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The future – as a theme, research orientation, and mode of framing societal challenges – is becoming important in the social sciences. Yet the absence of collective action in many such accounts makes clear the potential contribution of social movement studies. In social movement studies, meanwhile, the future has been discussed directly and indirectly. Assumptions about timing, activist orientations towards the future, and causation are embedded in understandings of strategy, agency, mobilisation, tactical choice, consequences, and in concepts of waves, cycles and diffusion. Conceptual developments around temporalities, real utopias and grassroots initiatives, imagination, and prefiguration offer some alternative perspectives and promising new directions. Foregrounding social movement futures also has implications for protesters themselves: ideas and emotions relating to the future are central to activist debates about goals, winning, utopia, hope and burnout. This introduction reviews the societal and academic context for the renewed interest in futures that are relevant for social movement studies, before outlining three major movement areas or debates where futures are implicated, and which need to form part of future research. These areas, and the subdiscipline as a whole, it is argued, may also benefit from a more direct analysis of movement futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Naming God: Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology and Scripture" by Janet Soskice explores the historical tradition of divine names and the shift towards a focus on divine attributes in early modern philosophy and theology. Soskice examines key ancient and medieval authors such as Philo of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Thomas Aquinas to understand how divine naming is rooted in biblical ethos. The book emphasizes the personal and dynamic nature of divine naming, contrasting it with the impersonal approach of natural theology. Soskice argues for a re-consideration of philosophical theology as a lived and embodied spiritual practice. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the differences between Augustine and Aquinas's views on the concept of free decision, specifically focusing on liberum arbitrium. Aquinas diverges from Augustine by shifting the context of free decision from sin and guilt to human nature and using an Aristotelian framework. Aquinas also differs from Augustine in his understanding of the object and essence of free decision. While Aquinas's treatment of liberum arbitrium represents a departure from Augustine's teachings, he still maintains some Augustinian elements. Aquinas's definition aligns more closely with Augustine's emphasis on the pursuit of happiness and upholds the highest teachings of Augustine. [Extracted from the article]

This essay examines how volition and desire are connected to tangible outcomes for a group of Theravāda Buddhists in rural Chiang Mai, Thailand. Understanding the ways that actions are related to goals in this community is particularly fruitful for the study of the will, because for many people in Thailand it is considered relatively futile to ‘want’ something. Instead of only willing change to occur, there is also a shared social and religious attention to impermanence and uncertainty that informs attitudes, suggesting a kind of non-willing work. Rather than this ‘un-willing’ resulting in a lack of control over one’s surroundings, or an inability to get things done, people see their non-will to be an agentic mechanism that creates desired effects. Parsing out how this cultivation of non-will serves personal and social ends allows for a re-centring of scholarly attention to moral worlds within cultures of volition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causation has traditionally been an under-theorized topic. Until Hendrickson's work, very little effort had been devoted to creating a compelling theory of causation in intelligence analysis. In line with the recent attempts to integrate intelligence theory with philosophy, this article is intended to contribute to the philosophy of intelligence by defining a dedicated account of causation for it. The Unified Theory for Intelligence Analysis, as this account of causation is named, is intended to integrate into a single account Betts' Normal and Exceptional Theories as well as Hendrickson's target challenges. It is then proved that a pluralistic account of causation that combines both counterfactual and probabilistic accounts of causation is the most successful option. Finally, it is shown that Bayesian tools are the natural manifestation of this Unified Theory, and that Subjective Logic can help refute criticism against Bayesianism in intelligence analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional robustness refers to a system's ability to maintain a function in the face of perturbations to the causal structures that support performance of that function. Modularity, a crucial element of standard methods of causal inference and difference-making accounts of causation, refers to the independent manipulability of causal relationships within a system. Functional robustness appears to be at odds with modularity. If a function is maintained despite manipulation of some causal structure that supports that function, then the relationship between that structure and function fails to be manipulable independent of other causal relationships within the system. Contrary to this line of reasoning, I argue that functional robustness often attends feedback control, rather than failures of modularity. Feedback control poses its own challenges to causal explanation and inference, but those challenges do not undermine modularity—and indeed, modularity is crucial to grappling with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental causation is a deep-rooted debate in the philosophy and psychology literature. It relates to the causal role of mind on the physical world and is tightly linked with the Descartes' dualistic approach towards mind-body interaction. While the role of mental properties might seem obvious in our everyday interaction with the world, there are many arguments that make mental causation inefficacious or redundant within the physical world. In the motivation literature, the issue of mental causation is pivotal. It substantiates the causal role of intrinsic motivation on human behavior. However, the main theoretical streams in the motivation literature take a dualistic approach by dichotomizing different types of motivation into extrinsic and intrinsic ones. This creates a fundamental challenge on the possibility of mental causation in the relationship between motivation and behavior. The three main theoretical streams in the motivation literature consider intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as distinct and independent types of motivation and give a higher weight to one type over the other. This approach makes the role of intrinsic motivation as a mental factor on behavior difficult to interpret. Motivational congruence theory resolves this issue by taking a contextualist and dialectical stance on the relationship between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and the context. In a dynamic interaction with each other and the