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  1. Resemblance-based resources for reductive singularism (or: How to be a Humean singularist about causation).Jessica Wilson - 2009 - The Monist 92 (1):153-190.
    Hume argued that experience could not justify commonly held beliefs in singular causal effcacy, according to which individual or singular causes produce their effects or make their effects happen. Hume's discussion has been influential, as motivating the view that Causal reductionism (denying that causal efficacy is an irreducible feature of natural reality) requires Causal generalism (according to which causal relations are metaphysically constituted by patterns of events). Here I argue that causal reductionists---indeed, Hume himself---have previously unappreciated resources for making sense (...)
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  • The Reduction of Causal Processes.Mariam Thalos - 2002 - Synthese 131 (1):99-128.
    The principle that causes always render their effects more likely is fundamental to the enterprise of reducing facts of causation to facts about (objective) chances. This reductionist enterprise faces famous difficulties in accommodating common-sense intuitions about causal processes, if it insists on cashing out causal processes in terms of streams of events in which every event that belongs to the stream is a cause of the adjoining event downstream of it. I shall propose modifications to this way of cashing out (...)
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  • Local theories of causation and the a posteriori identification of the causal relation.Alexander Rueger - 1998 - Erkenntnis 48 (1):25-38.
    The need to find an intrinsic characterization of what makes a relation between events causal arises not only in local theories of causation like Salmon's process theory but also in global approaches like Lewis' counterfactual theory. According to the localist intuition, whether a process connecting two events is causal should depend only on what goes on between the events, not on conditions that hold elsewhere in the world. If such intrinsic characterizations could be found, an identification of the causal relation (...)
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  • Causality and conserved quantities: A reply to salmon.Phil Dowe - 1995 - Philosophy of Science 62 (2):321-333.
    In a recent paper (1994) Wesley Salmon has replied to criticisms (e.g., Dowe 1992c, Kitcher 1989) of his (1984) theory of causality, and has offered a revised theory which, he argues, is not open to those criticisms. The key change concerns the characterization of causal processes, where Salmon has traded "the capacity for mark transmission" for "the transmission of an invariant quantity." Salmon argues against the view presented in Dowe (1992c), namely that the concept of "possession of a conserved quantity" (...)
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  • An empiricist defence of the causal account of explanation.Phil Dowe - 1992 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6 (2):123 – 128.
    Abstract Kitcher (1989) and others have criticized Salmon's (1984) causal account of explanation on the grounds that it is epistemologically inadequate. The difficulty is that Salmon's principle of ?mark transmission? fails to achieve its intended purpose, namely to distinguish causal processes from other types of processes. This renders Salmon's account of causality epistemically inaccessible. In this paper that critique is reviewed and developed, and a modification to Salmon's theory, the ?conserved?quantity? theory (Dowe, 1992) is presented. This theory is shown to (...)
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  • A defense of backwards in time causation models in quantum mechanics.Phil Dowe - 1997 - Synthese 112 (2):233-246.
    This paper offers a defense of backwards in time causation models in quantum mechanics. Particular attention is given to Cramer's transactional account, which is shown to have the threefold virtue of solving the Bell problem, explaining the complex conjugate aspect of the quantum mechanical formalism, and explaining various quantum mysteries such as Schrödinger's cat. The question is therefore asked, why has this model not received more attention from physicists and philosophers? One objection given by physicists in assessing Cramer's theory was (...)
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  • The conserved quantity theory of causation and closed systems.Sungho Choi - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (3):510-530.
    Advocates of the conserved quantity (CQ) theory of causation have their own peculiar problem with conservation laws. Since they analyze causal process and interaction in terms of conserved quantities that are in turn defined as physical quantities governed by conservation laws, they must formulate conservation laws in a way that does not invoke causation, or else circularity threatens. In this paper I will propose an adequate formulation of a conservation law that serves CQ theorists' purpose.
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  • Being implicated: on the fittingness of guilt and indignation over outcomes.Gunnar Björnsson - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (11):1–18.
    When is it fitting for an agent to feel guilt over an outcome, and for others to be morally indignant with her over it? A popular answer requires that the outcome happened because of the agent, or that the agent was a cause of the outcome. This paper reviews some of what makes this causal-explanatory view attractive before turning to two kinds of problem cases: cases of collective harms and cases of fungible switching. These, it is argued, motivate a related (...)
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