ABSTRACT
Causal realism, the author argues, is not merely a commitment to the reality of causal connections but also an attempt to explain the nature of such connections. Not all realists appeal to powers in trying to explain causation, but instead to notions such as causal processes, transmission of conserved quantities, and mechanisms. These accounts, it is argued, fail to explain causation because they implicitly endorse neo-Humean strictures about sticking to observable correlates. Some powers-based approaches also fail to explain, because they too implicitly endorse some neo-Humean ideas, such as the dispositional analysis of powers, and the two-place relation model of causal connections. Accounts that reject the dispositional analysis and two-place relation model represent a return to what used to be the standard view of causation prior to the rise of empiricism, notably that causation is the production of changes brought about by the interaction of powerful particulars. There used to be a general agreement about this general idea across the range of different philosophical schools of thought, from Aristotle and well into the Early Modern period. It is argued that this is the most promising form of causal realism.
