Non-reductive interventionist theories of causation and methodologies of causal reasoning embedded in that theoretical framework have become increasingly popular in recent years. This paper argues that one variant of an interventionist account of causation, viz. the one presented, for example, in Woodward (2003), is unsuited as a theoretical fundament of interventionist methodologies of causal reasoning, because it renders corresponding methodologies incapable of uncovering a causal structure in a finite number of steps. This finding runs counter to Woodward's own assessment and (...) to other recent studies which presume that Woodward's version of interventionism is effectively applicable to uncover causal structures, e.g. Campbell (2007) or Shapiro and Sober (2007). (shrink)

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 (...) inferences (e.g., diagnoses and prognoses) are appropriate, rather than about the presence of some physical causal relation analogous to distance or gravitational attraction. It is shown that the epistemic theory has important consequences for medical practice, in particular with regard to evidence-based causal assessment. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for a wider acceptance of a probabilistic approach to causation in negligence. This acceptance would help to remove much of the incoherence which has come to afflict the English law of personal injury law. This incoherence can also be found in other common law jurisdictions (notably those of the United States, Canada and Australia). Concentrating upon recent UK case law, the argument opposes the contention that ‘naked statistics’ can play no role in establishing causation. The (...) argument is controversial but it can be reduced to three unremarkable grounds: (1) With its acceptance (albeit in certain carefully prescribed circumstances) of liability for a negligently increased risk which has eventuated, the common law has already embraced a probabilistic conception of causation; (2) The English common law already employs a probabilistic (frequentist) approach to identifying coincidences; and (3) With the ‘balance of probabilities’ as the standard of proof in civil cases, the common law has long had a probabilistic (epistemic) concept at its core. Probabilistic approaches (at both the type and token level) are shown to be consistent with laypersons’ understanding of the concepts such as risk, chance, odds and likelihood. Moreover, a wider acceptance of a probabilistic perspective on causation would entail no major challenge to the fundamental aims of tort, viz. deterrence and corrective justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Michael Moore’s and Jonathan Schaffer’s views on the ontology of omissions in context of their stances on the problem of omissive causation. First, I consider, from a general point of view, the question of the ontology of omissions, and how it relates to the problem of omissive causation. Then I describe Moore’s and Schaffer’s particular views on omissions and how they combine with their stances on the problem of omissive causation. I charge Moore and Schaffer (...) with inconsistencies and insufficiencies within their overall theories, and consider their replies. Finally, I propose my own view on the ontology of omissions and solution to the problem of omissive causation. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon, or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein, Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627–653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level (...) causal process. In a 2009 essay entitled “Productivity, relevance, and natural selection,” Stuart Glennan argues in reply that natural selection is produced by causal pro- cesses operating at the level of individual organisms, but he maintains that there is no causal productivity at the population level. However, there are, he claims, many population-level properties that are causally relevant to the dynamics of evolution- ary processes. Glennan’s claims rely on a causal pluralism that holds that there are two types of causes: causal production and causal relevance. Without calling into question Glennan’s causal pluralism or his claims concerning the causal relevance of natural selection, I argue that natural selection does in fact exhibit causal production at the population level. It is true that natural selection does not fit with accounts of mechanisms that involve decomposition of wholes into parts, such as Glennan’s own. However, it does fit with causal production accounts that do not require decomposition, such as Salmon’s Mark Transmission account, given the extent to which populations act as interacting “objects” in the process of natural selection. (shrink)

What has the dispositional analysis of properties and laws (e.g. Molnar, Powers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003; Mumford, Laws in nature, Routledge London, 2004; Bird, Nature’s metaphysics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007) to offer to the scientific understanding of physical properties?—The article provides an answer to this question for the case of spacetime points and their metrical properties in General Relativity. The analysis shows that metrical properties are not ‘powers’, i.e. they cannot be understood as producing the effects of spacetime on (...) matter with metaphysical necessity. Instead they possess categorical characteristics which, in connection with specific laws, explain those effects. Thus, the properties of spacetime do not favor the metaphysics of powers with respect to properties and laws. (shrink)

