Causality as a Result of Natural Capacities

Abstract

This research aims to present the contemporary philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright's, perspective on the principle of causality, highlighting the structure of this term and its relationship to other terms, such as capacities and natures, probability, and necessity. This study attempts to answer some questions that seek to explore the true causal structure, whether it is a relationship between apparent events at the observable level, or whether causality is actually related to the natures, self-sufficiency, and properties of things. To answer these questions, this research clarifies how the capacities emerge from the natures and properties of physical things according to Cartwright and how they play a prominent role in the causal process, through the interactions and connections that occur between these capacities in different systems and contexts that contain primary conditions and basic information, which govern the causal interaction and determine the effect at what is called the threshold of influence. To clarify the contributions made by Cartwright to contemporary causation, the researcher conducted a comparison between probability as it emerges in quantum mechanics, and probability as it emerges in Cartwright's contemporary formulation of causality. One of the results that this research arrived at, using an analytical method, is the belief that the natures and capacities of things that emerge from them are the basis of causal interactions and the basis of causal explanation, which gave a different role to the fundamental laws of nature and made them significantly related to capacities and their connections.