Higher-­Level, Downward and Specific Causation

Forthcoming in M. Paolini Paoletti, F. Orilia (eds.), Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation, Routledge, 2017The Interventionist account of causation (Woodward 2003) seems to provide a rigorous framework for evaluating the possibility of downward causation. However, it has turned out 1) that only a modified version (Woodward 2014) of interventionism can be applied to situations of apparent downward causation and that 2) this model, though compatible with downward causation, makes it in principle impossible to find empirical support for downward causation (Baumgartner 2013). In this paper I show in which sense downward causation can be justified by using more fine-­‐grained notions of causation, such as stable, proportional and specific causation (Woodward 2010). In particular, the intervention on a higher-­‐level variable H(t) with respect to a lower-­‐level variable P(t*) (where t* is later than t) may be more proportional compared to the parallel intervention on lower-­‐level variable R(t) w.r.t. to P(t*), if R(t) is too determinate with respect to P(t*), i.e. if an intervention on R(t) is not necessary for manipulating P(t*)