Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Causal Bayes nets and token-causation: Closing the gap between token-level and type-level.Alexander Gebharter & Andreas Hüttemann - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-23.
    Causal Bayes nets (CBNs) provide one of the most powerful tools for modelling coarse-grained type-level causal structure. As in other fields (e.g., thermodynamics) the question arises how such coarse-grained characterisations are related to the characterisation of their underlying structure (in this case: token-level causal relations). Answering this question meets what is called a “coherence-requirement” in the reduction debate: How are different accounts of one and the same system (or kind of system) related to each other. We argue that CBNs as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Actual Causation and the Challenge of Purpose.Enno Fischer - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (7):2925-2945.
    This paper explores the prospects of employing a functional approach in order to improve our concept of actual causation. Claims of actual causation play an important role for a variety of purposes. In particular, they are relevant for identifying suitable targets for intervention, and they are relevant for our practices of ascribing responsibility. I argue that this gives rise to the _challenge of purpose_. The challenge of purpose arises when different goals demand adjustments of the concept that pull in opposing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • How to construct Remainder Sets for Paraconsistent Revisions: Preliminary Report.Rafael Testa, Eduardo Fermé, Marco Garapa & Maurício Reis - 2018 - 17th INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON NON-MONOTONIC REASONING.
    Revision operation is the consistent expansion of a theory by a new belief-representing sentence. We consider that in a paraconsistent setting this desideratum can be accomplished in at least three distinct ways: the output of a revision operation should be either non-trivial or non-contradictory (in general or relative to the new belief). In this paper those distinctions will be explored in the constructive level by showing how the remainder sets could be refined, capturing the key concepts of paraconsistency in a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Thought Experiments and Actual Causation.Margherita Benzi - 2019 - Topoi 38 (4):835-843.
    Philosophical works on actual causation make wide use of thought experiments. The principal aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments are used in the contemporary debate over actual causation and to discuss their role in relation to formal approaches in terms of causal models. I claim that a recourse to thought experiments is not something old fashioned or superseded by abstract models, but it is useful to interpret abstract models themselves and to use our intuitions to judge (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Analytic philosophy for biomedical research: the imperative of applying yesterday's timeless messages to today's impasses.Sepehr Ehsani - 2020 - In Patrick Glauner & Philipp Plugmann (eds.), Innovative Technologies for Market Leadership: Investing in the Future. Springer. pp. 167-200.
    The mantra that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it" (attributed to the computer scientist Alan Kay) exemplifies some of the expectations from the technical and innovative sides of biomedical research at present. However, for technical advancements to make real impacts both on patient health and genuine scientific understanding, quite a number of lingering challenges facing the entire spectrum from protein biology all the way to randomized controlled trials should start to be overcome. The proposal in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A causal Bayes net analysis of dispositions.Alexander Gebharter & Florian Fischer - 2021 - Synthese 198 (5):4873-4895.
    In this paper we develop an analysis of dispositions by means of causal Bayes nets. In particular, we analyze dispositions as cause-effect structures that increase the probability of the manifestation when the stimulus is brought about by intervention in certain circumstances. We then highlight several advantages of our analysis and how it can handle problems arising for classical analyses of dispositions such as masks, mimickers, and finks.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Why Intrinsicness Should Be Defined in a Non-reductive Way.Vera Hoffmann-Kolss - 2018 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 95:1-14.
    Defining the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties has turned out to be one of the most difficult and controversial tasks in contemporary metaphysics. It is generally assumed that a definition of intrinsicness should aim to avoid as many counterexamples as possible and reduce the notion to less controversial philosophical notions. In this paper, the author argues for a new methodological approach to defining intrinsicness. Rather than trying to cover as many intuitive examples as possible, a definition of intrinsicness should (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Normality and actual causal strength.Thomas F. Icard, Jonathan F. Kominsky & Joshua Knobe - 2017 - Cognition 161 (C):80-93.
    Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   57 citations  
  • A theory of structural determination.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):159-186.
    While structural equations modeling is increasingly used in philosophical theorizing about causation, it remains unclear what it takes for a particular structural equations model to be correct. To the extent that this issue has been addressed, the consensus appears to be that it takes a certain family of causal counterfactuals being true. I argue that this account faces difficulties in securing the independent manipulability of the structural determination relations represented in a correct structural equations model. I then offer an alternate (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Experimental Philosophy and Causal Attribution.Jonathan Livengood & David Rose - 2016 - In Wesley Buckwalter & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 434–449.
    Humans often attribute the things that happen to one or another actual cause. In this chapter, we survey some recent philosophical and psychological research on causal attribution. We pay special attention to the relation between graphical causal modeling and theories of causal attribution. We think that the study of causal attribution is one place where formal and experimental techniques nicely complement one another.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Structural equations and beyond.Franz Huber - 2013 - Review of Symbolic Logic 6 (4):709-732.
    Recent accounts of actual causation are stated in terms of extended causal models. These extended causal models contain two elements representing two seemingly distinct modalities. The first element are structural equations which represent the or mechanisms of the model, just as ordinary causal models do. The second element are ranking functions which represent normality or typicality. The aim of this paper is to show that these two modalities can be unified. I do so by formulating two constraints under which extended (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Causal Responsibility and Counterfactuals.David A. Lagnado, Tobias Gerstenberg & Ro'I. Zultan - 2013 - Cognitive Science 37 (6):1036-1073.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   112 citations  
  • (1 other version)Following the FAD: Folk Attributions and Theories of Actual Causation.Jonathan Livengood, Justin Sytsma & David Rose - 2016
    Using structural equations and directed graphs, Christopher Hitchcock (2007a) proposes a theory specifying the circumstances in which counterfactual dependence of one event e on another event c is necessary and sufficient for c to count as an actual cause of e. In this paper, we argue that Hitchcock is committed to a widely-endorsed folk attribution desideratum (FAD) for theories of actual causation. We then show experimentally that Hitchcock’s theory does not satisfy the FAD, and hence, it is in need of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Conjoined cases.Tomasz Wysocki - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-19.
