ABSTRACT
In The Possibility of Metaphysics, Jonathan Lowe hoped that the future would bring a causal account of persistence. I argue that my account of causation in terms of interaction between powerful particulars allows an understanding of the persistence and constitution of compound entities – roughly as these phenomena are standardly explained by the empirical sciences – as causal phenomena. Powerful particulars views of causation have in the past assumed that interactions are unidirectional; one object acts while another is acted upon. However, modern science does not recognise any form of unidirectional action. It insists that whenever one object exerts an influence on another, the latter simultaneously exerts a proportional influence of the same kind on the first, but in the opposite direction. My account accepts the reciprocity of causal interactions, which allows me to include in the class of causal phenomena all physical bonds postulated by the sciences to explain the constitution of material entities and why they continue to exist over time. Such bonds are standardly described in terms of reciprocal interactions between constituent parts of any given compound. On my view, constitution and persistence are merely different sides of the same coin: causation.
