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Causation

In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 159-213 (1986)

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  1. (1 other version)A Proposed Probabilistic Extension of the Halpern and Pearl Definition of ‘Actual Cause’.Luke Fenton-Glynn - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (4):1061-1124.
    In their article 'Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part I: Causes', Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl draw upon structural equation models to develop an attractive analysis of 'actual cause'. Their analysis is designed for the case of deterministic causation. I show that their account can be naturally extended to provide an elegant treatment of probabilistic causation.
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  • Wallace, Free Choice, and Fatalism.Gila Sher - 2015 - In Steven M. Cahn & Maureen Eckert (eds.), Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 31-56.
    In this paper I reconstruct David Foster Wallace’s argument against fatalism in his undergraduate honors thesis, “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality”. My goal is to present the argument in a clear and concise way, so that it is easy to see its main line of reasoning and potential power. A secondary goal is to offer clarificatory and critical notes on some of the issues at stake. The reconstruction reveals interesting connections between Wallace’s argument and John MacFarlane’s (...)
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  • Unifying morality’s influence on non-moral judgments: The relevance of alternative possibilities.Jonathan Phillips, Jamie B. Luguri & Joshua Knobe - 2015 - Cognition 145 (C):30-42.
    Past work has demonstrated that people’s moral judgments can influence their judgments in a number of domains that might seem to involve straightforward matters of fact, including judgments about freedom, causation, the doing/allowing distinction, and intentional action. The present studies explore whether the effect of morality in these four domains can be explained by changes in the relevance of alternative possibilities. More precisely, we propose that moral judgment influences the degree to which people regard certain alternative possibilities as relevant, which (...)
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  • A Defense of the Contrastive Theory of Causation.Esteban Céspedes - 2015 - Critica 47 (140):93-99.
    An argument proposed by Steglich-Petersen (2012) establishes that while contrastive causation can be applied to general causation and causal explanation, it is a mistake to consider it in cases of singular causation. I attempt to show that there is no mistake. Steglich-Petersen’s argument does not seem to be strong enough and is actually circular. Furthermore, I briefly argue that even if we take his argument to be valid, there is still a response from the side of contrastive causation.
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  • An improved probabilistic account of counterfactual reasoning.Christopher G. Lucas & Charles Kemp - 2015 - Psychological Review 122 (4):700-734.
    When people want to identify the causes of an event, assign credit or blame, or learn from their mistakes, they often reflect on how things could have gone differently. In this kind of reasoning, one considers a counterfactual world in which some events are different from their real-world counterparts and considers what else would have changed. Researchers have recently proposed several probabilistic models that aim to capture how people do (or should) reason about counterfactuals. We present a new model and (...)
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  • Ymmärtäminen ja selittäminen ihmistieteissä.Panu Raatikainen - 2015 - Kasvatus 46:281-286.
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  • Theories of persistence.Ryan Wasserman - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):243-250.
    The debate over persistence is often cast as a disagreement between two rival theories—the perdurantist theory that objects persist through time by having different temporal parts at different times, and the endurantist theory that objects persist through time by being wholly present at different times. This way of framing the debate over persistence involves both an important insight and an important error. Unfortunately, the error is often embraced and the insight is often ignored. This paper aims to correct both of (...)
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  • Causal reasoning in economics: a selective exploration of semantic, epistemic and dynamical aspects.François Claveau - 2013 - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 6 (2):122.
    Economists reason causally. Like many other scientists, they aim at formulating justified causal claims about their object of study. This thesis contributes to our understanding of how causal reasoning proceeds in economics. By using the research on the causes of unemployment as a case study, three questions are adressed. What are the meanings of causal claims? How can a causal claim be adequately supported by evidence? How are causal beliefs affected by incoming facts? In the process of answering these semantic, (...)
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  • Events and their counterparts.Neil McDonnell - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (5):1291-1308.
    This paper argues that a counterpart-theoretic treatment of events, combined with a counterfactual theory of causation, can help resolve three puzzles from the causation literature. First, CCT traces the apparent contextual shifts in our causal attributions to shifts in the counterpart relation which obtains in those contexts. Second, being sensitive to shifts in the counterpart relation can help diagnose what goes wrong in certain prominent examples where the transitivity of causation appears to fail. Third, CCT can help us resurrect the (...)
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  • Transitivity and Proportionality in Causation.Neil McDonnell - 2018 - Synthese 195 (3):1211-1229.