context, the two distinct yet intertwined types of motivation (i.e., intrinsic and extrinsic ones) produce overall motivation which in turn induces behavior. The theory resolves the issue of mental causation both at the surface and deep levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors provide an epistemological view on the old controversial random-necessity. It has been considered that either one or the other form part of the structure of reality. Chance and indeterminism are nothing but a disorderly efficiency of contingency in the production of events, phenomena, processes, i.e., in its causality, in the broadest sense of the word. Such production may be observed in natural and artificial processes or in human social processes (in history, economics, society, politics, etc.). Here we touch the object par excellence of all scientific research whether natural or human. In this work, is presented a hypothesis whose practical result satisfies the Hegelian dialectic, with the consequent implication of their mutual reciprocal integration. Producing abstractions, without which, there is no thought or knowledge of any kind, from the concrete, that is, the real problem, which in this case is a given Ontological System or Reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Our study aims to address two pivotal questions: "What are the recent advancements in understanding the etiology of urological tumors through Mendelian Randomization?" and "How can Mendelian Randomization be more effectively applied in clinical settings to enhance patient health outcomes in the future?" Methods: In our systematic review conducted in April 2023, we utilized databases like PubMed and Web of Science to explore the influence of Mendelian Randomization in urological oncological diseases. We focused on studies published from January 2018, employing keywords related to urological tumors and Mendelian Randomization, supplemented with MeSH terms and manual reference checks. Our inclusion criteria targeted original research studies, while we excluded reports and non-relevant articles. Data extraction followed a PICO-based approach, and bias risk was independently evaluated, with discrepancies resolved through discussion. This systematic approach adhered to PRISMA guidelines for accuracy and thoroughness in reporting. Results: From the initial 457 publications, we narrowed down to 43 full-text articles after screening and quality assessments.A deeper understanding of Mendelian Randomization can help us explore risk factors with a clear causal relationship to urological tumors.This insight may pave the way for future research in early diagnosis, treatment, and management of associated diseases. Conclusion: Our review underscores the value of MR in urogenital tumor research, highlighting its efficacy in establishing causality and its potential to clarify disease mechanisms. Despite challenges like large sample sizes and variant identification, MR offers new perspectives for understanding and managing these tumors, suggesting a trend towards more inclusive and diverse research approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional approaches to causation in the social sciences draw on approaches in the Philosophy of Science in which a causal force acts on cases and generates change in the form of events. This relies on just one of the Aristotelian conceptions of cause – efficient cause – what brings the effect in to being. We should also pay attention to Final Cause – purpose and Formal cause, what makes something what it is and no other.The somethings are complex far from equilbric socio-ecological systems in which human agency has causal powers. This resonates with the understanding of the nature of effect in the complexity frame of reference as the state of the system both in relation to stability and transformation of kind. Effects are systems states. The argument draws on Hegel's and Dewey's understandings of cause / effect relationships as not separable but intimately interwoven. Effects have continuing reciprocal impacts on causes themselves as in positive feedback in systems. This way of thinking about causation allows us to engage with macro social change. The argument will be illustrated by a discussion of the transformation from industrial to post-industrial character across port city regions in high income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite abundant philosophical pondering and experiential evidence demonstrating the need for freedom in leading a meaningful life, the literature lacks an investigation of whether and how free will beliefs contribute to one's meaningful life as an antecedent variable. Based on the coupling of the life‐affirming hypothesis and Chinese culture, we used a manipulation experiment (Study 1, n = 242) and a two‐wave longitudinal study (Study 2, n = 378) to test the potential causality between laypeople's daily beliefs in free will and meaning in life (presence of and search for meaning) with two samples of Chinese undergraduates. The results show that belief in free will positively predicts the presence of meaning and search for meaning, immediately (Study 1) and 2 months later (Study 2). The present work corroborated that the belief in free will is an antecedent variable that imbues life with meaning and sparks actions seeking meaning, supporting the life‐affirming hypothesis instead of the deficit‐correcting hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioethics provides a new perspective for the comparative study of Christianity and Chinese Buddhism. This paper provides a comprehensive comparison of the sources, states of existence, and fundamental principles and purposes of the Christian and Chinese Buddhist perspectives on human life, focusing specifically on the realm of bioethics. It places special emphasis on teachings about God's creation and dependent origination, original sin and Buddhist causality, as well as love and compassion. Despite the significant geographic distance between Christianity and Chinese Buddhism, the dialogue highlights potential cultural differences and interpretations. It also demonstrates mutual acceptance and the process of redefining one's own identity. Religious bioethics greatly benefits from a comprehensive study of various religions from around the world. It aims to encourage cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on different religions globally. It promotes religious bioethics as a relevant field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dominican theologian Durand of Saint-Pourçain (ca. 1275–1334), breaking from the wide consensus, made a two-pronged attack on concurrentism (i.e., the theory according to which God does more than conserving creatures in existence and co-causes all their actions). On the one hand, he shows that the concurrentist position leads to the unacceptable consequence that God is the direct cause of man's evil actions. On the other hand, he attacks the metaphysical foundations of concurrentism, first in the version offered by Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, and then in a more general way. Against Thomas and Giles, he challenges Neoplatonic assumptions about causality and being. More generally, he establishes that God's action and a creature's action can be neither identical nor different, and thus cannot both be direct causes of