Switch to: Citations

References in:

Counterfactuals and counterparts: defending a neo-Humean theory of causation

Dissertation, Macquarie University and University of Glasgow (2015)

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Free Contrastivism.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2013 - In Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2001 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Four- Dimensionalism defends the thesis that the material world is composed of temporal as well as spatial parts. This defense includes a novel account of persistence over time, new arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology, and responses to the challenges four- dimensionalism faces." "Theodore Sider pays particular attention to the philosophy of time, including a strong series of arguments against presentism, the thesis that only the present is real. Arguments offered in favour of four- dimensionalism include novel arguments based (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   684 citations  
  • Proportionality, Contrast and Explanation.Brad Weslake - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (4):785-797.
    If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):642-647.
    Precis of my book by this title, for a symposium.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   596 citations  
  • Causation, Transparency, and Emphasis.Peter Achinstein - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (1):1 - 23.
    It is often said that singular causal statements express a relationship between one event and another or between a fact and an event. This is a very strong view, which has the following simple corollary: singular causal statements whose cause-term purports to refer to an event and whose effect-term purports to refer to an event express a relationship between an event and an event.Thus, both Davidson and Kim would claim that the singular causal Statement Socrates’ drinking hemlock at dusk caused (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1061 citations  
  • Causes of causes.Alex Broadbent - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (3):457-476.
    When is a cause of a cause of an effect also a cause of that effect? The right answer is either Sometimes or Always . In favour of Always , transitivity is considered by some to be necessary for distinguishing causes from redundant non-causal events. Moreover transitivity may be motivated by an interest in an unselective notion of causation, untroubled by principles of invidious discrimination. And causal relations appear to add up like transitive relations, so that the obtaining of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Against the Contrastive Account of Singular Causation.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (1):115-143.
    For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of events acting as cause and effect are specified. In recent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   217 citations  
  • Being Positive About Negative Facts.Mark Jago & Stephen Barker - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1):117-138.
    Negative facts get a bad press. One reason for this is that it is not clear what negative facts are. We provide a theory of negative facts on which they are no stranger than positive atomic facts. We show that none of the usual arguments hold water against this account. Negative facts exist in the usual sense of existence and conform to an acceptable Eleatic principle. Furthermore, there are good reasons to want them around, including their roles in causation, chance-making (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • Contrastive causation in the law.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Legal Theory 16 (4):259-297.
    What conception of causation is at work in the law? I argue that the law implicitly relies on a contrastive conception. In a liability case where the defendant's breach of duty must be shown to have caused the plaintiff's damages, it is not enough to consider what would have happened if the cause had not occurredthe law requires us to look to a specific replacement for the effect, which in this case is the hypothetical outcome in which the plaintiff came (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Would‐cause semantics.Phil Dowe - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):701-711.
    This article raises two difficulties that certain approaches to causation have with would‐cause counterfactuals. First, there is a problem with David Lewis’s semantics of counterfactuals when we ‘suppose in’ some positive event of a certain kind. And, second, there is a problem with embedded counterfactuals. I show that causal‐modeling approaches do not have these problems. †To contact the author, please write to: Philosophy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e‐mail: p.dowe@uq.edu.au.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Events and reification.Willard V. Quine - 1985 - In Ernest LePore & Brian P. McLaughlin (eds.), Actions and events: perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson. New York, NY, USA: Blackwell. pp. 162-71.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   72 citations  
  • Difference-making in context.Peter Menzies - 2004 - In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals. MIT Press.
    Several different approaches to the conceptual analysis of causation are guided by the idea that a cause is something that makes a difference to its effects. These approaches seek to elucidate the concept of causation by explicating the concept of a difference-maker in terms of better-understood concepts. There is no better example of such an approach than David Lewis’ analysis of causation, in which he seeks to explain the concept of a difference-maker in counterfactual terms. Lewis introduced his counterfactual theory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   109 citations  
  • The individuation of events.Donald Davidson - 1970 - In Carl G. Hempel, Donald Davidson & Nicholas Rescher (eds.), Essays in honor of Carl G. Hempel. Dordrecht,: D. Reidel. pp. 216-34.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   216 citations  
  • Causing and Nothingness.Helen Beebee - 2004 - In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals. MIT Press. pp. 291--308.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   150 citations  
  • Events as Property Exemplifications.Jaegwon Kim - 1976 - In M. Brand & Douglas Walton (eds.), Action Theory. Reidel. pp. 310-326.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   277 citations  
  • (1 other version)Events.David Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 241-269.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   119 citations  
  • Singular causal statements and strict deterministic laws.Noa Latham - 1987 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1):29-43.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Causation and Counterfactuals.John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.) - 2004 - MIT Press.
    Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection ...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   157 citations  
  • Causal explanation.David Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 214-240.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   350 citations  
  • Postscripts to `causation'.David Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   111 citations  
  • The Time-Asymmetry of Causation.Huw Price & Brad Weslake - 2009 - In Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 414-443.
    One of the most striking features of causation is that causes typically precede their effects – the causal arrow is strongly aligned with the temporal arrow. Why should this be so? We offer an opinionated guide to this problem, and to the solutions currently on offer. We conclude that the most promising strategy is to begin with the de facto asymmetry of human deliberation, characterised in epistemic terms, and to build out from there. More than any rival, this subjectivist approach (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  • Causal Contextualisms.Jonathan Schaffer - 2013 - In Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
    Causal claims are context sensitive. According to the old orthodoxy (Mackie 1974, Lewis 1986, inter alia), the context sensitivity of causal claims is all due to conversational pragmatics. According to the new contextualists (Hitchcock 1996, Woodward 2003, Maslen 2004, Menzies 2004, Schaffer 2005, and Hall ms), at least some of the context sensitivity of causal claims is semantic in nature. I want to discuss the prospects for causal contextualism, by asking why causal claims are context sensitive, what they are sensitive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Causes need not be physically connected to their effects: The case for negative causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2004 - In Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of science. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 197--216.
    Negative causation occurs when an absence serves as cause, effect, or causal intermediary. Negative causation is genuine causation, or so I shall argue. It involves no physical connection between cause and effect. Thus causes need not be physically connected to their effects.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   74 citations  
  • Causation in context.Peter Menzies - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Laws in nature.Stephen Mumford - 2004 - New York: Routledge.
    This book outlines a major new theory of natural laws. The book begins with the question of whether there are any genuinely law-like phenomena in nature. The discussion addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians such as whether the laws of nature are necessary or contingent and whether a property can be identified independently of its causal role.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   289 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1667 citations  
  • (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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   705 citations  
  • Studies in the way of words.Herbert Paul Grice - 1989 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   981 citations  
  • (1 other version)Causation and preemption.Ned Hall & Laurie Ann Paul - 2003 - In Peter Clark & Katherine Hawley (eds.), Philosophy of science today. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Counterfactuals and causation: history, problems, and prospects.John Collins, Ned Hall & L. A. Paul - 2004 - In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals. MIT Press. pp. 1--57.
    Among the many philosophers who hold that causal facts1 are to be explained in terms of—or more ambitiously, shown to reduce to—facts about what happens, together with facts about the fundamental laws that govern what happens, the clear favorite is an approach that sees counterfactual dependence as the key to such explanation or reduction. The paradigm examples of causation, so advocates of this approach tell us, are examples in which events c and e— the cause and its effect— both occur, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   70 citations  
  • A System of Logic.John Stuart Mill - 1829/2002 - Longman.
    Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   560 citations  
  • Causality.Jessica M. Wilson - 2005 - In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 90--100.
    Arguably no concept is more fundamental to science than that of causality, for investigations into cases of existence, persistence, and change in the natural world are largely investigations into the causes of these phenomena. Yet the metaphysics and epistemology of causality remain unclear. For example, the ontological categories of the causal relata have been taken to be objects (Hume 1739), events (Davidson 1967), properties (Armstrong 1978), processes (Salmon 1984), variables (Hitchcock 1993), and facts (Mellor 1995). (For convenience, causes and effects (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
    It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   947 citations  
  • The metaphysics of causation.Jonathan N. D. Schaffer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided as follows. First, there are questions about the nature of the causal relata, including (1.1) whether they are in spacetime immanence), (1.2) how fine grained they are individuation), and (1.3) how many there are adicity). Second, there are questions about the metaphysics of the causal relation, including (2.1) what is the difference between causally related and causally unrelated sequences connection), (2.2) what is the difference between sequences related as cause to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   72 citations  
  • Constitutive Overdetermination.L. A. Paul - 2007 - In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation. Bradford. pp. 4--265.
