rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Causality and causal explanation in Aristotle
  name:
    name part: Stein, Nathanael
    name part: 1976-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2023
    copyright date: 2023
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: xi, 287 pages ; 25 cm.
  abstract: This book aims to answer two main questions about Aristotle's theory of causality and causal explanation, especially in relation to natural science. How does he answer main philosophical questions about causes to which he thinks his predecessors' answers are flawed? How do his answers bear on the main questions we confront in thinking about causality in general? The texts that deal with causality directly are analyzed against the background of his criticisms of his predecessors and his broader views about explanation, highlighting their theoretically important commitments. This allows us to reveal the conceptual architecture of his theory. The basic theory is then applied to two questions about causality, one metaphysical and one epistemological. The metaphysical question is how to account for the relation between causes and what they cause, in light of a fundamental tension between different desiderata for causal explanations. Aristotle's answer is pluralistic. He does not think that there is one metaphysical relationship between causes and what they cause even within a given mode of causality. The epistemological question asks how we grasp causes, and grasp them in a way that yields scientific understanding. Aristotle's answer is again a pluralist one. Metaphysically different phenomena demand different cognitive resources, and some are more accessible than others. Nevertheless, there is a discernible path from simpler to more sophisticated types of cognitive grasp on causality. Aristotle thus aims to provide a non-reductionist account of causality that still leaves room for a substantive conception of understanding in natural science.
  table of contents: Reading (and animating) physics II -- Background 1 : critiques of the predecessors -- Background 2 : science and dialectic -- Physics ii 3 in argumentative context -- The realist challenge -- Causes, kinds, and transformations -- Causal kinds and causal profiles -- Discreteness in agent-patient relations -- Coming to know causes -- Causality and epistemic asymmetries -- The non-secret connexion.
  note: Nathanael Stein.
  note: Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-271) and indexes.
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Aristotle
  subject:
    topic: Causation
  subject:
    topic: Explanation
  classification: B491.C3 S84 2023
  classification: 122
  identifier: 9780197660867
  identifier: 019766086X
  identifier: 9780197660881
  identifier: 9780197660898
  identifier: 9780197660874
  identifier: 2022062180
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 230122
    record change date: 20230719132413.1
    record identifier: in00004725097