the same effect. Without claiming that Durand's series of objections are definitely unanswerable, we may at least observe that they have generally been underestimated (which earned him the lowly role of the mere foil of the concurrentist view in the history of philosophy) and are able to do considerable damage to concurrentism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a coherent and comprehensive proposal of a renewed contemporary Aristotelian–Thomistic approach to the evolutionary view of reality and the position of theistic evolution. Beginning with a proposal of a hylomorphically–grounded essentialist definition of species—framed within a broader revival of biological essentialism—a constructive model of the Aristotelian–Thomistic metaphysics of evolution is being offered, together with a reflection on the alleged violation of the principle of proportionate causation in evolutionary transitions and the role of teleology and chance in evolution. The theological part of the article addresses a number of questions concerning the Thomistic school of theology in its encounter with the evolutionary worldview, including the question of whether God creates through evolution, the query concerning the concurrence of divine and created causes in evolutionary transitions, and the question regarding evolutionary and theological notions of anthropogenesis. A list of ten postulates grounding a contemporary Thomistic version of theistic evolution is offered as a conclusion to the research presented in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current attempts to understand unusually high rates of psychiatric illness in complex, chronic illnesses can be guilty of operating within an explanatory framework whereby there are two options. Either (a) that the psychiatric predicaments are secondary to the bodily condition, and (b) that they are primary. In this paper, I draw upon philosophical work on affect, contemporary empirical work, and qualitative first-person patient data to illustrate a much messier reality. I argue that affective experience is generally more complex in such conditions, and that a variety of pre- and post-morbid causal factors dynamically interact such that the resultant psychiatric predicaments do not permit to classification as strictly primary or secondary to the bodily condition. Affective scaffolding, in my view, provides an apt theoretical framework for capturing this nuance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive science is confronted by several fundamental anomalies deriving from the mind–body problem. Most prominent is the problem of mental causation and the hard problem of consciousness, which can be generalized into the hard problem of agential efficacy and the hard problem of mental content. Here, it is proposed to accept these explanatory gaps at face value and to take them as positive indications of a complex relation: mind and matter are one, but they are not the same. They are related in an efficacious yet non-reducible, non-observable, and even non-intelligible manner. Natural science is well equipped to handle the effects of non-observables, and so the mind is treated as equivalent to a hidden 'black box' coupled to the body. Two concepts are introduced given that there are two directions of coupling influence: (1) irruption denotes the unobservable mind hiddenly making a difference to observable matter, and (2) absorption denotes observable matter hiddenly making a difference to the unobservable mind. The concepts of irruption and absorption are methodologically compatible with existing information-theoretic approaches to neuroscience, such as measuring cognitive activity and subjective qualia in terms of entropy and compression, respectively. By offering novel responses to otherwise intractable theoretical problems from first principles, and by doing so in a way that is closely connected with empirical advances, irruption theory is poised to set the agenda for the future of the mind sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierre-Sylvain Regis, once a well-known defender of Cartesianism, offers an unusually rich and innovative refutation of Spinoza. While many of his early modern contemporaries raised narrower objections to particular claims in Spinoza's Ethics , Regis develops a broader anti-Spinozistic position, one that threatens the very core of Spinoza's metaphysical ambitions and offers a philosophically robust alternative. However, as with any far-reaching philosophical commitment, Regis's gambit comes with substantive costs of its own, including creating instabilities within the core of his own philosophical system. Far from diminishing the significance of Regis's anti-Spinozism, this critical appraisal helps us better appreciate both the conceptual pull of Spinozism within early modern metaphysics and one sweeping, albeit costly way of escaping its orbit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does causation in the physical world relate to implication in logic? This article presents implication as fundamentally a relation of inclusion between propositions. Given this, it is argued that an event cannot "causally imply" another, also given the laws of nature. Then, by applying the notion of inclusion to physical objects, a relation "within the possibilities of" is developed, which generates a partial order on sets of entities and is independent of time. Based on this, it is shown that changes of physical objects in time (at any rate, a great many of them) imply, and thus counterfactually depend on, what we call "causes" – an asymmetric dependence which is robust despite the perspectival nature of the concept of "cause". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a roughly Aristotelian account of powers ontology. In doing so, the paper uses the distinction found in Aristotle between four analogous senses of potency to explain causation and the existence-essence distinction in substances. On this basis, the paper offers some justification in support of the claims that powers and dispositions are the truth-makers of categorical properties and that categorical properties are ontologically dependent upon powers and dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within modern science, the rich explanatory power of causality has been relocated down to a simple, lacking notion of causality implicitly defined as ‘the material origin of a series.’ Through the course of this paper, I examine two prominent examples in modern science where this notion of causality is on full display. The first of these examples is the origin of the universe as espoused by the Big Bang theory. The second is the mind/body problem. In both cases, the modern notion of causality, as the origin of a material series, is utterly deficient in explanatory power. To rescue the notion of causality, I detail the classical view of causality as espoused by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and shown clearly in the Christian Faith. Most importantly, I show how reintroducing immaterial causality would absolve the explanatory gap in both cases. With this fuller notion of causality, I show how the origin of the universe and the mind/body problem are only problems considering the modern, deficient sense of causality. If the view of immaterial causality found in the Christian tradition is allowed, ample explanation is given as to the mechanics of both the origin of the universe and the mind/body problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary debate on free will, most philosophers assume that the defense of libertarianism implies the defense of the notion of alternative possibilities. This article discusses this presupposition by showing that it is possible to build a libertarianism without alternative possibilities, apparently more robust than libertarianism with alternative possibilities. Inspired by Bergson, this nonclassical libertarianism challenges the idea that all causation implies the actualization of a predetermined possibility (an idea shared by determinism and classical libertarianism). Moreover, it challenges the idea that free will is a mere choice between prefixed possibilities: for this libertarianism, free will is the result of a creative process of the mind—an entirely causal process whose outcome is not, however, predetermined. This nonclassical libertarianism describes the process of forming a will in a more realistic way than classical libertarianism does. Furthermore, it is not threatened by the problem of chance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Menstrual health in humanitarian contexts is a neglected topic. Its taboo nature presents difficulties for participants in menstrual health projects in these particularly challenging settings. Namely, their experiences may be concealed or overlooked in projects that are typically outcome focused. Realist Evaluation is a useful method to unearth and explore the hidden mechanisms and their causes, which lead to positive or negative participant experiences. The authors have applied this approach to a robust humanitarian menstrual health project to explore how to centre the emotional wellbeing of participants at all stages: prior to, during, and post-participation. Study setting: The project studied was led by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies who piloted their adaptable manual for menstruator–friendly water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) facility design in humanitarian contexts. It was conducted by the Lebanese Red Cross in an informal tented settlement hosting Syrian refugees in Qaa, Lebanon. Methods: The authors collected interview and focus group data on the contextual factors and processes within the project from nine project staff and 16 settlement inhabitants. They used a realist process of theory development, testing, and consolidation to understand how and under what circumstances the project inputs affected participants' wellbeing. Results: The contextual factors and causal mechanisms promoting participant experience comprised individual (choices influencing and experience during participation), interpersonal (group dynamics and the role of non-menstruators), and organisational (expertise and knowledge, relationship to participants and cultural differences) factors. Implications: The research uses a case study from a renowned humanitarian organisation who provided a well-delivered project in a conducive environment to explore the mechanisms and contexts that can promote wider learning and refine understanding and programming in this under-researched and -theorised space. Specifically, it informs which contextual factors and project inputs must be present within a menstrual health project to ensure participant satisfaction whilst efficiently delivering well-designed menstruator-friendly WaSH facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article in this journal, Eli Pitcovski puts forward a novel, explanation-based account of harm. We seek to show that Pitcovski's account, and his arguments in favor of it, can be substantially improved. However, we also argue that, even thus improved, the account faces a dilemma. The dilemma concerns the question of what it takes for an event, E, to explain why a state, P, does not obtain. Does this require that P would have obtained if E had not occurred? Pitcovski's theory faces problems no matter how one answers that question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article in Science, Nicolas Gisin claimed that quantum correlations emerge from outside space–time. We explainthat they are due to space-time symmetries. This paper is a critical review of metaphysical conclusions found in many recent articles. It advocates the importance of contextuality, Einstein -causality and global symmetries. Bell tests allow only rejecting probabilistic coupling provided by a local hidden variable model, but they do not justify metaphysical speculations about quantum nonlocality and objects which know about each other's state, even when separated by large distances. The violation of Bell inequalities in physics and in cognitive science can be explained using the notion of Bohr- contextuality. If contextual variables, describing varying experimental contexts, are correctly incorporated into a probabilistic model, then the Bell–CHSH inequalities cannot be proven and nonlocal correlations may be explained in an intuitive way. We also elucidate the meaning of statistical independence assumption incorrectly called free choice, measurement independence or no- conspiracy. Since correlation does not imply causation, the violation of statistical independence should be called contextuality; it does not restrict the experimenter's freedom of choice. Therefore, contrary to what is believed, closing the freedom-of choice loophole does not close the contextuality loophole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars have not assigned much interpretive importance to the specific use of the term 'persuasion' in the cosmology of Plato's Timaeus. This paper suggests understanding cosmological 'persuasion' in conjunction with 'force,' another trait of divine agency in the Timaeus. It analyses the nature of intelligent causation in the cosmology of the Timaeus, particularly in the construction of the cosmic body and soul. Then, it gives a detailed characterization of the causation of necessity, appearing in the Timaeus in three different versions, and relates it to the complex notion of intelligent agency. Ultimately, it claims that the cosmic music in the Timaeus, the primary agent of ordered causation in the cosmos, functions on two levels of conflict with the disorder of the sensible aspect of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Shepherd, how many things exist? On the one hand, it looks like the answer is going to be many. It is a central tent of Shepherd's philosophical system that causation is a relation whereby two or more objects combine to create a third. Since there are many instances of this causal relation, there must be many objects in the world. On the other hand, there are several moments throughout her writing where Shepherd indicates that the distinction between causes and effects is in some sense unreal, and that while the world appears to us to consist of many distinct objects interacting causally, really there is just one thing and its merely nominally distinct parts. I argue that Shepherd is an ontological pluralist, and the texts that appear to express a commitment to ontological monism are best understood as expressing ontological holism instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the variety of ways in which a directed acyclic graph (DAG) can be used to represent a