    Our best philosophical and scientific pictures of the world organize material objects into a hierarchy or levels or layers- microparticles at the bottom, molecules, cells, and persons at higher layers. Are objects at higher layers identical to the sums of objects at lower layers that constitute them? (Note that this question is different from the question of whether composition- as opposed to constitution- is identity.).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Overdetermining causes.Jonathan Schaffer - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2):23 - 45.
    When two rocks shatter the window at once, what causes the window to shatter? Is the throwing of each individual rock a cause of the window shattering, or are the throwings only causes collectively? This question bears on the analysis of causation, and the metaphysics of macro-causation. I argue that the throwing of each individual rock is a cause of the window shattering, and generally that individual overdeterminers are causes.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • Contrastive causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (3):327-358.
    Causation is widely assumed to be a binary relation: c causes e. I will argue that causation is a quaternary, contrastive relation: c rather than C* causes e rather than E*, where C* and E* are nonempty sets of contrast events. Or at least, I will argue that treating causation as contrastive helps resolve some paradoxes.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   222 citations  
  • Chance and counterfactuals.John Hawthorne - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):396–405.
    Suppose the world is chancy. The worry arises that most ordinary counterfactuals are false. This paper examines David Lewis' strategy for rescuing such counterfactuals, and argues that it is highly problematic.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   89 citations  
  • Non‐locality on the Cheap? A New Problem for Counterfactual Analyses of Causation.Ned Hall - 2002 - Noûs 36 (2):276–294.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Supervaluationism, vagueifiers, and semantic overdetermination.Matti Eklund - 2001 - Dialectica 55 (4):363–378.
    Supervaluationism, traditionally conceived, is the conjunction of three theses: Vagueness in a language gives rise to there being a multitude of acceptable assignments of semantic values to some expressions of the language, These assignments correspond to possible completions of the meanings of vague expressions, Truth is truth under all acceptable assignments, and falsity is falsity under all acceptable assignments. Supervaluationism has three chief virtues. It preserves classical logic. It provides an account of what vagueness is . And it extends nicely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (1 other version)Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach.Judea Pearl - manuscript
    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 difficultiesn in the traditional account.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   103 citations  
  • (1 other version)Context and logical form.Jason Stanley - 2000 - Linguistics and Philosophy 23 (4):391--434.
    In this paper, I defend the thesis that alleffects of extra-linguistic context on thetruth-conditions of an assertion are traceable toelements in the actual syntactic structure of thesentence uttered. In the first section, I develop thethesis in detail, and discuss its implications for therelation between semantics and pragmatics. The nexttwo sections are devoted to apparent counterexamples.In the second section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples of true non-sentential assertions.In the third section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples of what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   353 citations  
  • Causation by disconnection.Jonathan Schaffer - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (2):285-300.
    The physical and/or intrinsic connection approach to causation has become prominent in the recent literature, with Salmon, Dowe, Menzies, and Armstrong among its leading proponents. I show that there is a type of causation, causation by disconnection, with no physical or intrinsic connection between cause and effect. Only Hume-style conditions approaches and hybrid conditions-connections approaches appear to be able to handle causation by disconnection. Some Hume-style, extrinsic, absence-relating, necessary and/or sufficient condition component of the causal relation proves to be needed.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   116 citations  
  • Causes as probability raisers of processes.Jonathan Schaffe - 2001 - Journal of Philosophy 98 (2):75-92.
    The leading accounts of the nature of causation divide into probability-raising and process-linkage views. On the probability-raising view, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the effect with the cause versus without. On the process-linkage view, causation is rooted in the existence of a connecting line from cause to effect. I propose a third alternative which synthesizes these views while solving their problem cases. On this alternative, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the connecting line to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • A counterfactual analysis of causation.Murali Ramachandran - 1997 - Mind 106 (422):263-277.
    On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counter-factually) depends on the former one. But this requirement precludes the possibility of late pre-emptive causation, of causation by fragile events, and of indeterministic causation. Lewis proposes three different strategies for accommodating these three kinds of cases, but none of these turn out to be satisfactory. I offer a single analysis (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   35 citations  
  • Identity, ostension, and hypostasis.W. V. Quine - 1950 - Journal of Philosophy 47 (22):621-633.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   138 citations