Quantum Action and Substance Causation

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2025.019

Keywords

naturalism, explanation, powers, hylomorphism, Aquinas, Aristotle, wave function

Abstract

Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics defends a hylomorphic account of substance causation. Recent arguments have developed approaches informed by quantum mechanics (Koons 2021 and 2022, Simpson 2021 and 2023, Pruss 2018). While these arguments have responded to Jaegwon Kim’s critiques concerning overdetermination and causal closure, the ontological status of substantial form, especially as it applies to the category of “thermal substances,” remains an open question. In particular, do the forms of thermal substances (1) qualify as natural kinds, meeting a moderate requirement for naturalistic explanation, and (2) do they actualize the kinds of causal powers needed for substance causation in a way that avoids the event causalist’s critique of explanatory vacuity? This paper defends substance causation on both counts, by relying on a robust reading of Aquinas’s original account of substance causation and its distinction between corporeal and virtual contact. Far from problematizing these recent accounts, a robust Thomistic account in fact vindicates recent contemporary hylomorphic approaches, and even resolves some of the gaps that remain in a sound Aristotelian-Thomistic response to standard critiques concerning substance causation’s naturalistic status and explanatory power.

Author Biographies

Janice Chik Breidenbach, Ave Maria University, Oxford, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Janice Chik Breidenbach is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University. She holds research affiliations at Oxford as Member of the Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, where she was also a Visiting Research Scholar (in 2017 and 2019), and as Senior Affiliate of the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Formerly, she was Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center (2023), as well as the Barry Research Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Pennsylvania (2019-20).

Her research focuses on contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy of action, metaphysics and science, and political philosophy. Her work has been published in Synthese, the Review of Metaphysics, Routledge, New Blackfriars, University of Cambridge Press, T&T Clark Edinburgh, and other venues, while being supported by research grants from the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, the Philosophical Quarterly Research Fund, and the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education. She has given scholarly talks at universities in the US and abroad, including: Edinburgh, Oxford, Sharif University of Technology (Iran), the Fashion Institute of Technology, Holy Cross, Saint Louis University, Princeton, Cambridge, KU Leuven, University of Pennsylvania, Notre Dame, and the University of St Andrews.

Daniel Sadasivan, Ave Maria University

Dr. Daniel Sadasivan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University, having earned his PhD in physics at the George Washington University. During the completion of his PhD, he received the Parke Prize for excellence in theoretical physics as well as the SCGSR award which funded research at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. His dissertation, Unitary Bethe-Salpeter Methods in Two- and Three-Body Systems is available through the Department of Energy. In addition to his peer-reviewed publications, and academic presentations, he has served as a grant reviewer for the Department of Energy, and a peer reviewer for multiple academic journals. 

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Published

2025-10-31

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1.
CHIK BREIDENBACH, Janice and SADASIVAN, Daniel. Quantum Action and Substance Causation. Scientia et Fides. Online. 31 October 2025. Vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 135-161. [Accessed 23 December 2025]. DOI 10.12775/SetF.2025.019.

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2 (2025): Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science and Religion

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Articles: Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science and Religion

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