Are causal facts really explanatorily emergent?

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

Alexander Reutlinger

pp. 2291-2305

in: Andreas Hüttemann (ed), Causation and structuralism, Synthese 194 (7), 2017.

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.

Cited authors

Russell Bertrand