    Incorporating normality ascriptions into counterfactual theories of causation was supposed to handle isomorphs. It doesn’t—conjoining isomorphs can produce cases that such ascriptions cannot resolve.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Causal Sufficiency and Actual Causation.Sander Beckers - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 50 (6):1341-1374.
    Pearl opened the door to formally defining actual causation using causal models. His approach rests on two strategies: first, capturing the widespread intuition that X = x causes Y = y iff X = x is a Necessary Element of a Sufficient Set for Y = y, and second, showing that his definition gives intuitive answers on a wide set of problem cases. This inspired dozens of variations of his definition of actual causation, the most prominent of which are due (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (1 other version)Following the FAD: Folk Attributions and Theories of Actual Causation.Jonathan Livengood, Justin Sytsma & David Rose - 2017 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2):273-294.
    In the last decade, several researchers have proposed theories of actual causation that make use of structural equations and directed graphs. Many of these researchers are committed to a widely-endorsed folk attribution desideratum, according to which an important constraint on the acceptability of a theory of actual causation is agreement between the deliverances of the theory with respect to specific cases and the reports of untutored individuals about those same cases. In the present article, we consider a small collection of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Actual Causation and Simple Voting Scenarios.Jonathan Livengood - 2011 - Noûs 47 (2):316-345.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Actual Causation and Compositionality.Jonathan Livengood & Justin Sytsma - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (1):43-69.
    Many theories of actual causation implicitly endorse the claim that if c is an actual cause of e, then either c causes e directly or every intermediary by which c indirectly causes e is itself both an actual cause of e and also an actual effect of c. We think this compositionality constraint is plausible. However, as we show, it is not always satisfied by the causal attributions ordinary people make. We conclude by considering what philosophers working on causation should (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Of brains and planets: on a causal criterion for mind-brain identities.Vera Hoffmann-Kolss - 2016 - Synthese 193 (4):1177-1189.
    Whether mental properties are identical with neural properties is one of the central questions of contemporary philosophy of mind. Many philosophers agree that even if mental properties are identical with neural properties, the mind-brain identity thesis cannot be established on empirical grounds, but only be vindicated by theoretical philosophical considerations. In his paper ‘When Is a Brain Like the Planet?’, Clark Glymour proposes a causal criterion for local property identifications and claims that this criterion can be used to empirically establish (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Contextualising Causation Part I.Julian Reiss - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (11):1066-1075.
    This is the first instalment of a two-part paper on the counterfactual theory of causation. It is well known that this theory is ridden with counterexamples. Specifically, the following four features of the theory suffer from problems: it understands causation as a relation between events; counterfactual dependence is understood using a metric of similarity among possible worlds; it defines a non-discriminatory concept of causation; and it understands causation as transitive. A number of philosophers have recently proposed that causation is contrastive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • How (not) to judge a theory of causation.Victor Gijsbers - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3117-3135.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Appropriate causal models and the stability of causation.Joseph Y. Halpern - 2016 - Review of Symbolic Logic 9 (1):76-102.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • (1 other version)Rethinking Causation for Data‐intensive Biology: Constraints, Cancellations, and Quantized Organisms.Douglas E. Brash - 2020 - Bioessays 42 (7):1900135.
    Complex organisms thwart the simple rectilinear causality paradigm of “necessary and sufficient,” with its experimental strategy of “knock down and overexpress.” This Essay organizes the eccentricities of biology into four categories that call for new mathematical approaches; recaps for the biologist the philosopher's recent refinements to the causation concept and the mathematician's computational tools that handle some but not all of the biological eccentricities; and describes overlooked insights that make causal properties of physical hierarchies such as emergence and downward causation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Functions and Cognitive Bases for the Concept of Actual Causation.David Danks - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (1):111-128.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • (1 other version)Rethinking Causation for Data‐intensive Biology: Constraints, Cancellations, and Quantized Organisms.Douglas E. Brash - 2020 - Bioessays 42 (7):1900135.
    Complex organisms thwart the simple rectilinear causality paradigm of “necessary and sufficient,” with its experimental strategy of “knock down and overexpress.” This Essay organizes the eccentricities of biology into four categories that call for new mathematical approaches; recaps for the biologist the philosopher's recent refinements to the causation concept and the mathematician's computational tools that handle some but not all of the biological eccentricities; and describes overlooked insights that make causal properties of physical hierarchies such as emergence and downward causation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Bayesian Networks and Causal Ecumenism.David Kinney - 2020 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):147-172.
    Proponents of various causal exclusion arguments claim that for any given event, there is often a unique level of granularity at which that event is caused. Against these causal exclusion arguments, causal ecumenists argue that the same event or phenomenon can be caused at multiple levels of granularity. This paper argues that the Bayesian network approach to representing the causal structure of target systems is consistent with causal ecumenism. Given the ubiquity of Bayesian networks as a tool for representing causal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark