He thinks of causation as the giving of being, and he thinks that anything that receives being, and therefore all creatures, cannot itself give being but can merely transmit it.
It may intuitively sound strange as long as we think of backward causation as consisting of something we can control directly by our everyday actions.
But if causation is a basic, irreducible relation, then we might with equal intelligibility be able to think of substances as well as events as causes.
Clarke proposes that agent causation be thought of as a species of a broader genus, substance causation, with agent causation distinguished by its role in intentional action.
Instead, Reid thinks, the concept of causation is not an idea copied from a sensory impression in the first place.
In the past, microbes not implicated in disease causation have been thought of as hardly interacting with their host at all, or as friendly commensals providing benefits without consequences.
Why is it plausible to think that causation is conceptually linked with counterfactuals in the way specified by this definition of causal dependence?
Modern philosophers thought of themselves as scientific revolutionaries because they rejected Aristotle's account of causation.
I think much of the causation goes the other way: the influx of unauthorized immigrants was a byproduct of Arizona's booming economy.
