Phil Dowe, in Physical Causation, addresses such questions as 'What are causal processes and interactions?', 'What is the connection between causes and effects?', and 'What distinguishes a cause from its effect?' Dowe not only provides explicit and original answers to these questions, but, en route, provides important critiques of alternative answers as well as sophisticated discussions of negative causation, the fork asymmetry, and quantum mechanics.

This paper examines the Transference Theory of causation, developed originally by Aronson (1971) and Fair (1979). Three difficulties for that theory are presented: firstly, problems associated with the direction of transference and causal asymmetry; secondly, the case of persistence as causation, for example where a body's own inertia is the cause of its motion; and thirdly the problematic notion of identity through time of physical quantities such as energy or momentum. Finally, the theory is compared with the Conserved Quantity Theory (...) (Dowe 1992c), and it is shown that that account embodies the modifications that the transference theory needs to adopt. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Salmon's response to two counterexamples to his conserved quantity (CQ) theory of causation. The first counterexample that I examine involves a time‐wise gerrymandered world line of a series of patches of wall that is absorbing energy as a result of being illuminated in an astrodome. Salmon says that since the gerrymandered world line does not fulfill his “no‐interaction requirement,” his CQ theory does not suffer from the counterexample. But I will argue that his response fails (...) both at a theoretical level and at a practical level. In so doing I point out a problem for CQ theorists' definition of a causal interaction. The second counterexample is concerned with a time‐wise gerrymandered world line of a series of patches that are in shadow, in Hitchcock's well‐known example. Salmon's response is based on a principle that Salmon thinks is derivable from the concept of a conserved quantity. However, I argue that the principle has a counterexample. (shrink)

Causation has traditionally been analyzed either as a relation of nomic dependence or as a relation of counterfactual dependence. I argue for a third program, a physicalistic reduction of the causal relation to one of energy-momentum transference in the technical sense of physics. This physicalistic analysis is argued to have the virtues of easily handling the standard counterexamples to the nomic and counterfactual analyses, offering a plausible epistemology for our knowledge of causes, and elucidating the nature of the relation between (...) causation and physical science. (shrink)

This paper discusses several distinct process theories of causality offered in recent years by Phil Dowe and me. It addresses problems concerning the explication of causal process, causal interaction, and causal transmission, whether given in terms of transmission of marks, transmission of invariant or conserved quantities, or mere possession of conserved quantities. Renouncing the mark-transmission and invariant quantity criteria, I accept a conserved quantity theory similar to Dowe's--differing basically with respect to causal transmission. This paper also responds to several fundamental (...) constructive criticisms contained in Christopher Hitchcock's discussion of both the mark-transmission and the conserved quantity theories. (shrink)