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 (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

I argue that four-dimensionalism and the desire satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible. For every person whose desires are satisfied, there will be many shorter-lived individuals (‘person-stages’ or ‘subpersons’) who share the person’s desires but who do not exist long enough to see those desires satisfied; not only this, but in many cases their desires are frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. I call this the frustrating (...) problem for four-dimensionalism. In the first half of the paper I lay the groundwork for understanding the frustrating problem, and then in the second half, I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist, (i) the Parfit (1984) inspired claim that identity is not what matters, (ii) the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan (2010), (iii) the indirect concern account of Hudson (2001), (iv) the sensible stages account of Lewis (1986), (v) a multiple-concepts account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) a No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states and thus no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions will help the four-dimensionalist; she does better to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism. (shrink)

Several prominent, contemporary theories of actual causation maintain that in order for something to count as an actual cause (in the circumstances) of some known effect, the potential cause must be a difference-maker with respect to the effect in some restricted range of circumstances. Although the theories disagree about how to restrict the range of circumstances that must be considered in deciding whether something counts as an actual cause of a known effect, the theories agree that at least some counterfactual (...) circumstances must be considered. I argue that the theories are still too permissive in the range of counterfactual circumstances they admit for consideration, and I present simple counter-examples that make use of this overpermissiveness. (shrink)

This paper is about the metaphysical debate whether objects persist over time by the selfsame object existing at different times (nowadays called “endurance” by metaphysicians), or by different temporal parts, or stages, existing at different times (called “perdurance”). I aim to illuminate the debate by using some elementary kinematics and real analysis: resources which metaphysicians have, surprisingly, not availed themselves of. There are two main results, which are of interest to both endurantists and perdurantists. (1) I describe a precise formal (...) equivalence between the way that the two metaphysical positions represent the motion of the objects of classical mechanics (both point-particles and continua). (2) I make precise, and prove a result about, the idea that the persistence of objects moving in a void is to be analysed in terms of tracking the continuous curves in spacetime that connect points occupied by matter. The result is entirely elementary: it is a corollary of the Heine–Borel theorem. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical work on causation is a tangled mess of disparate aims, approaches, and accounts. Best to cut through it by means of ruthless but, hopefully, sensible judgments. The ones that follow are designed to sketch the most fruitful avenues for future work.

This essay enriches causal models capturing the propagation of prejudice, bias, and other aggregative social mechanisms, negative or positive. These explananda include the reinforcement of economic inequality, “mob-like” behavior, peer pressure, and the establishment of social norms. The stage is set by introducing various forms of redundant causation and discussing some difficulties with mainstream preemption. Next the main proposal extends current representations of aggregative social mechanisms in two respects. First, it is more nuanced, as it identifies three distinct kinds of (...) inferences: relevance of causes to effects, degree of redundancy of an effect, and the influence that causes exert on other causes. Second, it offers a quantitative—as opposed to merely qualitative—distinction between the causal contribution of preempting and preempted causes. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that mind-body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every (...) introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation. (shrink)

Loewer (in: Physicalism and its discontents, 2001; Philos Phenomenol Res 65:655–663, 2002; in: Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, 2007) has argued that the nonreductive physicalist should respond to the exclusion problem by endorsing the overdetermination entailed by their view. Kim’s (Physicalism, or something near enough, 2005; in: Contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, 2007) argument against this reply is based on the premise that mental causation must be a productive relation in order to sustain human agency. In this (...) paper, I challenge the premise that mental causation is a productive relation by appealing to the underlying double prevention structure of the physiological mechanisms of human action. Since the causal pathways from an agent’s mental events to bodily movement involves an absence, mental causation is not productive. This places Kim in a troublesome dilemma in his debate with Loewer: either surrender mental causation or deny that causation is a productive relation. With the support offered for productive mental causation undermined, responses to the exclusion problem based on accepting overdetermination remain viable options for the nonreductive physicalist. (shrink)

