We want to Use a parsimonious and productive ontology in which modality is dissolved into systems described in State Spaces:
there are no more basic principles of change and modality beyond … local constraints; they, and not possible worlds, laws, or counterfactuals, are the ontological bedrock of dynamical organization.Winning & Bechtel (2018), 295
In other words, causation consists in
Constraints.This is an example of a
Deflationary
Explanation.
This has explanatory benefits:
If causality is reconceptualized in terms of the operation of constraints, intentional behavior can be rethought as an example of constraints operating top-down. The Emergence of mental properties like intentionality can in tum be understood in terms of the workings of contextual (enabling) constraints operating bottom up. … Appreciating the Janus nature of contextual constraints makes [formal and final causation as a] kind of whole/part and part/whole interactions understandable.Juarrero (1998), 242 (my emphasis)
Constraints and thus causation are meaningless on the level of the whole universe, which can be seen as either fully constrained (fixed, a “Block Universe”) or unconstrained (no “larger system” or external environment).
References
- Juarrero (1998): “Causality as Constraint”
- Winning & Bechtel (2018): “Rethinking Causality in Biological and Neural Mechanisms: Constraints and Control”