João Pinheiro da Silva
Central European University
Howard Robinson has appealed to the “causal closure of the physical” principle (CCP, from now on) in order to present what he takes to be the two main problems with Aristotelian hylomorphism:
1. Aristotelian approaches to metaphysics and nature in general do “not fit nature as we now understand it” (Robinson 2021); because
2. Aristotelian hylomorphism rests not only on “a kind of downward causation that explicitly rules out such [causal] closure” (Ibid.), but also on a theory of causes that is ultimately irreconcilable with our best contemporary science.
I reject both 1) and 2).
Firstly, I disclose some problems with causal closure. That is, I critically evaluate CCP as defended by Robinson and conclude that the general appeal to CCP against the Aristotelian is question begging since what is at stake in the discussion is exactly what one means by “physical” in the first place. The real question is whether the picture of nature offered by CCP is indeed sufficient to make full sense of our best contemporary science.
In the second part, I argue that, if one looks at contemporary science, one will not find a picture of nature that amicable to CCP. CCP “requires that basic physics applies to the basic constituents within complex structures as much as to them when more isolated”. It also requires that there is no “perspective of the whole”, that is, rejecting that the whole has any causal efficacy that is not reducible to its parts. And it thus requires real causal activity to be purely bottom-up. One might indeed appeal to the higher-level factors in our scientific explanations, but those explanations, contrarily to the bottom-up ones, do not track real causes.
But even at the most fundamental level, the most fundamental parts can’t be understood outside a larger whole. This is true even in physics. In order to show that, I will appeal to the quark confinement theory and the Paoli Exclusion Principle.
This creates not only an even bigger asymmetry but also a dilemma for proponents of CPP: only physical explanations map onto causes, but even in physics, only some explanations map onto causes – the ones that refer only to the bottom level and that explain things purely from the bottom-up; however, by referring only to the most fundamental level, physical explanations can’t really get off the ground.
I will also look at recent developments in contemporary biology (specially evo-devo) and argue that they reinstate teleological explanations in biology whilst also requiring that teleology to be irreducible.
As such, I conclude that it is CCP that does “not fit nature as we now understand it”, not hylomorphism.
Chair: Elena Garadja
Time: September 6th, 14:40-15:10
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 