Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 58 by Victor Caston;

Author:Victor Caston; [Caston, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192602725
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2020-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

2. Spontaneous generation and spontaneous causation

Further philosophical support for an approach that emphasizes process types can be obtained by reflecting on the puzzle about whether spontaneous generation is spontaneously caused (in the Physics 2 sense). Understood correctly, this puzzle is closely connected with the issue of what types it belongs to. Physics 2. 4–6 offers several conditions for spontaneous causation. I focus on three. First, spontaneous proceedings happen ‘neither … always nor for the most part’ (οὔτε … αἰεὶ οὔτε ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ)—which I abbreviate as ‘rarely’.21 Second, they are accidentally caused.22 These conditions are related, and 2. 4–6 often substitutes one for the other. 2. 5, for instance, locates spontaneous proceedings ‘in the class of things outside of what is necessary and for the most part’ (ἐν τοῖς παρὰ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον καὶ τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ πολύ) and specifically those that can be ‘for the sake of something’ (ἕνεκά του, 196b19–21). It later offers roughly the same definition, substituting accidental causation for happening rarely: ‘chance is an accidental cause in the class of things that are in accord with choice, among the things that are for the sake of something’ (197a5–6).23 It is thus plausible to think spontaneous proceedings happen rarely because they are accidentally caused.24 Moreover—this is the third condition—they are among things that are for the sake of something (196b33).

My argument is that to determine whether spontaneous generation meets these conditions, we need to know which process types are involved in it. I begin with the requirement that spontaneous proceedings happen rarely and accidentally. These conditions concern types. It makes no sense to say that an individual happens rarely. Rather, what is rare is occurrences of some type. Moreover, different ways of specifying these types yield different determinations about whether something counts as happening rarely and as accidentally caused. Consider Aristotle’s example in Physics 2. 5: the housebuilding craft is a proper cause of a house, but the musical is an accidental cause (2. 5, 196b24–9). The housebuilding craft and the housebuilding process it causes are of a type that is non-accidentally related to the house type, but the musical type is accidentally related to it. Metaphysics Ε. 2 offers an example with a slightly different structure, closer to what we will find in spontaneous generation: a pastry chef who aims at producing sweet pastries and also, accidentally, produces health (1027a3–5). The chef’s pastry-making craft aims at making sweet pastries and so it is the non-accidental cause of the sweet pastry, insofar as it is a sweet pastry. However, this craft is only accidentally the cause of a healthy thing, when it just so happens that this sweet pastry is also healthy. As before, the point is that saying that this is a case of accidental causation—and that cases like it happen rarely—depends on identifying the pastry as belonging to two types: the healthy one and the sweet one. If the types were different, these might not be examples of accidental causation (or things that happen rarely).

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