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  1. (1 other version)A philosophical guide to conditionals.Jonathan Bennett - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language, and analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. An ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, it also offers a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate students (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • (1 other version)How to do things with causes.Nancy Cartwright - 2009 - APA Proceedings and Addresses 83 (2).
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  • Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):201-202.
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  • Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence.Adam Elga - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 68 (3):313-324.
    In "Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow", David Lewis defends an analysis of counterfactuals intended to yield the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence: that later affairs depend counterfactually on earlier ones, and not the other way around. I argue that careful attention to the dynamical properties of thermodynamically irreversible processes shows that in many ordinary cases, Lewis's analysis fails to yield this asymmetry. Furthermore, the analysis fails in an instructive way: it teaches us something about the connection between the asymmetry of overdetermination (...)
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  • Actual causation: a stone soup essay.Clark Glymour, David Danks, Bruce Glymour, Frederick Eberhardt, Joseph Ramsey & Richard Scheines - 2010 - Synthese 175 (2):169-192.
    We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) "neuron" and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...)
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  • Causation: A User’s Guide.L. A. Paul & Ned Hall - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Edward J. Hall.
    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 (...)
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  • Review: The Grand Leap; Reviewed Work: Causation, Prediction, and Search. [REVIEW]Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour & Richard Scheines - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (1):113-123.
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  • Of Miracles and Interventions.Luke Glynn - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (1):43-64.
    In Making Things Happen, James Woodward influentially combines a causal modeling analysis of actual causation with an interventionist semantics for the counterfactuals encoded in causal models. This leads to circularities, since interventions are defined in terms of both actual causation and interventionist counterfactuals. Circularity can be avoided by instead combining a causal modeling analysis with a semantics along the lines of that given by David Lewis, on which counterfactuals are to be evaluated with respect to worlds in which their antecedents (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • Interventionist counterfactuals.Rachael Briggs - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (1):139-166.
    A number of recent authors (Galles and Pearl, Found Sci 3 (1):151–182, 1998; Hiddleston, Noûs 39 (4):232–257, 2005; Halpern, J Artif Intell Res 12:317–337, 2000) advocate a causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals. But the precise logical significance of the causal modeling semantics remains murky. Particularly important, yet particularly under-explored, is its relationship to the similarity-based semantics for counterfactuals developed by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, 1973b). The causal modeling semantics is both an account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and (...)
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  • A Partial Theory of Actual Causation.Brad Weslake - manuscript
    One part of the true theory of actual causation is a set of conditions responsible for eliminating all of the non-causes of an effect that can be discerned at the level of counterfactual structure. I defend a proposal for this part of the theory.
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  • Causes and Conditions.J. L. Mackie - 1965 - American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (4):245 - 264.
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  • A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
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  • Cause and Norm.Christopher Hitchcock & Joshua Knobe - 2009 - Journal of Philosophy 106 (11):587-612.
    Much of the philosophical literature on causation has focused on the concept of actual causation, sometimes called token causation. In particular, it is this notion of actual causation that many philosophical theories of causation have attempted to capture.2 In this paper, we address the question: what purpose does this concept serve? As we shall see in the next section, one does not need this concept for purposes of prediction or rational deliberation. What then could the purpose be? We will argue (...)
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  • (1 other version)Events.David Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 241-269.
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  • Making things happen: a theory of causal explanation.James F. Woodward - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.
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  • Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
    Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds and his theory of laws of nature.
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  • (1 other version)Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections, statistical associations, actions and observations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curriculum of statistics, artificial intelligence, business, epidemiology, social science and economics.
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  • Explanatory generalizations, part I: A counterfactual account.James Woodward & Christopher Hitchcock - 2003 - Noûs 37 (1):1–24.
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  • Counterfactuals and explanation.Boris Kment - 2006 - Mind 115 (458):261-310.
    On the received view, counterfactuals are analysed using the concept of closeness between possible worlds: the counterfactual 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q' is true at a world w just in case q is true at all the possible p-worlds closest to w. The degree of closeness between two worlds is usually thought to be determined by weighting different respects of similarity between them. The question I consider in the (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. Part I: Causes.Joseph Y. Halpern & Judea Pearl - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):843-887.
    We propose a new definition of actual causes, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. We show that the definition yields a plausible and elegant account of causation that handles well examples which have caused problems for other definitions and resolves major difficulties in the traditional account.
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  • Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow.David Lewis - 1979 - Noûs 13 (4):455-476.
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  • (1 other version)The intransitivity of causation revealed in equations and graphs.Christopher Hitchcock - 2001 - Journal of Philosophy 98 (6):273-299.
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  • (2 other versions)Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part II: Explanations.Judea Pearl - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):889-911.
    We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the literature. (...)
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  • (2 other versions)A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals.Jonathan Bennett - 2003 - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 10 (4):565-570.
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  • (1 other version)Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason.Christopher Hitchcock - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (4):495-532.
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  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 42 (3):341-344.