problem of probabilistic causality. For each of these ways, we describe the relevant formal or informal semantics governing that representation. It is suggested that the cleanest such representation is that embodied in an augmented DAG, which contains nodes for non-stochastic intervention indicators in addition to the usual nodes for domain variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that we need to distinguish between three concepts of actual causation: total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. I provide two lines of argument in support of this account. First, I address three thought experiments that have been troublesome for unified accounts of actual causation, and I show that my account provides a better explanation of corresponding causal intuitions. Second, I provide a functional argument: if we assume that a key purpose of causal concepts is to guide agency, we are better off making a distinction between three concepts of actual causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Maurice Blondel's (1861–1949) later notion of the "cycloid" of thought, particularly as this helps us to understand his earlier work L'Action (1893). The aim is to demonstrate how Blondel incorporates aspects of the Christian faith, particularly the Eucharist, into his philosophy without abrogating his "method of immanence". In particular, the article shows how Blondel saw attention to the Christian spirit as essential to the development of a metaphysics that attends both to finite actions and to the action of God, actus purus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades later, the conceptual problems of the term "agency" identified by Walter Johnson remain largely unresolved, in particular the analytic inhibitions that follow from what the historian Lynn Thomas has described as agency-as-argument. Taking the case of the colonial Zimbabwean chief Munhuwepayi Mangwende as a reference point, this essay argues that the microhistorical tracing of agency as meaning rather than causality is what may permit us to move past the "safe harbor" of agency-as-argument and begin to understand the full range of what people have chosen to do in the past—and to interact more effectively with what they might yet choose to do in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causality is at the core of much contemporary discussion in social sciences, philosophy, and computer science—from the establishment of basic definitions of causality to developing methods for causal inference, this discussion is increasingly finding voice within geographical literature. However, geographers have long discussed (and differed) about the role "causality" plays in our work. We present a history of contemporary definitions of causality arising from philosophy and examine how these intellectual currents interact with past and present geographical thinking about causal relations. In particular, we focus on how new thinking about counterfactual causality can help re‐route inquiry around a well‐known impasse: law‐based causality in geography. In other words, while different perspectives around "laws" of geography exist, we argue that it is more productive to put aside these differences and find common ground in counterfactual causal thinking. To demonstrate, we outline new kinds of scholarship enabled by counterfactual causality and contemporary challenges that counterfactual causality faces in spatial analysis. Throughout, we refer interested readers to contemporary work on spatial causal inference and methods useful for scholars interested in analysing causal relationships in geographical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaverse (MV) technology introduces new tools for users each day. MV companies have a significant share in the total stock markets today, and their size is increasing. However, MV technologies are questioned as to whether they contribute to environmental pollution with their increasing energy consumption (EC). This study explores complex nonlinear contagion with tail dependence and causality between MV stocks, EC, and environmental pollution proxied with carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) with a decade-long daily dataset covering 18 May 2012–16 March 2023. The Mandelbrot–Wallis and Lo's rescaled range (R/S) tests confirm long-term dependence and fractionality, and the largest Lyapunov exponents, Shannon and Havrda, Charvât, and Tsallis (HCT) entropy tests followed by the Kolmogorov–Sinai (KS) complexity measure confirm chaos, entropy, and complexity. The Brock, Dechert, and Scheinkman (BDS) test of independence test confirms nonlinearity, and White's test of heteroskedasticity of nonlinear forms and Engle's autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity test confirm heteroskedasticity, in addition to fractionality and chaos. In modeling, the marginal distributions are modeled with Markov-Switching Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity Copula (MS-GARCH–Copula) processes with two regimes for low and high volatility and asymmetric tail dependence between MV, EC, and CO2 in all regimes. The findings indicate relatively higher contagion with larger copula parameters in high-volatility regimes. Nonlinear causality is modeled under regime-switching heteroskedasticity, and the results indicate unidirectional causality from MV to EC, from MV to CO2, and from EC to CO2, in addition to bidirectional causality among MV and EC, which amplifies the effects on air pollution. The findings of this paper offer vital insights into the MV, EC, and CO2 nexus under chaos, fractionality, and nonlinearity. Important policy recommendations are generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For complex networked systems, based on the consideration of nonlinearity and causality, a novel general method of nonlinear causal network learning, termed extreme support vector regression Granger causality (ESVRGC), is proposed. The nonuniform time-delayed influence of the driving nodes on the target node is particularly considered. Then, the restricted model and the unrestricted model of Granger causality are, respectively, formulated based on extreme support vector regression, which uses the selected time-delayed components of system variables as the inputs of kernel functions. The nonlinear conditional Granger causality index is finally calculated to confirm the strength of a causal interaction. Generally, based on the simulation of a nonlinear vector autoregressive model and nonlinear discrete time-delayed dynamic systems, ESVRGC demonstrates better performance than other popular methods. Also, the validity and robustness of ESVRGC are also verified by the different cases of network types, sample sizes, noise intensities, and coupling strengths. Finally, the superiority of ESVRGC is successful verified by the experimental study on real benchmark datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gloria Frost's book, "Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers," aims to reconstruct Aquinas's premodern approach to causation, focusing on the ontological relationship between cause and effect. Frost provides background information from Aristotle, Avicenna, and other thinkers used by Aquinas, while delving deeply into Aquinas's own ideas. The book explores topics such as efficient causation, causal powers, potentiality and actuality, natural inclination, and action and passion. Frost's work is a comprehensive and valuable contribution to the interpretation of Aquinas's theories of efficient causation. [Extracted from the article]

