ABSTRACT
Potentialities are properties that can manifest. Many potentialities are instantiated in virtue of having causal bases that are possible causes for their manifestations. This chapter shows that a closer look at potentialities and their causal bases studied in the life sciences (from cell biology to psychiatry) gives us good reasons to revise our philosophical assumptions about causal bases. The investigation reveals that causal bases are often more dynamic and dependent on interactions with the environment than previously assumed. In particular, we argue that causal bases in the life sciences are regularly extrinsic and processual and that potentialities in the life sciences have causal bases at different levels.