The concept of explanation is central to scientific practice. However, scientists explain phenomena in very different ways. That is, there are many different kinds of explanation; e.g. causal, mechanistic, statistical, or equilibrium explanations. In light of the myriad kinds of explanation identified in the literature, most philosophers of science have adopted some kind of explanatory pluralism. While pluralism about explanation seems plausible, it faces a dilemma Explanation beyond causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 39–56, 2018). Either there is nothing that (...) unifies all instances of scientific explanation that makes them count as explanations, or there is some set of unifying features, which seems incompatible with explanatory pluralism. Different philosophers have adopted different horns of this dilemma. Some argue that no unified account of explanation is possible. Others suggest that there is a set of necessary features that can unify all explanations under a single account Explanation beyond causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 74–95, 2018; Strevens in Depth: an account of scientific explanation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2008). In this paper, we argue that none of the features identified by existing accounts of explanation are necessary for all explanations. However, we argue that a unified account can still be provided that accommodates pluralism. This can be accomplished, we argue, by reconceiving of scientific explanation as a cluster concept: there are multiple subsets of features that are sufficient for providing an explanation, but no single feature is necessary for all explanations. Reconceiving of explanation as a cluster concept not only accounts for the diversity of kinds of explanations, but also accounts for the widespread disagreement in the explanation literature and enables explanatory pluralism to avoid Pincock’s dilemma. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical debate on causation and causal explanation in the biological and biomedical sciences has focused on the notion of mechanism. Mechanisms, their nature and epistemic roles have been tackled by a range of so-called neo-mechanistic theories, and widely discussed. Without denying the merits of this approach, our paper aims to show how lately it has failed to give proper credit to processes, which are central to the field, especially of contemporary molecular biology. Processes can be summed (...) up in the notion of ‘pathway’, which is far from being just equivalent to that of ‘mechanism’ and has a profound epistemological and explanatory relevance. It is argued that an adequate consideration of pathways impels some rethinking of scientific explanation in molecular biology, namely its functional and contextual features. A number of examples are given to suggest that the focus of philosophical attention in this disciplinary field should shift from the notion of mechanism to the notion of pathway. (shrink)

Šio straipsnio tikslas – bendrais bruožais aptarti reduktyvizmo raišką šiuolaikinėje analitinėje sąmonės, moralės, veiksmo ir priežastingumo filosofijoje bei įvertinti redukcijos strategijų šiose filosofijos šakose panašumus ir skirtumus. Straipsnyje aptariamos šešios reduktyvizmo strategijos – sąvokų sinonimija paremta redukcija, a posteriori tapatybės tezė, analitinis funkcionalizmas, anomalusis monizmas, analizė pasitelkiant pareities sąvoką, konceptualinė analizė be sąvokų sinonimijos – ir konstatuojama, kad skirtingose filosofijos srityse šios strategijos reiškiasi skirtingai, taip pat yra skirtingai kritikuojamos ir interpretuojamos. Straipsnyje mėginama paaiškinti kai kuriuos šių skirtumų ir daroma (...) išvada, kad šiuolaikinėje analitinėje filosofijoje neperspektyvu kalbėti apie reduktyvizmą apskritai, kaip vieną visas sritis apimantį reiškinį, paremtą visas reduktyvistines koncepcijas vienijančiu reduktyvizmo modeliu, forma ar vizija. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that natural selection explains the rise of adaptive complexity. Razeto-Barry and Frick have recently argued in favour of this view, dubbing it the Creative View. I argue that the Creative View is mistaken if it claims that natural selection serves to answer Paley’s question. This is shown by a case that brings out the contrastive structure inherent in this demand for explanation. There is, however, a rather trivial sense in which specific environmental conditions are crucial for (...) the rise of specific adaptations, but this is hardly what opponents of the Creative View are denying. (shrink)