Proportionality—the idea that causes are neither too general nor too specific for their effects—seems to recommend implausibly disjunctive causes (McGrath, 1998; Shapiro & Sober, 2012; Franklin-Hall, 2016). I argue that this problem should be avoided by appeal to the notion of cohesion. I propose an account of cohesion in terms of the similarity structure of property-spaces, argue that it is not objectionably mysterious, and that alternative approaches—based on naturalness, interventionism, and contrastivism—are inadequate without appeal to it. In an appendix, I show how my proposal can be perspicuously formalized by adapting structural equation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical doctrine of the eternal relations or origin (ERO) claims that these relations are (1) atemporal and (2) causal. In this paper, I investigate the casual nature of the ERO, highlighting that the patristic and medieval Christian thinkers who developed this doctrine understood causality in terms of Aristotle's efficient causality, highlighting that these are casual acts that produce an effect. I then provide an analysis of some of the major theories of efficient causation on offer in contemporary metaphysics to see which theory best comports with how the ancient and medieval Christian thinkers understood the efficient–causal aspect of the ERO, concluding that a powers theory of causation seems to work best. I conclude by discussing the implications the classical doctrine of the ERO has for models of God, arguing that they are compatible only with classical theism and neoclassical theism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a Thomistic account of graced human nature that emphasizes the importance of underlying developments in Aquinas' doctrine of creation that inform his approach to the doctrine of grace. While post-Cartesian accounts of the human person often reduce the complex causal structure that marks the relationship between God and the human person in Aquinas' pre-modern theological anthropology, this article recovers a more comprehensive account of Aquinas' account of human sanctification and divine causality. Where modern and postmodern anthropologies are often marked by scientific determinism or subjectivism, Aquinas's anthropology of grace refuses the modern dichotomization of immanence and transcendence, proposing instead an understanding of grace as the divinization of the human person as image of God that is marked not only by the supernatural finality of beatitude, but the intrinsic and personal immanence of divine indwelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to relate two debates about how logic and language influence thought. There is an axis of discussion about whether there exists a plurality of logic or a single logical system as an evaluation criterion for any reasoning context. In linguistics, the debate arising from the strong and weak interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has centralized the discussion around the degree of influence or determination of language on thought. From different perspectives and theoreticalconceptual frameworks, logic, and linguistics delimit and problematize a field of inquiry and reflection. The article, from a transdisciplinary perspective, intends to account for and postulate communicating vessels between these debates, considering the nuances of each approach. It also seeks to propose its own hypothesis on the problem raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to derive a consistent test of Granger causality at a given expectile. We also propose a sup-Wald test for jointly testing Granger causality at all expectiles that has the correct asymptotic size and power properties. Expectiles have the advantage of capturing similar information as quantiles, but they also have the merit of being much more straightforward to use than quantiles, since they are defined as least squares analog of quantiles. Studying Granger causality in expectiles is practically simpler and allows us to examine the causality at all levels of the conditional distribution. Moreover, testing Granger causality at all expectiles provides a sufficient condition for testing Granger causality in distribution. A Monte Carlo simulation study reveals that our tests have good finite-sample size and power properties for a variety of data-generating processes and different sample sizes. Finally, we provide two empirical applications to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of debates about free will and determinism can be traced back to the early periods of philosophy. However, new approaches to the basic principles of Newtonian physics, science and philosophy, and the Aristotelian system of thought, which has been accepted for centuries, have caused the problem in question to gain importance. According to this new Newtonian approach, the universe has a deterministic structure and every event that occurs in the universe depends on the adequacy of the principle of causality. When the determinist doctrine is accepted, the nature of human actions and whether they have a determinant have become important metaphysical questions. This study answers the questions of whether it is possible for us to accept the nature of free will in a deterministic and determined universe, and ultimately whether free will is possible. In this context, firstly the possibility of free will will be discussed through the terminological background and types of the concepts of determinism and indeterminism. Secondly, the question of whether free will and determinism are compatible with each other will be analyzed through compatibilism and incompatibilism approaches. Finally, it will be stated through the criticism of libertarianism that free will and determinism are incompatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many areas of philosophy, we lack an understanding of their developments between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. One such area is the development of the notion of final causation. The rejection of final causation is often described as one of the distinguishing hallmarks of so called Early Modern philosophy in relation to the Scholastic philosophical tradition. Our lack of understanding of the development of this notion in philosophy therefore impedes our ability to write an adequate history of philosophy spanning these centuries. In this article, the notion of final causation as treated in the works of Chrysostom Javellus (1472–1538) and Francis Silvestri (of Ferrara) (1474–1526) is presented. It is argued that the treatment of final causation in these thinkers is already shaped by concerns regarding finality that we find in Early Modern philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideas presented by José Eusebio Caro in his unfinished work entitled Social Mechanics or Theory of Human Movement, Considered in its Nature, in its Effects and in its Causes, in 1836, collects characteristic aspects of the thought of the first decades of the 19th century, with roots, some of them in previous times. The intellectual richness of the work in question induced analytical