[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

particles? Or that it exercises profound influence over this
aggregate s future career? My opponent presumably says
both: his claim is presumably that the lightning strike
amounts to a violent change of course in the career of this
aggregate. But does this aggregate really even have a career
long enough to enable my opponent to discern within it
both a previous phase and a subsequent phase?
If this aggregate of microparticles does have a temporally
protracted career, that career seems in any case not to have
begun in advance of Max s own existence. I am not denying
that that aggregate existed before Max was born or con-
ceived; it surely did exist. But it was, for vast periods before
Max s birth, strikingly scattered in space. Over these vast
periods it was too scattered, it seems, to have as a whole
caused anything, or to have undergone any unitary reac-
tions to impinging events. Microphysics would have had
no greater need to recognize its existence, during these vast
periods, than the existence of any other gerrymandered or
randomly assembled collection of microparticles. All that
62 Chapter 3
this aggregate did, during these vast stretches of its exis-
tence, was to be the collection that it is.
Yet during at least a short time leading up to Max s death,
my opponent might rejoin, that very aggregate can be said
to have done many things to have produced many effects.
For Max himself did many things during just this short time.
He talked on the phone to a friend, let us say, and posted a
payment on his phone bill. Every action Max took, my oppo-
nent might plausibly claim, supervened on complex micro-
physical events involving the microparticles that composed
him (perhaps together with complex microphysical events
involving microparticles that surrounded Max). So the
microparticles that composed Max, at the moments of the
morning of his death, themselves produced many effects.
Now it is true this my opponent would have to allow
that not every one of the microparticles in the aggregate
affected by the lightning strike was present in Max during
all these moments. Max took a breath of air just seconds
before the lightning strike, and the microparticles in those
oxygen atoms, taken up into Max s bloodstream by the
precise moment of the strike, were not present in Max s
body during any of Max s activities that morning. Even
so, a vast majority of the microparticles comprised in the
ill-fated aggregate were present in Max throughout the
morning. This vast majority jointly produced many complex
microphysical events over the course of the morning. So
surely, my opponent might insist, that aggregate itself might
be said to have done much over the course of the morning.
Its career can be said to extend at least that far back.
But I question whether this really can be said. Certainly it
does not follow, from the premise that a part of x caused
effect e, that x caused effect e, even if the part is large that
reasoning embodies the fallacy of composition. In a case like
Real Essential Natures, or Merely Real Kinds? 63
the present one, such a conclusion appears to be not just
unwarranted but extremely implausible. The precise reason
why it is implausible depends on the precise analysis of cau-
sation one elects; the conclusion is implausible on any analy-
sis currently on offer, but for different reasons in different
cases. I will limit myself to saying why it is implausible
on the analysis I will endorse and articulate in chapter 4.
That analysis comes from Mackie by way of Bennett, and
says that for event c to be a cause of event e is for c to be an
NS condition of e (Bennett 1988, ch. 3). That is, it is for c to
be a Necessary component of circumstances and develop-
ments that actually preceded e and which jointly were
Sufficient for e. Suppose then that forty minutes before
his death, Max wrote a check to the phone company. The
appearance of letters and numbers on the check, my oppo-
nent supposes, supervened on a complex microphysical
outcome caused by a complex set of motions and state
changes involving the microparticles that composed Max s
body. Is this enough to establish that the aggregate a of
microparticles, composing Max at the time of the lightning
strike, itself caused the appearance of the letters and
numbers or at least caused the complex microphysical
outcome e on which that appearance supervened? For this
to be true, on the Mackie Bennett understanding of causa-
tion, some state of affairs involving a itself including the
microparticles in the oxygen Max breathed in just a second
before his death would have had to figure indispensably
in the circumstances that obtained and were jointly suffi-
cient for e. But this is extremely implausible. Surely even if
those individual oxygen atoms breathed in by Max in his
last breath had not even been in existence forty minutes before
his death even if there had not then existed aggregate a
outcome e would have occurred anyway, and Max would
64 Chapter 3
have written the check. Nothing involving a was indispens-
able to that outcome.
I conclude that the aggregate of microparticles composing
Max at the moment of the lightning strike had a career that
had begun at most one second before. After the lightning
strike, that aggregate was again too scattered to be said to
have done anything as a unitary whole, or to have been
influenced as a unitary whole. Indeed the career of this
aggregate would seem to have extended over just a single
episode: all it did was to get violently scattered. Its  getting
scattered did not interrupt or break the pattern of an earlier
career, and did not leave an indelible imprint on a later
career. That episode did not comprise a before phase that
grew smoothly out of a past history of that aggregate and
an after phase reflected in that aggregate s subsequent
history. The  getting scattered was the whole history of the
aggregate: the getting scattered cannot be seen as an alter-
ation proper to that aggregate s course of existence. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]