The paper takes a detailed look at a surprising new aspect of the dynamics of rigid bodies. Far from the usual consideration of rigid body theory as a merely technical chapter of classical physics, I demonstrate here that there are solutions to the conservation equations of mechanics that imply the spontaneous, unpredictable splitting of a rigid body in free rotation, something that has direct implications for the problem of causality. The paper also shows that the instability revealed in indeterminist splitting (...) processes does not depend solely on the bodies’ inertial properties but also on the number of dimensions of the physical space they inhabit. The paper concludes with a conjecture on the behavior of rigid bodies in four-dimensional space. (shrink)

This thesis will survey several prominent approaches to analysing causation, discuss their differences and similarities, and look at a number of problems which are common to all of them. I will be arguing for the following claims about how we should approach the process of analysing causation. Firstly, I will be arguing that a reductive analysis is desirable, since if we can reductively analyse causation in terms of something empirically accessible, we can explain how it is possible to know anything (...) about causation. I will argue that to reductively analyse causation is to find out what kind of facts ground causal facts. Secondly, I will argue, following Hall and Strevens, that there are two kinds of causation, causal difference making and causal influence. This two-tiered approach explains the cases where we are tempted to ascribe conflicting characteristics to our concept of causation. Thirdly, I will argue that causal influence grounds causal difference making and that it does so necessarily. That the grounding relation holds necessarily is important for defending the two-tiered approach against the objection that it would yield a disjunctive account. (shrink)

Causation is important when considering: how an organism maintains health; why disease arises in a healthy person; and, how one may intervene to change the course of a disease. This paper explores the form of causative relationships in health, disease and intervention, with particular regard to the pathological and biopsychosocial models. Consistent with the philosophical view of dispositionalism, we believe that objects are the fundamental relata of causation. By accepting the broad scope of the biopsychosocial model, we argue that psychological (...) and social constructs be considered objects. We think that this ‘biopsychosocial dispositionalism’ offers the flexibility required to describe causation throughout health, disease and intervention pathways. When constructing mechanistic chains to describe causative pathways, we argue that an object will causally connect with others through actions; transfers of energy from one object to another, initiated by the manifestation of one or more dispositional property. Finally, our analysis of causative interactions utilises the concept that a common form of interaction exists between disease and intervention pathways. This common form will always be an object, but the mode of interaction will vary with each disease. We describe how intervention may act through objects being shared between converging mechanistic chains, or through the removal and/or insertion of objects in such chains. We believe that this analysis provides novel insight to the forms of causative transactions that can occur. In addition, we hope that the findings of this analysis represent the first step towards developing a framework for appraising the composition of mechanistic theories. (shrink)

A combination of process and counterfactual theories of causation is proposed with the aim of preserving the strengths of each of the approaches while avoiding their shortcomings. The basis for the combination, or hybrid, view is the need, common to both accounts, of imposing a stability requirement on the causal relation.

Mechanism is undoubtedly a causal concept, in the sense that ordinary definitions and philosophical analyses explicate the concept in terms of other causal concepts such as production and interaction. Given this fact, many philosophers have supposed that analyses of the concept of mechanism, while they might appeal to philosophical theories about the nature of causation, could do little to inform such theories. On the other hand, methods of causal inference and explanation appeal to mechanisms. Discovering a mechanism is the gold (...) standard for establishing and explaining causal connections. This fact suggests that it might be possible to provide an analysis of causation that appeals to mechanisms. (shrink)

A scientific mathematical law is causal if and only if it is a process law that contains a time derivative. This is the intrinsic criterion for causal laws we propose. A process is a space-time line along which some properties are conserved or vary. A process law contains a time variable, but only process laws that contain a time derivative are causal laws. An effect is identified with what corresponds to a time derivative of some property or magnitude in a (...) process law, whereas the other terms correspond to the cause(s). According to our criterion, causes are simultaneous with their effects and causality has no temporal direction. Several examples from natural and social disciplines support the applicability of our criterion to all scientific laws. Various objections to our proposal are presented and refuted. The merits our intrinsic theory of causality vis-à-vis the Salmon–Dowe conserved quantity theory are discussed. (shrink)

According to Hugh Mellor in Real Time II (1998, Ch. 12), assuming the logical independence of causal facts and the 'law of large numbers', causal loops are impossible because if they were possible they would produce inconsistent sets of frequencies. I clarify the argument, and argue that it would be preferable to abandon the relevant independence assumption in the case of causal loops.

