Diachronic Constitution

Abstract It is often argued that constitution and causation are different kinds of dependence relations. Some have argued for a distinction between constitutive explanation of causal capacities that explain what a system would do in specific situations from causal or etiological explanations that explain why an event such as a change in the property of a system happened. In what follows we argue against the claim that causation and constitution are always distinct metaphysical relations. This paper develops a temporal account of constitution. We call this species of constitution, diachronic constitution. We show how diachronic constitution is a consequence of a common type of causation in the empirical sciences: continuous reciprocal causation, a variety of causal production instantiated in complex dynamical systems. Hence, this paper seeks to establish that constitution does not only resemble causation in certain respects. We argue for the stronger claim that constitution can be analysed in terms of causation understood as production of change. Temporalizing the constitution relation is neither as remarkable nor as problematic as it might initially seem. The idea of diachronic constitution will appear almost inevitable in the context of complex dynamical systems, given local interactions between microscale and macroscale states in such systems.