- Submit
-
Browse
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Value Theory
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Philosophical Traditions
- Philosophy, Misc
- Other Academic Areas
- More
Switch to: Citations
References in:
Russell and the Temporal Contiguity of Causes and Effects
Erkenntnis 83 (6):1245-1264 (2018)
Add references
You must login to add references.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A key to modern studies of 18th century Western philosophy, the Treatise considers numerous classic philosophical issues, including causation, existence, freedom and necessity and morality. This abridged edition has an introduction which explain's Hume's thought and places it in the context of its times. |
|
|
One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read. |
|
|
Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
1. Of what use is the concept of causation? Bertrand Russell [1912-13] argued that it is not useful: it is “a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” His argument for this was that the kind of physical theories that we have come to regard as fundamental leave no place for the notion of causation: not only does the word ‘cause’ not appear in the advanced sciences, but the (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
The Principle of Sufficient Reason states that everything has an explanation. But different notions of explanation yield different versions of this principle. Here a version is formulated in terms of the notion of a “grounding” explanation. Its consequences are then explored, with particular emphasis on the fact that it implies necessitarianism, the view that every truth is necessarily true. Finally, the principle is defended from a number of objections, including objections to necessitarianism. The result is a defense of a “rationalist” (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (The principle of sufficient reason: A reassessment, pp. 240–248, 2006), I (Weaver, Synthese 184(3):299–317, 2012) have argued that if all purely contingent events could be caused and something like a Lewisian analysis of causation is true (per, Lewis’s, Causation as influence, reprinted in: Collins, Hall and paul. Causation and counterfactuals, 2004), then all purely contingent events have causes. I dubbed the derivation of the universality of causation the “Lewisian argument”. The Lewisian (...) |
|
|
Minimally, causal realism (as understood here) is the view that accounts of causation in terms of mere, regular or probabilistic conjunction are unsatisfactory, and that causal phenomena are correctly associated with some form of de re necessity. Classic arguments, however, some of which date back to Sextus Empiricus and have appeared many times since, including famously in Russell, suggest that the very notion of causal realism is incoherent. In this paper I argue that if such objections seem compelling, it is (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our model of time is the classical continuum of real numbers, and our model of other measurable quantities that change over time is that of functions defined on real numbers with real numbers as values. This model is not derived from reality or from our experience of it, but imposed on reality; and the fit is very imperfect. In classical mathematics, the value of a function for any real number as argument is independent of its value for any other argument: (...) |
|
|
Studies causation both as a concept and as it is 'in the objects.' Offers new accounts of the logic of singular causal statements, the form of causal regularities, the detection of causal relationships, the asymmetry of cause and effect, and necessary connection, and it relates causation to functional and statistical laws and to teleology. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mereotopology is a theory of connected parts. The existence of boundaries, as parts of everyday objects, is basic to any such theory; but in classical mereotopology, there is a problem: if boundaries exist, then either distinct entities cannot be in contact, or else space is not topologically connected . In this paper we urge that this problem can be met with a paraconsistent mereotopology, and sketch the details of one such approach. The resulting theory focuses attention on the role of (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
There are conflicting intuitions concerning the status of a boundary separating two adjacent entities (or two parts of the same entity). The boundary cannot belong to both things, for adjacency excludes overlap; and it cannot belong to neither, for nothing lies between two adjacent things. Yet how can the dilemma be avoided without assigning the boundary to one thing or the other at random? Some philosophers regard this as a reductio of the very notion of a boundary, which should accordingly (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
There is a basic distinction, in the realm of spatial boundaries, between bona fide boundaries on the one hand, and fiat boundaries on the other. The former are just the physical boundaries of old. The latter are exemplified especially by boundaries induced through human demarcation, for example in the geographic domain. The classical problems connected with the notions of adjacency, contact, separation and division can be resolved in an intuitive way by recognizing this two-sorted ontology of boundaries. Bona fide boundaries (...) |
|
|
We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's conclusion (...) |
|
|