The ‘no-difference problem’ challenges us to explain in which way the occurrence of an aggregate effect gives us reason to act in a specific way, although our individual actions make no difference to the effect’s occurrence. When discussing this problem, philosophers usually distinguish between so-called ‘triggering cases’, where the aggregate effect in question is brought about upon reaching a precise threshold, and ‘non-triggering cases’, in which no such precise threshold exists. However, despite their relevant differences, it is widely assumed not (...) only that both categories of cases confront us with the same moral problem, but also that this problem should be solved in the same way no matter which category we are considering. In this paper, I argue that this assumption is mistaken by showing that non-triggering cases pose very different moral problems than triggering cases unless very specific and, arguably, unlikely assumptions in neighbouring debates about causation and decision-making under indeterminacy hold. (shrink)

In this essay we show that some thesis -contended by some authors searching on physical causation- about causal pseudoprocesses, processes of which the most salient aspect seems to be travelling faster than the speed of light, must be rejected o seriously modified. Secondly, we will argue that there is just one non causal entities category and that special relativity does not provide any particular motivation to appeal to an ontological distinction based on identity over time. In addition, this conclusion we (...) will enable us to offer a more accurate definition of a pseudoprocess than that found in the relevant literature. In third place, we will show in some detail how such processes, understood the way that we suggest here, are and have been valuable methodological tools when studying –through usual measurement procedures- effective causal relations holding in the physical world. Finally, we will connect our conclusions with R. Torretti’s criticism on the relation between ordinary causation and governed-by-differential-equations physical processes and we will show that, although neutral on his anthropocentric background, the account here argued provides, against what Torretti claims, a natural explanation to the physical connection between ordinary causation and causal processes such as studied by physics. (shrink)

Scientific explanation is an important goal of scientific practise. Philosophers have proposed a striking diversity of seemingly incompatible accounts of explanation, from deductive-nomological to statistical relevance, unification, pragmatic, causal-mechanical, mechanistic, causal intervention, asymptotic, and model-based accounts. In this dissertation I apply two novel methods to reexamine our evidence about scientific explanation in practise and thereby address the fragmentation of philosophical accounts. I start by collecting a data set of 781 articles from one year of the journal Science. Using automated text (...) mining techniques I measure the frequency and distribution of several groups of philosophically interesting words, such as "explain", "cause", "evidence", "theory", "law", "mechanism", and "model". I show that "explain" words are much more common in scientific writing than in other genres, occurring in roughly half of all articles, and that their use is very often qualified or negated. These results about the use of words complement traditional conceptual analysis. Next I use random samples from the data set to develop a large number of small case studies across a wide range of scientific disciplines. I use a sample of "explain" sentences to develop and defend a new general philosophical account of scientific explanation, and then test my account against a larger set of randomly sampled sentences and abstracts. Five coarse categories can classify the explanans and explananda of my cases: data, entities, kinds, models, and theories. The pair of the categories of the explanans and explanandum indicates the "form" of an explanation. The explain-relation supports counterfactual reasoning about the dependence of qualities of the explanandum on qualities of the explanans. But for each form there is a different "core relation" between explanans and explanandum that supports the explain-relation. Causation, modelling, and argument are the core relations for different forms of scientific explanation between different categories of explanans and explananda. This flexibility allows me to resolve some of the fragmentation in the philosophical literature. I provide empirical evidence to show that my general philosophical account successfully describes a wide range of scientific practise across a large number of scientific disciplines. (shrink)

