ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether and how powers ontologies can back formal causation. It answers three questions: (i) what is formal causation; (ii) whether we need formal causation; and (iii) whether formal causation needs powers and can be grounded in powers. The authors take formal causal explanations to be explanations in which something’s essence features prominently in the explanans. Three kinds of essential explanations are distinguished: constitutive, consequential, and those singling out something’s propria. The latter has been overlooked in the literature, but it features frequently in the most relevant uses of formal explanations in philosophy and science. These are explanations for why an object has certain properties that are not parts of its essence, but that belong to it more intimately than just being part of its consequential essence: they are the properties that ‘flow’ from something’s essence. A powers metaphysics is argued to be uniquely placed to make sense of this phenomenon. Three grades of involvement are distinguished, in which powers might be salient for formal causal explanations: (i) powers might be the subject matter of the essence operator, (ii) the essence of something might include powers, or (iii) powers can explain how propria can flow from something’s constitutive existence.
