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 our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

A collection of 13 papers by David Lewis, written on a variety of topics including causation, counterfactuals and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, explanation, perception, free will, and rational decision. The conclusions reached include the claim that time travel is possible, that counterfactual dependence is asymmetrical, that events are properties of spatiotemporal regions, that the Prisoners’ Dilemma is a Newcomb problem, and that causation can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual dependence between events. These papers (...) can be seen as a “prolonged campaign” for a philosophical position Lewis calls “Humean supervenience,” according to which “all there is to the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact,” with all global features of the world thus supervening on the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities. (shrink)

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 (...) our place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

This book provides a post-positivist theory of deterministic and probabilistic causality that supports both quantitative and qualitative explanations. Features of particular interest include the ability to provide true explanations in contexts where our knowledge is incomplete, a systematic interpretation of causal modeling techniques in the social sciences, and a direct realist view of causal relations that is compatible with a liberal empiricism. The book should be of wide interest to both philosophers and scientists. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy (...) Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

We have examined only a few of the basic questions about causal inference that result from Reichenbach's two principles. We have not considered what happens when the probability distribution is a mixture of distributions from different causal structures, or how unmeasured common causes can be detected, or what inferences can reliably be drawn about causal relations among unmeasured variables, or the exact advantages that experimental control offers. A good deal is known about these questions, and there is a good deal (...) more to find out. (shrink)

After clarifying the probabilistic conception of causality suggested by Good (1961-2), Suppes (1970), Cartwright (1979), and Skyrms (1980), we prove a sufficient condition for transitivity of causal chains. The bearing of these considerations on the units of selection problem in evolutionary theory and on the Newcomb paradox in decision theory is then discussed.

This paper examines Wesley Salmon's "process" theory of causality, arguing in particular that there are four areas of inadequacy. These are that the theory is circular, that it is too vague at a crucial point, that statistical forks do not serve their intended purpose, and that Salmon has not adequately demonstrated that the theory avoids Hume's strictures about "hidden powers". A new theory is suggested, based on "conserved quantities", which fulfills Salmon's broad objectives, and which avoids the problems discussed.

In the Facts of Causation, D.H. Mellor includes, as a part of his theory of causation, an account of the chance that a cause gives its effect. He proposes that this chance can be analyzed as a certain kind of conditional, a closest world conditional with a chance consequent. I show that there are problems with Mellor’s account, but also attempt to show how these can be remedied. This analysis highlights important issues concerning the concept of components of single case (...) objective chance. (shrink)

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" (...) is sufficient to account for the difference between causal and pseudo processes. Here that view is defended, and important questions are raised about the notion of transmission and about gerrymandered aggregates. (shrink)

In a recent paper Wesley Salmon has replied to criticisms of his 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, namely that the concept of “possession of a conserved quantity” is sufficient to account for the difference between (...) causal and pseudo processes. Here that view is defended, and important questions are raised about the notion of transmission and about gerrymandered aggregates. (shrink)

In this important book, Ellery Eells explores and refines philosophical conceptions of probabilistic causality. In a probabilistic theory of causation, causes increase the probability of their effects rather than necessitate their effects in the ways traditional deterministic theories have specified. Philosophical interest in this subject arises from attempts to understand population sciences as well as indeterminism in physics. Taking into account issues involving spurious correlation, probabilistic causal interaction, disjunctive causal factors, and temporal ideas, Professor Eells advances the analysis of what (...) it is for one factor to be a positive causal factor for another. A salient feature of the book is a theory of token level probabilistic causation in which the evolution of the probability of a later event from an earlier event is central. This will be a book of crucial significance to philosophers of science and metaphysicians; it will also prove stimulating to many economists, psychologists, and physicists. (shrink)

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

If the decades of the forties through the sixties were dominated by discussion of Hempel's “covering law“ explication of explanation, that of the seventies was preoccupied with Salmon's “statistical relevance” conception, which emerged as the principal alternative to Hempel's enormously influential account. Readers of Wesley C. Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, therefore, ought to find it refreshing to discover that its author has not remained content with a facile defense of his previous investigations; on the (...) contrary, Salmon offers an original account of different kinds of explications, advances additional criticisms of various alternative theories, and elaborates a novel “two-tiered“ analysis of explanation that tacitly depends upon a “two-tiered” account of homogeneity. Indeed, if the considerations that follow are correct, Salmon has not merely refined his statistical relevance account but has actually abandoned it in favor of a “causal/mechanistic“ construction. This striking development suggests that the theory of explanation is likely to remain as lively an arena of debate in the eighties as it has been in the past. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...) argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

This paper presents a drastically revised version of the theory of causality, based on analyses of causal processes and causal interactions, advocated in Salmon (1984). Relying heavily on modified versions of proposals by P. Dowe, this article answers penetrating objections by Dowe and P. Kitcher to the earlier theory. It shows how the new theory circumvents a host of difficulties that have been raised in the literature. The result is, I hope, a more satisfactory analysis of physical causality.

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)

Germund Hesslow has argued recently [2] that a probabilistic theory of causality as advocated by Patrick Suppes [4] has two problems that a deterministic theory avoids. In this paper, I argue that Suppes' probabilistic causal calculus is free of each of these problems and, moreover, that several broader issues raised by Hesslow's discussion tend to support a probabilistic conception of causes.

The final work of a distinguished physicist, this remarkable volume examines the emotive significance of time, the time order of mechanics, the time direction of thermodynamics and microstatistics, the time direction of macrostatistics, and the time of quantum physics. Coherent discussions include accounts of analytic methods of scientific philosophy in the investigation of probability, quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, and causality. "[Reichenbach’s] best by a good deal."—Physics Today. 1971 ed.

A distinction is drawn between property causation and token causation. According to the former, a positive causal factor in a population raises the probability of its effects within "background contexts". The latter, which concerns "actual physical connections" between token events, is not explicated here although its distinctness from the first concept and its importance are discussed. The applicability of both is illustrated by two currently controversial issues in evolutionary theory -- the units of selection controversy and the use of parsimony (...) as an inference rule in phylogenetic reconstruction. (shrink)