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  • (1 other version)“If you’d wiggled A, then B would’ve changed”: Causality and counterfactual conditionals.Katrin Schulz - 2011 - Synthese 179 (2):239-251.
    This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl (2000) to formalize a causal (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part II: Explanations.Joseph Y. Halpern & Judea Pearl - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):889-911.
    We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the literature.
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  • Actual causation: a stone soup essay.Clark Glymour David Danks, Bruce Glymour Frederick Eberhardt, Joseph Ramsey Richard Scheines, Peter Spirtes Choh Man Teng & Zhang Jiji - 2010 - Synthese 175 (2):169--192.
    We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) “neuron” and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...)
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  • Causal interpretation in systems of equations.James Woodward - 1999 - Synthese 121 (1-2):199-247.
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  • Explanatory generalizations, part II: Plumbing explanatory depth.Christopher Hitchcock & James Woodward - 2003 - Noûs 37 (2):181–199.
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  • (1 other version)Prevention, preemption, and the principle of sufficient reason.Christopher Hitchcock - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (4):495-532.
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  • Where’s the biff?Toby Handfield, Charles R. Twardy, Kevin B. Korb & Graham Oppy - 2008 - Erkenntnis 68 (2):149-68.
    This paper presents an attempt to integrate theories of causal processes—of the kind developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe—into a theory of causal models using Bayesian networks. We suggest that arcs in causal models must correspond to possible causal processes. Moreover, we suggest that when processes are rendered physically impossible by what occurs on distinct paths, the original model must be restricted by removing the relevant arc. These two techniques suffice to explain cases of late preëmption and other cases (...)
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  • Structural equations and causation.Ned Hall - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (1):109 - 136.
    Structural equations have become increasingly popular in recent years as tools for understanding causation. But standard structural equations approaches to causation face deep problems. The most philosophically interesting of these consists in their failure to incorporate a distinction between default states of an object or system, and deviations therefrom. Exploring this problem, and how to fix it, helps to illuminate the central role this distinction plays in our causal thinking.
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  • (1 other version)The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs.Christopher Hitchcock - 2001 - Journal of Philosophy 98 (6):273.
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  • A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle.Robert Stalnaker - 1981 - In William Leonard Harper, Robert Stalnaker & Glenn Pearce (eds.), Ifs. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. pp. 87-104.
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  • A causal theory of counterfactuals.Eric Hiddleston - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):632–657.
    I develop an account of counterfactual conditionals using “causal models”, and argue that this account is preferable to the currently standard account in terms of “similarity of possible worlds” due to David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker. I diagnose the attraction of counterfactual theories of causation, and argue that it is illusory.
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  • (1 other version)Causes and counterfactuals.Jaegwon Kim - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):570-572.
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  • (2 other versions)Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part I: Causes.Judea Pearl - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):843-887.
    We propose a new definition of actual causes, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. We show that the definition yields a plausible and elegant account of causation that handles well examples which have caused problems for other definitions and resolves major difficulties in the traditional account. 1. Introduction2. Causal models: a review2.1Causal models2.2Syntax and semantics3. The definition of cause4. Examples5. A more refined definition6. DiscussionAAppendix: Some Technical IssuesA.1The active causal processA.2A closer look at AC2(b)A.3Causality with infinitely many variablesA.4Causality in nonrecursive (...)
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  • (1 other version)``Causes and Counterfactuals".Jaegwon Kim - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):570-572.
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  • Counterfactual theories of causation.Peter Menzies - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The basic idea of counterfactual theories of causation is that the meaning of causal claims can be explained in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form “If A had not occurred, C would not have occurred”. While counterfactual analyses have been given of type-causal concepts, most counterfactual analyses have focused on singular causal or token-causal claims of the form “event c caused event e”. Analyses of token-causation have become popular in the last thirty years, especially since the development in the (...)
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  • Causal models, token causation, and processes.Peter Menzies - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):820-832.
    Judea Pearl (2000) has recently advanced a theory of token causation using his structural equations approach. This paper examines some counterexamples to Pearl's theory, and argues that the theory can be modified in a natural way to overcome them.
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  • Actual causation and the art of modeling.Joseph Halpern & Christopher Hitchcock - 2010 - In Halpern Joseph & Hitchcock Christopher (eds.), Causality, Probability, and Heuristics: A Tribute to Judea Pearl. College Publications. pp. 383-406.
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  • Causal inference in statistics. An overview.Judea Pearl - 2009 - Statistics Surveys 3:96-146.
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  • 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 (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part II: Explanations.Y. Halpern Joseph & Pearl Judea - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):889-911.
    We propose new definitions of explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent’s initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the literature.
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  • (1 other version)“If you’d wiggled A, then B would’ve changed”: Causality and counterfactual conditionals.Katrin Schulz - 2011 - Synthese 179 (2):239-251.
    This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl to formalize a causal notion (...)
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  • (1 other version)How To Do Things With Causes.Nancy Cartwright - 2009 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 83 (2):5 - 22.
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