The debate between the dynamical and the statistical interpretations of natural selection is centred on the question of whether all explanations that employ the concepts of natural selection and drift are reducible to causal explanations. The proponents of the statistical interpretation answer negatively, but insist on the fact that selection/drift arguments are explanatory. However, they remain unclear on where the explanatory power comes from. The proponents of the dynamical interpretation answer positively and try to reduce selection/drift arguments to some of (...) the most prominent accounts of causal explanation. In turn, they face the criticism raised by statisticalists that current accounts of causation have to be violated in some of their core conditions or otherwise used in a very loose manner in order to account for selection/drift explanations. We propose a reconciliation of both interpretations by conveying evolutionary explanations within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Therefore, we argue that the explanatory power in natural selection arguments is a result of successful unification of individual- and population-level facts. A short case study based on research on sympatric speciation will be presented as an example of how population- and individual-level facts are unified to explain the morphological mosaic of bill shape in island scrub jays. (shrink)

We propose an account of dynamic predicates which draws on the notion of force, eliminating reference to events in the linguistic semantics. We treat dynamic predicates as predicates of forces, represented as functions from an initial situation to a final situation that occurs ceteris paribus, that is, if nothing external intervenes. The possibility that opposing forces might intervene to prevent the transition to a given final situation leads us to a novel analysis of non-culminating accomplishment predicates in a variety of (...) languages, including the English progressive. We then apply the force-theoretic framework to the composition of basic Vendlerian eventuality types within a lexical-decomposition syntax. The difference between predicates of forces and predicates of situations is argued to underlie the dynamic/stative contrast, and also to allow for a formal treatment of the difference between be and stay. Consequences for the relationship between language and cognition are discussed. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss two realist conceptions about causation in the light of the general theory of relativity. I first consider the conserved quantity of causation, which explicitly relies on the energy conservation principle. Such principle is however problematic within GTR, mainly because of the dynamical nature of the spacetime structure itself. I then turn to the causal theory of properties, according to which properties are such that insofar as they are certain qualities, they are powers to produce certain (...) effects. In order to be compatible with GTR, such theory has to assume non-trivial global conditions on the spacetime structure; such assumptions seem to deprive the „singularist‟ non-Humean feature of this theory of causation. The question of the possible causal nature of spacetime properties is addressed in the conclusion. (shrink)

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.

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

How do people understand questions about cause and prevent? Some theories propose that people affirm that A causes B if A's occurrence makes a difference to B's occurrence in one way or another. Other theories propose that A causes B if some quantity or symbol gets passed in some way from A to B. The aim of our studies is to compare these theories' ability to explain judgements of causation and prevention. We describe six experiments that compare judgements for causal (...) paths that involve a mechanism, i.e. a continuous process of transmission or exchange from cause to effect, against paths that involve no mechanism yet a change in the cause nevertheless brings about a change in the effect. Our results show that people prefer to attribute cause when a mechanism links cause to effect. In contrast, prevention is sensitive both to the presence of an interruption to a causal mechanism and to a change in the outcome in the absence of a mechanism. In this sense, ‘prevent’ means something different than ‘cause not'. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of causation. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of causation are commonly judged by their ability to correctly determine whether there is a causal relation present in intuitively clear example scenarios. If the theories survive this test, they are then used to answer big philosophical questions about causation. This Method of Examples is attractive because it seems to allow us to determine the quality of a theory of causation independently of answering the big philosophical questions; which is good, since it means that we can then non-circularly (...) use the theories judged to be best to answer those questions. However, the current article argues that this virtue of the Method of Examples is an illusion. In particular, I argue that the necessary step of judging whether a proposed analysis of causation is reductive can only be taken after many of the most vexing philosophical questions about causation have already been answered. It is then shown that a rejection of the methodological supremacy of the Method of Examples leads to a more pluralistic method of judging theories of causation, a pluralism that benefits non-standard approaches like interventionism and agency theories. (shrink)