Counter factual theories of Causation have had problems with cases of probabilistic causation and preemption. I put forward a counterfactual theory that seems to deal with these problematic cases and also has the virtue of providing an account of the alleged asymmetry between hasteners and delayers: the former usually being counted as causes, the latter not. I go on to consider a new type of problem case that has not received so much attention in the literature, those I dub catalysts (...) |
|
|
Michael Dummett claims that the classical model of time as a continuum of instants has to be rejected. In his view, “it allows as possibilities what reason rules out, and leaves it to the contingent laws of physics to rule out what a good model of physical reality would not even be able to describe.” This paper argues otherwise. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mellor's subject is singular causation between facts, expressed 'E because C'. His central requirement for causation is that the chance that E if C be greater than the chance that E if $\sim \text{C}\colon \ ch_{\text{C}}>ch_{\sim \text{C}}$. The book is as much about chance as it is about causation. I show that his way of distinguishing ch C from the traditional notion of conditional chance leaves him with a problem about the existence of ch Q when Q is false ; (...) |
|
|
The Facts of Causation grapples with one of philosophy's most enduring issues. Causation is central to all of our lives. What we see and hear causes us to believe certain facts about the world. We need that information to know how to act and how to cause the effects we desire. D. H. Mellor, a leading scholar in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, offers a comprehensive theory of causation. Many questions about causation remain unsettled. In science, the indeterminism of (...) |
|
|
Writing in 1912, Bertrand Russell declared talk of causes and of causality to be obsolete, noting its elimination from scientific theory as he saw it: “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs.... The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” Causal laws, he claimed, “tend to be replaced by quite (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
Contemporary analytic philosophy is in the midst of a vigorous debate on the nature of causation. Each of the main proposals discussed in this chapter faces important problems: the deductive-nomological model, the counterfactual theory, the manipulability theory, the probabilistic theory and the transference theory. After having explored possible solutions to these problems, I conclude that one version of the transference approach is most promising. However, as I show in the last section, it is necessary to supplement this transference approach with (...) |
|
|
Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. The Facts of Causation , now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and (...) |
|
|
We propose that all actual causes are simultaneous with their direct effects, as illustrated by both everyday examples and the laws of physics. We contrast this view with the sequential conception of causation, according to which causes must occur prior to their effects. The key difference between the two views of causation lies in differing assumptions about the mathematical structure of time. |
|
|
|
|
|
A standard objection to the thesis that all causation is simultaneous causation is that this claim rules out temporally extended causal chains. Defenders of universal simultaneous causation have suggested two replies: deny the supposed incompatibility between simultaneous causation and causal chains or deny the existence of causal chains. In this paper, I argue that neither type of defense of universal causation against this objection is plausible. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A (would-be) sophisticated answer to the question of the title might be, ‘The question is senseless. We should not conceive of time at all. We should just get on with our ordinary lives, asking and answering the usual questions, such as “What Time is it?”, “How long will it take?”, and so on, which we understand perfectly well. St. Augustine understood such questions, phrased in Latin, as well as we do. He should have been content with that, instead of bothering (...) |
|
|
Ulrich Meyer's objections to Dummett's arguments on the time continuum fail because he takes Dummett to endorse Hume's atomistic doctrine that events are ‘loose and separate’, In fact, Dummett rejects this doctrine. He used it in his original article only to indicate that certain implications which are conceptually possible fom the point of view of the classical model of time are not actually conceptually possible. |
|
|
These are just some of the fundamental questions addressed in Time and Space. Writing for a primary readership of advanced undergraduate and graduate philosophy students, Barry Dainton introduces the central ideas and arguments that make space and time such philosophically challenging topics. Although recognising that many issues in the philosophy of time and space involve technical features of physics, Dainton has been careful to keep the conceptual issues accessible to students with little scientific or mathematical training. Surveying historical debates and (...) |
|
|
Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of examples (...) |
|
|
This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This innovative (...) |
|
|
There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim. |
PhilPapers logo by Andrea Andrews and Meghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see our terms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications). Use of this site is subject to terms & conditions.
All rights reserved by The PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-64dd777598-vk9kt uwo