Towards a Process-Oriented Ontology by Timothy Rutzou
In the final presentation of the panel “Causal Powers in the Social Sciences” from IACR 2016, Timothy Rutzou discusses the problem of temporality, process, and change when it comes to our understanding of causation in the social world. Rutzou begins his presentation with a overview of critical realism through which he then critiques the mechanistic model of causation and its implicit Humeanism. In concluding, Rutzou suggests that Professor Stephen Mumford and Professor Rani Liil Anjum’s concept of simultaneous causation is a more fitting model for understanding causation in the social world.