The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-nineteenth century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether’s theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there (...) is nothing for minds to violate. This paper is motivated by two ideas. First, one might take seriously the fact that GR formally has an infinity of rigid symmetries of the action and hence, by Noether’s first theorem, an infinity of conserved energies-momenta. Second, Sean Carroll has asked how one should modify the Dirac–Maxwell–Einstein equations to describe mental causation. This paper uses the generalized Bianchi identities to show that General Relativity tends to exclude, not facilitate, such Cartesian mental causation. In the simplest case, Cartesian mental influence must be spatio-temporally constant, and hence 0. The difficulty may diminish for more complicated models. Its persuasiveness is also affected by larger world-view considerations. The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in GR. Such realism also might help to answer an objection to theories of causation involving conserved quantities, because energies-momenta would be conserved even in GR. (shrink)

The debate on the possibility of an evolutionary theory of cultural change has heated up, over the last years, due to the supposed incompatibilities between the two main theoretical proposals in the field: dual inheritance theory and cultural epidemiology. The former, first formulated in the 1980’s by a group of biologists and anthropologists mostly hosted at Californian universities, supports an analogy between genetic inheritance and cultural transmission. Cultural epidemiology, more recently formulated by Dan Sperber and his collaborator, denies the defensibility (...) of such an analogy and put forward a partially alternative model. But how much do these proposals actually differ with each other? In this article, I shall argue that less than what cultural epidemiologists use to think. (shrink)

Many philosophers now regard causal approaches to explanation as highly promising, even in physics. This is due in large part to James Woodward's influential argument that a wide variety of scientific explanations are causal, based on his interventionist approach to causation. This article argues that some derivations describing causal relations and satisfying Woodward's criteria for causal explanation fail to be explanatory. Further, causal relations are unnecessary for a range of explanations, widespread in physics, involving highly idealized models. These constitute significant (...) limitations on the scope of causal explanation. We have good reason to doubt that causal explanation is as widespread or important in physics as Woodward and other proponents maintain. (shrink)

Our concept of actual causation plays a deep, ever-present role in our experiences. I first argue that traditional philosophical methods for understanding this concept are unlikely to be successful. I contend that we should instead use functional analyses and an understanding of the cognitive bases of causal cognition to gain insight into the concept of actual causation. I additionally provide initial, programmatic steps towards carrying out such analyses. The characterization of the concept of actual causation that results is quite different (...) from many standard views: it is graded, context-sensitive, and extrinsic. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on scientific explanation contains a striking diversity of accounts. I use novel empirical methods to address this fragmentation and assess the importance and generality of explanation in science. My evidence base is a set of 781 articles from one year of the journal Science, and I begin by applying text mining techniques to discover patterns in the usage of “explain” and other words of philosophical interest. I then use random sampling from the data set to develop and (...) test a classification scheme for scientific explanation. My results show that explanation and inference to the best explanation are ubiquitous in science, that they occur across a wide range of scientific disciplines, and that they are a goal of scientific practise. These explanations and inferences to the best explanation come in a diversity forms, which at least partially justifies the fragmentation of philosophical accounts. I draw two methodological lessons: first that text mining can enhance traditional conceptual analysis by establishing facts about word usage; and second that random sampling of cases can increase our confidence that a philosophical account applies in general. These empirical techniques supplement traditional philosophical methods. (shrink)

Philosophers have already recognized the importance of causal preemption involving “positive” events. First, preemption with positive events raises problems for counterfactual theories of causation. Second, theories of moral and legal responsibility rely heavily on the concept of causation, so accurately assessing responsibility in preemption cases requires correctly assessing their causal structure. However, philosophers have not discussed preemption involving “negative” events or omissions. This paper argues that cases of preemptive omissions exist and have important implications for theories of causation and for (...) moral and legal responsibility. Of theoretical importance, the alterations made to counterfactual theories of causation to address preemption with positive events do not seem to work for accommodating preemptive omissions. Of practical importance, there have been actual legal cases involving preemptive omissions, and at least one such case was, this paper contends, decided incorrectly on erroneous causal grounds. This paper identifies what must happen for preemptive omissions to obtain. It then argues for the existence of preemptive omissions by constructing a series of cases and drawing structural parallels between preemption cases with positive events and cases with omissions. It ultimately presents a formula for generating preemptive omissions and examines both why “traditional” methods of generating preemption fail for omissions and why the proposed method avoids such concerns. (shrink)