    It is commonly assumed that causation is transitive and in this paper I aim to reconcile this widely-held assumption with apparent evidence to the contrary. I will discuss a familiar approach to certain well-known counterexamples, before introducing a more resistant sort of case of my own. I will then offer a novel solution, based on Yablo’s proportionality principle, that succeeds in even these more resistant cases. There is a catch, however. Either proportionality is a constraint on which causal claims are (...)
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  • Toward a propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism for the life sciences.Lane DesAutels - 2015 - Synthese 192 (9):2921-2953.
    In what follows, I suggest that it makes good sense to think of the truth of the probabilistic generalizations made in the life sciences as metaphysically grounded in stochastic mechanisms in the world. To further understand these stochastic mechanisms, I take the general characterization of mechanism offered by MDC :1–25, 2000) and explore how it fits with several of the going philosophical accounts of chance: subjectivism, frequentism, Lewisian best-systems, and propensity. I argue that neither subjectivism, frequentism, nor a best-system-style interpretation (...)
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  • Causal V. Positivist Theories of Scientific Explanation: A Defense of the Causal Theory.Douglas Hans Rice - 1996 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Three fundamental claims are defended in this dissertation. First, the influence of Hume's epistemological program and his skepticism with respect to causal knowledge have hindered the development of an adequate theory of scientific explanation. Second, Hume's conception of causal knowledge is outdated, and knowledge of causation should be relieved of the special epistemological burden placed on it by Hume's followers. Finally, once relieved of this Humean epistemological burden, the causal theory of scientific explanation is superior to alternatives lying in the (...)
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  • Path-bound normativity and a Confucian case of historical holism.Yujian Zheng - 2022 - Asian Philosophy 32 (2):215-235.
    I bring a new thesis of historical holism to bear on the well-known Mencius-Xunzi dispute about xing/性. The significance of doing so seems bi-directional: in the first direction, i.e. applying the...
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  • Grounding in the image of causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):49-100.
    Grounding is often glossed as metaphysical causation, yet no current theory of grounding looks remotely like a plausible treatment of causation. I propose to take the analogy between grounding and causation seriously, by providing an account of grounding in the image of causation, on the template of structural equation models for causation.
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  • (1 other version)Comment la procrastination est-elle possible? Procrastination, souci de soi et identité personnelle.Christine Tappolet - 2013 - Repha 7:13-43.
    As common experience confirms, procrastination seems not only possible, but widespread. However, procrastination should not be taken for granted. Often, the procrastinator harms herself knowingly. It thus clearly seems that such a person lacks the self-concern that usually characterises us. After having spelled out what procrastination is, and having explored its main varieties, I consider the relation between procrastination and risk-taking. After this, I discuss the implications of this phenomenon for the debates about personal identity. The upshot, I argue, is (...)
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  • Necessarily Maybe. Quantifiers, Modality and Vagueness.Alessandro Torza - 2015 - In Quantifiers, Quantifiers, and Quantifiers. Themes in Logic, Metaphysics, and Language. (Synthese Library vol. 373). Springer. pp. 367-387.
    Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...)
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  • Can ANOVA measure causal strength?Robert Northcott - 2008 - Quarterly Review of Biology 83 (1):47-55.
    The statistical technique of analysis of variance is often used by biologists as a measure of causal factors’ relative strength or importance. I argue that it is a tool ill suited to this purpose, on several grounds. I suggest a superior alternative, and outline some implications. I finish with a diagnosis of the source of error – an unwitting inheritance of bad philosophy that now requires the remedy of better philosophy.
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  • Two-dimensionalism and the social character of meaning.Derek Ball - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (3):567-595.
    This paper develops and critiques the two-dimensionalist account of mental content developed by David Chalmers. I first explain Chalmers's account and show that it resists some popular criticisms. I then argue that the main interest of two-dimensionalism lies in its accounts of cognitive significance and of the connection between conceivability and possibility. These accounts hinge on the claim that some thoughts have a primary intension that is necessarily true. In this respect, they are Carnapian, and subject to broadly Quinean attack. (...)
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  • Existence, Fundamentality, and the Scope of Ontology.Uriah Kriegel - 2015 - Argumenta 1 (1):97-109.
    A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer a (...)
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  • A Closer Look at Trumping.Sara Bernstein - 2015 - Acta Analytica 30 (1):1-22.
    This paper argues that so-called “trumping preemption” is in fact overdetermination or early preemption, and is thus not a distinctive form of redundant causation. I draw a novel lesson from cases thought to be trumping: that the boundary between preemption and overdetermination should be reconsidered.
