Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation

Ludger Jansen teaches philosophy at the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Münster and at the University of Rostock, where he was head of the project “Formal Causation in Aristotle and Analytic Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science” funded by the German Research Foundation. He is the author of Gruppen und Institutionen (2017) and Tun und Können (2015); and co-editor with Barry Smith of Biomedizinische Ontologie (2008) and with Christoph Jedan of Philosophische Anthropologie in der Antike (2010). Petter Sandstad is a doctoral student at the University of Rostock working on Aristotelian formal causation, and was a researcher on the project “Formal Causation in Aristotle and Analytic Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science” funded by the German Research Foundation. He has published papers on Socrates and Aristotle, as well as on contemporary metaphysics.

Introducing Formal Causation
Ludger Jansen and Petter Sandstad

Part I: Scholastic Approaches to Formal Causation




Form, Intention, Information: From Scholastic Logic to Artificial Intelligence
Gyula Klima




Formal Causation: Accidental and Substantial
David S. Oderberg

Part II: Contemporary Approaches to Formal Causation




A Non-hylomorphic Account of Formal Causation
Petter Sandstad and Ludger Jansen




Formal Causes for Powers Theorists
Giacomo Giannini and Stephen Mumford




Away with Dispositional Essences in Trope Theory
Jani Hakkarainen and Markku Keinänen




Functional Powers
Michele Paolini Paoletti

Part III: Formal Causation and Dependence




An Aristotelian Approach to Existential Dependence
Benjamin Schnieder and Jonas Werner




Finean Feature Dependence and the Aristotelian Alternative
Wolfgang Sattler




A Problem for Natural-Kind Essentialism and Formal Causes
José Tomás Alvarado and Matthew Tugby

Part IV: Formal Causation in Biology and Cognitive Sciences




Form as Cause and the Formal Cause: Aristotle’s Answer
James G. Lennox




Form, Cause, and Explanation in Biology: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective
Christopher J. Austin




Formal Explanation and Mechanisms of Conceptual Representation

Sandeep Prasada