Constraints and Selection

How Higher-Level Causal Eliminativism Leads to Superdeterminism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21461646
AutoresMiguel García-Valdecasas (0000-0001-6271-5181, Instituto de Filosofía, autor correspondente), Javier Sánchez-Cañizares (0000-0002-4670-2011, Universidad de Navarra)
Ano2025
Data de publicação2025-12-05
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoErkenntnis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0165-0106 • E-ISSN: 1572-8420
EditoraSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10670-025-01039-y
OpenAlexW4417034528
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas33

From how a whirlpool is formed behind a rock to how temperature speeds up a chemical reaction, constraints are pervasive in nature. They are also essential for explaining the emergence of dissipative structures, the far-from-equilibrium systems responsible for increasingly complex forms of organization. In this article, we argue that the constraints on change exert a non-derivative causal influence on microphysics by introducing selection rules, and that they are causal not by what they produce, but by what they prevent. However, recent approaches in the philosophy of science, such as the one we call “higher-level causal eliminativism” (HLCE), deem constraints as non-causal explanations or derivative causal explanations. HLCE is a microphysicalist perspective according to which reality is the result of an interplay of microphysical interactions. It denies the causality of constraints; only their explanatory value is recognized. In so doing, HLCE commits itself to superdeterminism, the theory for which some unknown non-local hidden variables and the laws of nature utterly determine the outcomes of all events, including those of quantum physics. Superdeterminism considers all higher-order relationships as nothing but statistically salient effects of global microphysical field interactions. By undermining the dependence of mathematical selection on ontological processes, superdeterminism leads to an arbitrary selection of initial conditions for the universe. Yet we will argue that this arbitrariness undermines itself and the hopes of HLCE

Arbitrariness · Causation · Eliminative materialism · Ontology · Qualia · Salient · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Quantum Mechanics and Applications