient causation in a
nonreductive framework fails. The upshot of this examination is the claim that any
attempted specification of the most basic causal factors which supposedly underlie a
causal transaction cannot account for the counterfactually necessary connections with
the effect in question. By contrast, the specification of these factors at a higher level
would allow establishing such connections. The paper closes with a discussion of how
this view of autonomous causation at the higher-level can coexist with the notion of a
complete specification of the causes of any physical effect exclusively in physical
terms.