Psychological Metaphysics

Peter A. White proposes that people basically understand causation in terms of stable, specific powers of things operating to produce effects under suitable conditions. This underpins an analysis of people’s understanding of causal processes in the physical word and of human action, which makes a radical break with the Heiderian tradition.

Psychological Metaphysics suggests that causal attribution is in the service of the person’s practical concerns and any interest in accuracy or understanding is subservient to this. A notion of regularity in the world is of no more than minor importance in causal attribution, and social cognition is not so much a matter of cognitive mechanisms or processes but more of cultural ways of thinking imposed upon tacit, unquestioned, universal assumptions.

Psychological Metaphysics incorporates not only research and theory in social cognition and developmental psychology, but also philosophy and the history of ideas. It will be challenging to everyone interested in how we try to understand the world.