research, of which this document reports, according to the following research question: What are the predominant epistemological features in the philosophical and sociological theses of José Eusebio Caro, in his posthumous work unfinished work entitled Social mechanics or theory of human movement, considered in its nature, in its effects and in its causes? The study of this work focuses on specifying epistemological aspects of a proposal that shares honors with positivism and the emergence of social theory whose theses give way to the emergence of sociology. This, in a particular century characterized by the search for the ideological and political originality of the American continent, which hoped to re-emerge far from Spanish domination and close to French theorists and the ideological developments of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part 2 of Report 4 covers three topics. The first is attempts to systematize, weighing and forming a hierarchy ("ranks") for the causal criteria. Two methodologies were used: referring to specific constructions of various researchers and assessment by determining the frequency of occurrence of a particular criterion in those works in which they were used as a way to establish the effect causality. Apart from the a priori leading criterion "Temporality," the first two places should be given to "Strength of association" and "Consistency of association" (their sequence may be reversed), that is, inductive points. The third place is taken by the "Counterfactual experiment" ("Natural experiment"), which, however, is rarely available in epidemiology and ecology. In its absence, the third place is again taken by the inductive criterion "Biological gradient" ("dose–effect" relationship). In the fields of ecology and ecotoxicology, where experimental or observational studies in humans are rarely available, the ranks of the criteria are specific, and "Biological plausibility" is in first place. Second, it presents a criticism of the causal approach in observational disciplines based on criteria of causality, starting from the lack of evidence of the inductive method itself. It points to the "mosaicism," multidisciplinarity, and subjectivity of the criteria, as well as their nonabsoluteness ("are saddled with reservations and exceptions"). It is noted, however, that such questions can be posed before almost any approach in the field of natural sciences. There is the opinion that the criteria of causality, as it were "confirming effects," should be left only for decision-making in the field of health care, and not for strict evidence in the field of "pure science" with its falsification of hypotheses. It is unlikely that this approach can be adopted for epidemiology. Third, models for assessing the causality of effects in epidemiology outside of causal criteria are considered. The most famous is the K.J. Rothman ("Causality Pie"), implying determinism of epidemiological effects, as opposed to the position of practical epidemiology and public health, in which causality is defined as probabilistic. The second model is called the "counterfactual" or "potential outcome model." The third is directed acyclic graphs or causal diagrams (DAG), and the fourth is the "Structural equation model." Another approach was discovered by C.V. Phillips, which quantifies errors (uncertainties) at all stages of an epidemiological study with Monte Carlo simulation. It is concluded that the named models turn out to be either qualitative and illustrative, or represent only a graphic or mathematical apparatus that still serves the same initial approach based on causal criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part 2 of Report 4 covers three topics. The first is attempts to systematize, weighing and forming a hierarchy ("ranks") for the causal criteria. Two methodologies were used: referring to specific constructions of various researchers and assessment by determining the frequency of occurrence of a particular criterion in those works in which they were used as a way to establish the effect causality. Apart from the a priori leading criterion "Temporality," the first two places should be given to "Strength of association" and "Consistency of association" (their sequence may be reversed), that is, inductive points. The third place is taken by the "Counterfactual experiment" ("Natural experiment"), which, however, is rarely available in epidemiology and ecology. In its absence, the third place is again taken by the inductive criterion "Biological gradient" ("dose–effect" relationship). In the fields of ecology and ecotoxicology, where experimental or observational studies in humans are rarely available, the ranks of the criteria are specific, and "Biological plausibility" is in first place. Second, it presents a criticism of the causal approach in observational disciplines based on criteria of causality, starting from the lack of evidence of the inductive method itself. It points to the "mosaicism," multidisciplinarity, and subjectivity of the criteria, as well as their nonabsoluteness ("are saddled with reservations and exceptions"). It is noted, however, that such questions can be posed before almost any approach in the field of natural sciences. There is the opinion that the criteria of causality, as it were "confirming effects," should be left only for decision-making in the field of health care, and not for strict evidence in the field of "pure science" with its falsification of hypotheses. It is unlikely that this approach can be adopted for epidemiology. Third, models for assessing the causality of effects in epidemiology outside of causal criteria are considered. The most famous is the K.J. Rothman ("Causality Pie"), implying determinism of epidemiological effects, as opposed to the position of practical epidemiology and public health, in which causality is defined as probabilistic. The second model is called the "counterfactual" or "potential outcome model." The third is directed acyclic graphs or causal diagrams (DAG), and the fourth is the "Structural equation model." Another approach was discovered by C.V. Phillips, which quantifies errors (uncertainties) at all stages of an epidemiological study with Monte Carlo simulation. It is concluded that the named models turn out to be either qualitative and illustrative, or represent only a graphic or mathematical apparatus that still serves the same initial approach based on causal criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counterfactual conditionals posit hypothetical scenarios in which antecedent events contradict reality. This study examined whether and how the processing difficulty of Chinese counterfactual conditionals (yaobushi, equivalent to if it had not been for in English) can be affected by the length of temporal shifts of the events across clauses and the likelihood of the antecedent occurrence. Participants read Chinese counterfactuals that contained either long (e.g., qunian-xianzai [last year-right now]) or short temporal shifts (e.g., zuotian-xianzai [yesterday-right now]) within highly likely (e.g., sign up for school activity) or less likely contexts (e.g., sign up for Arctic scientific research). ERP results revealed a significant N400 interaction between the temporal shift length and antecedent likelihood on the temporal indicators in the consequent and the sentence-ending