Steven W. Halady (SUNY Buffalo)
"Merricks, Causation, and Powers"
Trenton Merricks has given a powerful argument for eliminativism, the ontological position which claims that the ordinary objects of our common sense worldview such as baseballs, do not exist. His central argument for eliminativism is the Overdetermination Argument. This argument states that objects such as baseballs would be causally irrelevant to the events their constituent particles cause, that all of the causal power lies with the particles which would compose a baseball. This leads to rampant overdetermination in any ontology that accepts the existence of these middle-sized objects, which is grounds for the rejection of their existence. I maintain that there is a key error in the Overdetermination argument, namely that Merricks does not provide any account of what is required for causation. I briefly provide an account of causation based on power properties, and then show how on this account of causation, many ordinary objects are able to avoid the Overdetermination Argument. I then defend my position against the claim that I beg the question against Merricks on the existence of ordinary objects. I do not argue that the Overdetermination Argument necessarily fails, but that its lack of an account of causation renders it weaker than it first appears.