Can Indirect Causation be Real?

Causal realists maintain that the causal relation consists in “something more” than its relata. Specifying this relation in nonreductive terms is however notoriously difficult. Michael Tooley has advanced a plausible account avoiding some of the relation’s most obvious difficulties, particularly where these concern the notion of a cross-temporal “connection.” His account distinguishes discrete from nondiscrete causation, where the latter is suitable to the continuity of cross-temporal causation. I argue, however, that such accounts face conceptual difficulties dating from Zeno’s time. A Bergsonian resolution of these difficulties appears to entail that, for the causal realist, there can be no indirect causal relations of the sort envisioned by Tooley. A consequence of this discussion is that the causal realist must conceive all causal relations as ultimately direct.     

Apparent molar volumes of aqueous calcium chloride to 250°C, 400 bars,and from molalities of 0.242 to 6.150

Relative densities of CaCl ₂ (aq) with 0.22ml(mol-kg^–1)6.150 were measured with vibrating- tube densimeters between 25 and 250°C and near 70 and 400 bars. Apparent molar volumes V calculated from the measured density differences were represented with the Pitzer ioninteraction treatment, with appropriate expressions chosen for the temperature and pressure dependence of the virial coefficients of the model. It was found that the partial molar volume at infinite dilution V ^o , and the second and third virial coefficients B ^V and C ^V , were necessary to represent V near the estimated experimental uncertainty. The ionic-strength dependent ^(1)v term in the B ^V coefficient was included in the fit. The representation for V has been integrated with respect to pressure to establish the pressure dependence of excess free energies over the temperature range studied. The volumetric data indicate that the logarithm of the mean ionic activity coefficient, ln ±(CaCl ₂ ), increases by a maximum of 0.3 at 400 bars, 250°C, and 6 mol-kg^–1 as compared with its value at saturation pressure.