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  • A Defense of Nonreductive Mental Causation.Andrew Russo - 2013 - Dissertation, The University of Oklahoma
    Mental causation is a problem and not just a problem for the nonphysicalist. One of the many lessons learned from Jaegwon Kim’s writings in the philosophy of mind is that mental causation is a problem for the nonreductive physicalist as well. A central component of the common sense picture we have of ourselves as persons is that our beliefs and desires causally explain our actions. But the completeness of the “brain sciences” threatens this picture. If all of our actions are (...)
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  • Omission impossible.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (10):2575-2589.
    This paper gives a framework for understanding causal counterpossibles, counterfactuals imbued with causal content whose antecedents appeal to metaphysically impossible worlds. Such statements are generated by omissive causal claims that appeal to metaphysically impossible events, such as “If the mathematician had not failed to prove that 2+2=5, the math textbooks would not have remained intact.” After providing an account of impossible omissions, the paper argues for three claims: (i) impossible omissions play a causal role in the actual world, (ii) causal (...)
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  • Why the Counterfactualist Should Still Worry About Downward Causation.Lei Zhong - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (1):159-171.
    In Zhong (Philos Phenomenol Res 83:129–147, 2011; Analysis 72:75–85, 2012), I argued that, contrary to what many people might expect, the counterfactual theory of causation will generate (rather than solve) the exclusion problem. Recently some philosophers raise an incisive objection to this argument. They contend that my argument fails as it equivocates between different notions of a physical realizer (see Christensen and Kallestrup in Analysis 72:513–517, 2012). However, I find that their criticism doesn’t threaten the central idea of my view. (...)
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  • The Role Functionalist Theory of Absences.Justin Tiehen - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (3):505-519.
    Functionalist theories have been proposed for just about everything: mental states, dispositions, moral properties, truth, causation, and much else. The time has come for a functionalist theory of nothing. Or, more accurately, a role functionalist theory of those absences that are causes and effects.
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  • Epistemic causality and evidence-based medicine.Federica Russo & Jon Williamson - 2011 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33 (4).
    Causal claims in biomedical contexts are ubiquitous albeit they are not always made explicit. This paper addresses the question of what causal claims mean in the context of disease. It is argued that in medical contexts causality ought to be interpreted according to the epistemic theory. The epistemic theory offers an alternative to traditional accounts that cash out causation either in terms of “difference-making” relations or in terms of mechanisms. According to the epistemic approach, causal claims tell us about which (...)
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  • Causation in a timeless world.Sam Baron & Kristie Miller - 2014 - Synthese 191 (12):2867-2886.
    This paper offers a new way to evaluate counterfactual conditionals on the supposition that actually, there is no time. We then parlay this method of evaluation into a way of evaluating causal claims. Our primary aim is to preserve, at a minimum, the assertibility of certain counterfactual and causal claims once time has been excised from reality. This is an important first step in a more general reconstruction project that has two important components. First, recovering our ordinary language claims involving (...)
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  • (1 other version)Inference to the Best explanation.Peter Lipton - 2005 - In Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 193.
    Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given hypothesis. Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or neither. Occasionally, these evidential judgments can be made on deductive grounds. If an experimental result strictly contradicts a hypothesis, then the truth of (...)
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  • Don't Ask, Look! Linguistic Corpora as a Tool for Conceptual Analysis.Roland Bluhm - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico. pp. 7-15.
    Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...)
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  • Interventionism and the exclusion problem.Yasmin Bassi - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
    Jaegwon Kim (1998a, 2005) claims that his exclusion problem follows a priori for the non-reductive physicalist given her commitment to five apparently inconsistent theses: mental causation, non-identity, supervenience, causal closure and non-overdetermination. For Kim, the combination of these theses entails that mental properties are a priori excluded as causes, forcing the non-reductive physicalist to accept either epiphenomenalism, or some form of reduction. In this thesis, I argue that Kim’s exclusion problem depends on a particular conception of causation, namely sufficient production, (...)
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  • Adaptación y función - El papel de los conceptos funcionales en la teoría de la selección natural darwiniana.Santiago Ginnobili - 2009 - Ludus Vitalis 17 (31):3-24.
    La discusión acerca de funciones es de larga data en filosofía. Normalmente se describe a la revolución científica del siglo XVII como eliminando las causas finales y la teleología de la física. Sin embargo, el lenguaje funcional cumple un papel central en ciertas áreas de la práctica biológica. Esto ha llevado a muchos filósofos a intentar elucidar el concepto de función, en algunos casos para defender la relevancia de estos usos, en otros para mostrar que se trata de meras formas (...)
