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Are causal facts really explanatorily emergent?

Ladyman and ross on higher-level causal facts and renormalization group explanation

Alexander Reutlinger

pp. 2291-2305

Abstract

In their Every Thing Must Go, Ladyman and Ross defend a novel version of Neo-Russellian metaphysics of causation, which falls into three claims: (1) there are no fundamental physical causal facts, (2) there are higher-level causal facts of the special sciences, and (3) higher-level causal facts are explanatorily emergent. While accepting claims (1) and (2), I attack claim (3). Ladyman and Ross argue that higher-level causal facts are explanatorily emergent, because (a) certain aspects of these higher-level facts (their universality) can be captured by renormalization group (RG) explanations, and (b) RG explanations are not reductive explanations. However, I argue that RG explanation should be understood as reductive explanations. This result undermines Ladyman and Ross’s RG-based argument for the explanatory emergence of higher-level causal facts.

Publication details

Published in:

Hüttemann Andreas (2017) Causation and structuralism. Synthese 194 (7).

Pages: 2291-2305

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0530-2

Full citation:

Reutlinger Alexander (2017) „Are causal facts really explanatorily emergent?: Ladyman and ross on higher-level causal facts and renormalization group explanation“. Synthese 194 (7), 2291–2305.