Causal Efficacy

"Kimball on Whitehead on Perception." Process Studies 22:1 (Winter 1993) A response to Robert H. Kimball's charge (which may be found here) that A. N. Whitehead's account of perception is incoherent. Kimball argued that Whitehead's account failed to reconcile two traditional theories of perception: phenomenological (sense-data) theory and causal (physiological) theory. I argue that Kimball's charge results from a misguided attempt to place Whitehead's theory within the parameters of a debate between two traditional theories. Instead, Whitehead supersedes that debate by offering-via the explanatory notions "perception in the mode of causal efficacy" and "perception in the mode of presentational immediacy"-a more comprehensive picture.

Given the amount of literature devoted to the reasoning used in Darwin's Origin of Species, an interpretation seeking to revise the standard take on Darwin's methodology is unexpected. Yet, Richards (1997, 1998, 2005) challenges the view that Darwin drew an analogy in the Origin on the grounds that such a strategy could not support the possibility of a new species emerging. I suggest, however, that how one interprets causal efficacy is intimately connected with Darwin's use of analogy. A more robust conception of natural selection, as found in the Origin, supports the standard interpretation, significantly weakening Richards' charge of a paradox.