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  • La importancia del padre Fabro en la búsqueda de un tomismo esencial.Arzobispo de La Plata & Buenos Aires-Argentina - forthcoming - Sapientia.
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  • Married Causes.Jeff Engelhardt - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (2):161-180.
    Many philosophers accept some version of a principle that says for all x, if x exists, then x plays a unique causal role. After briefly clarifying one version of the principle in Section 1, Section 2 gives reasons to doubt it by showing that there are non-identical “causal indiscernibles”—I call them “married causes.” Section 3 then sketches a few philosophical puzzles for which married causes may be helpful.
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  • Agent causation in a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.Jonathan D. Jacobs & Timothy O'Connor - 2013 - In Sophie Gibb, E. J. Lowe & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Mental Causation and Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Freedom and moral responsibility have one foot in the practical realm of human affairs and the other in the esoteric realm of fundamental metaphysics—or so we believe. This has been denied, especially in the metaphysics-bashing era occupying the first two-thirds or so of the twentieth century, traces of which linger in the present day. But the reasons for this denial seem to us quite implausible. Certainly, the argument for the general bankruptcy of metaphysics has been soundly discredited. Arguments from Strawson (...)
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  • Causality Reunified.Michael Strevens - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (2):299-320.
    Hall has recently argued that there are two concepts of causality, picking out two different kinds of causal relation. McGrath, and Hitchcock and Knobe, have recently argued that the facts about causality depend on what counts as a “default” or “normal” state, or even on the moral facts. In the light of these claims you might be tempted to agree with Skyrms that causal relations constitute, metaphysically speaking, an “amiable jumble”, or with Cartwright that ‘causation’, though a single word, encompasses (...)
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  • How Can Causal Explanations Explain?Jon Williamson - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (2):257-275.
    The mechanistic and causal accounts of explanation are often conflated to yield a ‘causal-mechanical’ account. This paper prizes them apart and asks: if the mechanistic account is correct, how can causal explanations be explanatory? The answer to this question varies according to how causality itself is understood. It is argued that difference-making, mechanistic, dualist and inferentialist accounts of causality all struggle to yield explanatory causal explanations, but that an epistemic account of causality is more promising in this regard.
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  • (1 other version)Two Problems with the Socio-Relational Critique of Distributive Egalitarianism.Christian Seidel - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico. pp. 525-535.
    Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...)
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  • Causal Decision Theory: A Counterexample.Arif Ahmed - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (2):289-306.
    The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject it.
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  • Przyczyna i Wyjaśnianie: Studium Z Filozofii i Metodologii Nauk.Paweł Kawalec - 2006 - Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
    Przedmowa Problematyka związana z zależnościami przyczynowymi, ich modelowaniem i odkrywa¬niem, po długiej nieobecności w filozofii i metodologii nauk, budzi współcześnie duże zainteresowanie. Wiąże się to przede wszystkim z dynamicznym rozwojem, zwłaszcza od lat 1990., technik obli¬czeniowych. Wypracowane w tym czasie sieci bayesowskie uznaje się za matematyczny język przyczynowości. Pozwalają one na daleko idącą auto¬matyzację wnioskowań, co jest także zachętą do podjęcia prób algorytmiza¬cji odkrywania przyczyn. Na potrzeby badań naukowych, które pozwalają na przeprowadzenie eksperymentu z randomizacją, standardowe metody ustalania zależności przyczynowych (...)
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  • Counterfactuals, Autonomy and Downward Causation: Reply to Zhong.Dwayne Moore - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (3):831-839.
    In recent papers, Lei Zhong argues that the autonomy solution to the causal exclusion problem is unavailable to anyone that endorses the counterfactual model of causation. The linchpin of his argument is that the counterfactual theory entails the downward causation principle, which conflicts with the autonomy solution. In this note I argue that the counterfactual theory does not entail the downward causation principle, so it is possible to advocate for the autonomy solution to the causal exclusion problem from within the (...)
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  • What is the 'Cause' in Causal Decision Theory?Christopher Hitchcock - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (1):129-146.
    A simple counterfactual theory of causation fails because of problems with cases of preemption. This might lead us to expect that preemption will raise problems for counterfactual theories of other concepts that have a causal dimension. Indeed, examples are easy to find. But there is one case where we do not find this. Several versions of causal decision theory are formulated using counterfactuals. This might lead us to expect that these theories will yield the wrong recommendations in cases of preemption. (...)
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  • Introduction to Special Issue on 'Actual Causation'.Michael Baumgartner & Luke Glynn - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (1):1-8.
