  A second question that Soto and Sonnenschein's work raises is whether “downward causation” is at work in cancer. Several philosophers have weighed in on this question (Malaterre 2011; Bertolaso 2016; Green 2019).  Malaterre (2011) argues that advocates of TOFT need not commit to non-reductive physicalism, or emergent properties. Instead, he argues, Soto and Sonnenschein are drawing attention to dynamic relationships between variables that supervene over molecular and cellular activities, and a “higher level,” or less granular explanation of cancer etiology may be preferred in some contexts, both for pragmatic and epistemic reasons. Malaterre makes appeal to Woodward’s (2010) argument that choice of causal variables often involves appeal to something like a notion of “proportionality,” such that, depending on the target of inquiry, we may be “led to the incorporation of more fine-grained detail in the specification of causes […] or toward specifications that abstract away from such detail” (2010, 299).