Causation and laws of nature in early modern philosophy
/ Walter Ott.
; New York
: Oxford University Press
, 2009.
xii, 260 p.
; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-258) and index.
Introduction -- Themes -- The origin and status of laws of nature -- The ontology of powers -- Necessity -- Models of causation -- Plan of the book -- The Aristotelian background -- Necessity -- The ontology of relations -- Manifest and occult qualities -- The Cartesian predicament -- What mechanism isn't -- The rejection of Aristotelianism -- The nude wax : Cartesian ontology -- The laws of nature -- Force -- Occasionalism -- The concurrentist reading -- The argument from laws of nature -- Thoroughgoing occasionalism -- The problem of mental causation -- The dialectic of occasionalism -- Malebranche and the cognitive model of causation -- The argument from nonsense -- The argument from elimination -- The divine concursus argument -- 'Little souls' revisited -- The 'no necessary connection' argument -- The epistemic argument -- Laws and divine volitions -- The content of divine volitions -- The problem of efficacious laws -- Causation and explanation -- A scholastic mechanism -- Régis against the occasionalists -- Power and necessity -- A dead cadaverous thing -- Relations and powers -- Boyle's paradox -- Boyle and the concurrentists -- Locke on relations -- Locke on powers : the geometrical model -- Locke's mechanisms -- Hume -- The two Humes -- Intentionality -- Meaning -- Against the positivist reading -- Signification -- Judgment and belief -- Semiotic empiricism -- Relative ideas -- The argument from nonsense -- Necessity -- Finding Hume's target -- Against the cognitive and geometrical models -- The neighboring fields -- The practicality requirement -- Relations -- The status of relations -- Two kinds of relations -- The nature of necessity -- The definition of causation -- The problem -- Subjectivism or projectivism? -- Conclusion.