    An actual cause of some token effect is itself a token event that helped to bring about that effect. The notion of an actual cause is different from that of a potential cause – for example a pre-empted backup – which had the capacity to bring about the effect, but which wasn't in fact operative on the occasion in question. Sometimes actual causes are also distinguished from mere background conditions: as when we judge that the struck match was a cause (...)
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  • Causation, Pluralism and Responsibility.Francis Longworth - 2006 - Philosophica 77 (1).
    Counterfactual theories of causation have had difficulty in delivering the intuitively correct verdicts for cases of causation involving preemption, without generating further counterexamples. Hall has offered a pluralistic theory of causation, according to which there are two concepts of causation: counterfactual dependence and production. Hall’s theory does deliver the correct verdicts for many of the problematic kinds of preemption. It also deals successfully with cases of causation by omission, which have proved stubborn counterexamples to physical process theories of causation. Hall’s (...)
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  • A Regularity Theoretic Approach to Actual Causation.Michael Baumgartner - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (1):85-109.
    The majority of the currently flourishing theories of actual causation are located in a broadly counterfactual framework that draws on structural equations. In order to account for cases of symmetric overdeterminiation and preemption, these theories resort to rather intricate analytical tools, most of all, to what Hitchcock has labeled explicitly nonforetracking counterfactuals. This paper introduces a regularity theoretic approach to actual causation that only employs material conditionals, standard Boolean minimization procedures, and a stability condition that regulates the behavior of causal (...)
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  • Concepts, analysis, generics and the canberra plan.Mark Johnston & Sarah-Jane Leslie - 2012 - Philosophical Perspectives 26 (1):113-171.
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  • Cue competition effects and young children's causal and counterfactual inferences.Teresa McCormack, Stephen Andrew Butterfill, Christoph Hoerl & Patrick Burns - 2009 - Developmental Psychology 45 (6):1563-1575.
    The authors examined cue competition effects in young children using the blicket detector paradigm, in which objects are placed either singly or in pairs on a novel machine and children must judge which objects have the causal power to make the machine work. Cue competition effects were found in a 5- to 6-year-old group but not in a 4-year-old group. Equivalent levels of forward and backward blocking were found in the former group. Children's counterfactual judgments were subsequently examined by asking (...)
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  • Graded Causation and Defaults.Joseph Y. Halpern & Christopher Hitchcock - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):413-457.
    Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has shown that judgments of actual causation are often influenced by consideration of defaults, typicality, and normality. A number of philosophers and computer scientists have also suggested that an appeal to such factors can help deal with problems facing existing accounts of actual causation. This article develops a flexible formal framework for incorporating defaults, typicality, and normality into an account of actual causation. The resulting account takes actual causation to be both graded and (...)
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  • A peculiarity in pearl’s logic of interventionist counterfactuals.Jiji Zhang, Wai-Yin Lam & Rafael De Clercq - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (5):783-794.
    We examine a formal semantics for counterfactual conditionals due to Judea Pearl, which formalizes the interventionist interpretation of counterfactuals central to the interventionist accounts of causation and explanation. We show that a characteristic principle validated by Pearl’s semantics, known as the principle of reversibility, states a kind of irreversibility: counterfactual dependence (in David Lewis’s sense) between two distinct events is irreversible. Moreover, we show that Pearl’s semantics rules out only mutual counterfactual dependence, not cyclic dependence in general. This, we argue, (...)
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  • Difference‐Making in Epistemology.Juan Comesaña & Carolina Sartorio - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):368-387.
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  • Causal Necessity in Aristotle.Nathanael Stein - 2012 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (5):855-879.
    Like many realists about causation and causal powers, Aristotle uses the language of necessity when discussing causation, and he appears to think that by invoking necessity, he is clarifying the manner in which causes bring about or determine their effects. In so doing, he would appear to run afoul of Humean criticisms of the notion of a necessary connection between cause and effect. The claim that causes necessitate their effects may be understood—or attacked—in several ways, however, and so whether the (...)
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  • Interventionist counterfactuals.Rachael Briggs - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (1):139-166.
    A number of recent authors (Galles and Pearl, Found Sci 3 (1):151–182, 1998; Hiddleston, Noûs 39 (4):232–257, 2005; Halpern, J Artif Intell Res 12:317–337, 2000) advocate a causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals. But the precise logical significance of the causal modeling semantics remains murky. Particularly important, yet particularly under-explored, is its relationship to the similarity-based semantics for counterfactuals developed by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, 1973b). The causal modeling semantics is both an account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and (...)
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