A theory of the causal relate as aspects or property instances is developed. A supposed problem for transitivity is assessed and then resolved with aspects as the causal relata.

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 book, J. L. Mackie makes a careful study of several philosophical issues involved in his account of causation. Mackie follows Hume's distinction between causation as a concept and causation as it is ‘in the objects’ and attempts to provide an account of both aspects. Mackie examines the treatment of causation by philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Mill, Russell, Ducasse, Kneale, Hart and Honore, and von Wright. Mackie's own account involves an analysis of causal statements in terms of counterfactual (...) conditionals though these are judged to be incapable of giving a complete account of causation. Mackie argues that regularity theory too can only offer an incomplete picture of the nature of causation. In the course of his analysis, Mackie critically examines the account of causation offered by Kant, as well as the contemporary Kantian approaches offered by philosophers such as Bennett and Strawson. Also addressed are issues such as the direction of causation, the relation of statistical laws and functional laws, the role of causal statements in legal contexts, and the understanding of causes both as ‘facts’ and ‘events’. Throughout the discussion of these topics, Mackie develops his own complex account of the nature of causation, finally bringing his analysis to bear in regard to the topic of teleology and the question of whether final causes can be justifiably reduced to efficient causes. (shrink)

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.

Counterfactual analyses of causation can provide elegant analyses of many cases of causation. However, they fail to give intuitively correct analyses of cases involving a commonplace variety of late preemptive causation. I argue that a small emendation can solve the problem.

Extant counterfactual accounts of causation (CACs) still cannot handle preemptive causation. I describe a new variety of preemption, defend its possibility, and use it to show the inadequacy of extant CACs. Imagine that it is a law of nature that the first spell cast on a given day match the enchantment that midnight.

Ehring shows the inadequacy of received theories of causation, and, introducing conceptual devices of his own, provides a wholly new account of causation as the persistence over time of individual properties, or "tropes.".