Medical interventions that cure or prevent medical conditions are central to medicine; and thus, understanding them is central to our understanding of medicine. My purpose in this paper is to explore the conceptual foundations of medicine by providing a singular analysis of the concept of a ‘preventive or curative medical intervention’. Borrowing a general account of prevention from Phil Dowe, I provide an analysis of prevention, cure, risk reduction, and a preventive or curative intervention, before turning to preventive and curative (...) medical interventions. The resulting counterfactual-mechanistic account holds that preventive and curative medical interventions reduce the probability of a medical condition in an actual population compared to their counterfactual omission, commonly by disrupting an etiological or constitutive mechanism for the condition. (shrink)

As machine learning has gradually entered into ever more sectors of public and private life, there has been a growing demand for algorithmic explainability. How can we make the predictions of complex statistical models more intelligible to end users? A subdiscipline of computer science known as interpretable machine learning (IML) has emerged to address this urgent question. Numerous influential methods have been proposed, from local linear approximations to rule lists and counterfactuals. In this article, I highlight three conceptual challenges that (...) are largely overlooked by authors in this area. I argue that the vast majority of IML algorithms are plagued by (1) ambiguity with respect to their true target; (2) a disregard for error rates and severe testing; and (3) an emphasis on product over process. Each point is developed at length, drawing on relevant debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. Examples and counterexamples from IML are considered, demonstrating how failure to acknowledge these problems can result in counterintuitive and potentially misleading explanations. Without greater care for the conceptual foundations of IML, future work in this area is doomed to repeat the same mistakes. (shrink)

Reasoning about underlying causal relations drives responsibility judgments: agents are held responsible for the outcomes they cause through their behaviors. Two main causal reasoning approaches exist: dependence theories emphasize statistical relations between causes and effects, while transference theories emphasize mechanical transmission of energy. Recently, pluralistic or hybrid models, combining both approaches, have emerged as promising psychological frameworks. In this paper, we focus on causal reasoning as involved in third-party judgements of responsibility and on related judgments of intention and control. In (...) particular, we used a novel visual paradigm to investigate the combined effects of two well-known causal manipulations, namely omission and pre-emption, on these evaluations. Our findings support the view that people apply a pluralistic causal reasoning when evaluating individual responsibility for negative outcomes. In particular, we observed diminished responsibility when dependence, transference, or both fail, compared to when these mechanisms are upheld. Responsibility judgement involves a cognitive hybrid of multiple aspects of causal reasoning. However, important differences exist at the interindividual level, with most people weighting transference more than dependence. (shrink)

The emphasis on the organization of entities and their activities and interactions has been labeled one of the most distinct contributions of mechanistic philosophy. In this paper I discuss the manner in which the organization of entities and their activities and interactions participates in bringing about phenomena. I present a well-known example from molecular biology—the functioning of the genetic switch in phage lambda—and discuss Marco J. Nathan’s notion of causation by concentration. Nathan introduces causation by concentration to account for the (...) irreducible causal role that the concentration ratio between two kinds of proteins possesses in the genetic switch mechanism in phage lambda. I discuss what the irreducibility of this causal role amounts to and provide a mechanistic interpretation of Nathan’s causation by concentration; that is, I explain this irreducible causal role as one organizational feature of this mechanism. The paper concludes that biological mechanisms need a causal pluralist framework [similar to Glennan’s account in, and but slightly modified] where organizational features such as the concentration ratio have a causally relevant role, yet all the causally productive relations occur at the level of entities or individuals. (shrink)