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Interventionist Causation in Thermodynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Karen R. Zwier
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Abstract

The interventionist account of causation has been largely dismissed as a serious candidate for application in physics. This dismissal is related to the problematic assumption that physical causation is entirely a matter of dynamical evolution. In this article, I offer a fresh look at the interventionist account of causation and its applicability to thermodynamics. I argue that the interventionist account of causation is the account of causation that most appropriately characterizes the theoretical structure and phenomenal behavior of thermodynamics.

Type
Physical Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 1303 - 1315
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Sandra Mitchell, John Norton, James Woodward, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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