verbs. Specifically, the less likely events elicited larger negativity than highly likely events with short temporal shifts on the temporal indicator. On the sentence-ending word, the long temporal shift elicited enlarged negativity than the short temporal shift when the antecedent was highly likely. These findings have two key implications regarding the interplay of implied causality and falsity constraints during counterfactual comprehension. First, salient falsity constraints can override effects of causal coherence on processing. Second, greater negativity for unlikely antecedents suggests that counterfactual markers concurrently activate factual and hypothetical representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard view in philosophy is that responsibility entails causation. Most philosophers treat this entailment claim as an evident insight into the ordinary concepts of responsibility and causation. Further, it is taken to be equally obvious that the reversal of this claim does not hold: causation does not entail responsibility. In contrast, Sytsma and Livengood have put forward an account of the use of ordinary causal attributions (statements like "X caused Y") that contends that they are typically used interchangeably with responsibility attributions (statements like "X is responsible for Y"). Put in terms of the concepts at play in these attributions, this account suggests that the reversal of the entailment claim may also hold, and, a fortiori, there would be mutual entailment between the ordinary concepts of responsibility and causation. Using the cancellability test, we report the results of three pre-registered studies providing empirical evidence that causation and responsibility are mutually entailed by each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"If the tower is any taller than 320 ms, it may collapse," Eiffel thinks out loud. Although understanding this counterfactual poses no trouble, the most successful interventionist semantics struggle to model it because the antecedent can come about in infinitely many ways. My aim is to provide a semantics that will make modeling such counterfactuals easy for philosophers, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists who work on causation and causal reasoning. I first propose three desiderata that will guide my theory: it should be general, yet conservative, yet useful. Next, I develop a formalization of events in the form of an algebra. I identify an event with all the ways in which it can be brought about and provide rules for determining the referent of an arbitrary event description. I apply this algebra to counterfactuals expressed using underdeterministic causal models-models that encode non-probabilistic causal indeterminacies. Specifically, I develop semaphore interventions, which represent how the target system may be modified from without in a coordinated fashion. This, in turn, allows me to bring about any event within a single model. Finally, I explain the advantages of this semantics over other interventionist competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living organisms are active open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The ability to behave actively corresponds to dynamical metastability: minor but supercritical internal or external effects may trigger major substantial actions such as gross mechanical motion, dissipating internally accumulated energy reserves. Gaining a selective advantage from the beneficial use of activity requires a consistent combination of sensual perception, memorised experience, statistical or causal prediction models, and the resulting favourable decisions on actions. This information processing chain originated from mere physical interaction processes prior to life, here denoted as structural information exchange. From there, the self-organised transition to symbolic information processing marks the beginning of life, evolving through the novel purposivity of trial-and-error feedback and the accumulation of symbolic information. The emergence of symbols and prediction models can be described as a ritualisation transition, a symmetry-breaking kinetic phase transition of the second kind previously known from behavioural biology. The related new symmetry is the neutrally stable arbitrariness, conventionality, or code invariance of symbols with respect to their meaning. The meaning of such symbols is given by the structural effect they ultimately unleash, directly or indirectly, by deciding on which actions to take. The early genetic code represents the first symbols. The genetically inherited symbolic information is the first prediction model for activities sufficient for survival under the condition of environmental continuity, sometimes understood as the "final causality" property of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The single-regression Granger–Geweke causality estimator has previously been shown to solve known problems associated with the more conventional likelihood ratio estimator; however, its sampling distribution has remained unknown. We show that, under the null hypothesis of vanishing Granger causality, the single-regression estimator converges to a generalized χ 2 distribution, which is well approximated by a Γ distribution. We show that this holds too for Geweke's spectral causality averaged over a given frequency band, and derive explicit expressions for the generalized χ 2 and Γ-approximation parameters in both cases. We present a Neyman–Pearson test based on the single-regression estimators, and discuss how it may be deployed in empirical scenarios. We outline how our analysis may be extended to the conditional case, point-frequency spectral Granger causality and the important case of state-space Granger causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Niklas Luhmann, causality is both an impossibility and a necessity in education. On the one hand, the task of the teacher is an impossible one, because teaching as communication is a closed system that cannot determine the learning of pupils' psychical system in any causal sense. On the other hand, one cannot practice as a teacher without a belief in causality, i.e., in a causal connection between teaching and learning. In his article "The Child as the Medium of Education," Luhmann focuses on the enablement of education, despite its impossibility. His answer is that one thing that makes education possible is the emergence of the symbolically generalized medium "the child." In this article, Lars Qvortrup focuses on Luhmann's understanding of causality. According to Luhmann, causality is not a simple, ontological fact, but the result of the attribution of certain causes to certain effects. The conclusion is that causality as an attribution category — and not causality as an ontological fact — is another thing that makes education possible. Qvortrup also concludes, however, that Luhmann is not alone in criticizing the traditional, mechanical concept of causality. Other contemporary philosophers and sociologists have pointed out that in order to analyze causality in complex social systems, one has to select some causal factors and ignore others. While others do this based on seemingly pure scientific and statistical criteria, Luhmann focuses on attribution as a social construction of causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]