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The Time-Asymmetry of Causation

In Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 414-443 (2009)

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  1. The Character of Physical Law.Richard Phillips Feynman - 1965 - MIT Press.
    The law of gravitation, an example of physical law The relation of mathematics to physics The great conservation principles Symmetry in physical law The distinction of past and future Probability and uncertainty: the quantum mechanical view of nature Seeking new laws.
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  • (1 other version)Causality.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Written by one of the preeminent researchers in the field, this book provides a comprehensive exposition of modern analysis of causation. It shows how causality has grown from a nebulous concept into a mathematical theory with significant applications in the fields of statistics, artificial intelligence, economics, philosophy, cognitive science, and the health and social sciences. Judea Pearl presents and unifies the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual, and structural approaches to causation and devises simple mathematical tools for studying the relationships between causal connections (...)
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  • (2 other versions)On the Notion of Cause.Bertrand Russell - 1913 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 13:1-26.
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  • (1 other version)Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics, and Economics.Frank Plumpton Ramsey & D. H. Mellor (eds.) - 1931 - Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanties Press; Routledge.
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  • Counterfactuals and the Second Law.Barry Loewer - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  • (1 other version)The direction of time.Hans Reichenbach - 1956 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Maria Reichenbach.
    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.
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  • Philosophy of science: an anthology.Marc Lange (ed.) - 2006 - Oxford: Blackwell.
    Philosophy of Science: An Anthology assembles some of the finest papers in the philosophy of science since 1945, showcasing enduring classics alongside important and innovative recent work. Introductions by the editor highlight connections between selections, and contextualize the articles Nine sections address topics at the heart of philosophy of science, including realism and the character of scientific theories, scientific explanations and laws of nature, singular casusation, and the metaphysical implications of modern physics Provides an authoritative and accessible overview of the (...)
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  • Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem.Richmond Campbell & Lanning Sowden (eds.) - 1985 - Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
    1 Background for the Uninitiated RICHMOND CAMPBELL Paradoxes are intrinsically fascinating. They are also distinctively ...
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  • 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, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causation in a physical world.Hartry Field - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 435-460.
    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 (...)
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  • Causation and manipulability.James Woodward - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Manipulablity theories of causation, according to which causes are to be regarded as handles or devices for manipulating effects, have considerable intuitive appeal and are popular among social scientists and statisticians. This article surveys several prominent versions of such theories advocated by philosophers, and the many difficulties they face. Philosophical statements of the manipulationist approach are generally reductionist in aspiration and assign a central role to human action. These contrast with recent discussions employing a broadly manipulationist framework for understanding causation, (...)
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  • Against causal decision theory.Huw Price - 1986 - Synthese 67 (2):195 - 212.
    Proponents of causal decision theories argue that classical Bayesian decision theory (BDT) gives the wrong advice in certain types of cases, of which the clearest and commonest are the medical Newcomb problems. I defend BDT, invoking a familiar principle of statistical inference to show that in such cases a free agent cannot take the contemplated action to be probabilistically relevant to its causes (so that BDT gives the right answer). I argue that my defence does better than those of Ellery (...)
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  • Causation as a secondary quality.Peter Menzies & Huw Price - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2):187-203.
    In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is (...)
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  • The entropy theory of counterfactuals.Douglas N. Kutach - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (1):82-104.
    I assess the thesis that counterfactual asymmetries are explained by an asymmetry of the global entropy at the temporal boundaries of the universe, by developing a method of evaluating counterfactuals that includes, as a background assumption, the low entropy of the early universe. The resulting theory attempts to vindicate the common practice of holding the past mostly fixed under counterfactual supposition while at the same time allowing the counterfactual's antecedent to obtain by a natural physical development. Although the theory has (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causal laws and effective strategies.Nancy Cartwright - 1979 - Noûs 13 (4):419-437.
    La autora presenta algunas criticas generales al proyecto de reducir las leyes causales a probabilidades. Además, muestra que las leyes causales son imprescindibles para poder diferenciar las strategias efectivas de las que no lo son y da un criterio para considerar cuando podemos deducir causalidad a través de datos estadísticos.
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  • (1 other version)Foundations, Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economics.F. P. Ramsey, D. H. Mellor, Mirsky, Smiley & R. Stone - 1979 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 169 (1):118-118.
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  • Review of T he Direction of Time.Henryk Mehlberg - 1962 - Philosophical Review 71 (1):99.
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  • (2 other versions)On the notion of cause.Bertrand Russell - 1918 - In Mysticism and logic. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. pp. 171-196.
    El autor intenta mostrar que el concepto de ley es totalmente innecesario y que solo sirve para crear confusiones y generar falacias. Para ello muestra que la supuesta “ley de la causalidad” es inconsistente y que la ciencia no requiere de ella más que en una primera fase. Las ciencias maduras usan relaciones, en concreto, relaciones mediante ecuaciones diferenciales para desempe\ nar el papel que se le quiere otorgar a la ley de la causalidad. Despues de hacer esto, el autor (...)
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  • Review of Making Things Happen. [REVIEW]Brad Weslake - 2006 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1):136-140.
    The concept of causation plays a central role in many philosophical theories, and yet no account of causation has gained widespread acceptance among those who have investigated its foundations. Theories based on laws, counterfactuals, physical processes, and probabilistic dependence and independence relations (the list is by no means exhaustive) have all received detailed treatment in recent years—and, while no account has been entirely successful, it is generally agreed that the concept has been greatly clarified by the attempts. In this magnificent (...)
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  • Measures, explanations and the past: Should ‘special’ initial conditions be explained?Craig Callender - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (2):195-217.
    For the generalizations of thermodynamics to obtain, it appears that a very ‘special’ initial condition of the universe is required. Is this initial condition itself in need of explanation? I argue that it is not. In so doing, I offer a framework in which to think about ‘special’ initial conditions in all areas of science, though I concentrate on the case of thermodynamics. I urge the view that it is not always a serious mark against a theory that it must (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Causation.David Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 159-213.
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  • The Direction of Time.Hans Reichenbach - 1956 - Philosophy 34 (128):65-66.
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  • Can an Effect Precede Its Cause.A. E. Dummett & A. Flew - 1954 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 28 (3):27-62.
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  • Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation.Richmond Campbell & Lanning Sowden - 1990 - Noûs 24 (2):352-357.
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  • Can an Effect Precede its Cause?Michael Dummett - 1954 - Aristotelian Society Proceedings Supplement 28.
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  • Physics and common causes.Frank Arntzenius - 1990 - Synthese 82 (1):77 - 96.
    The common cause principle states that common causes produce correlations amongst their effects, but that common effects do not produce correlations amongst their causes. I claim that this principle, as explicated in terms of probabilistic relations, is false in classical statistical mechanics. Indeterminism in the form of stationary Markov processes rather than quantum mechanics is found to be a possible saviour of the principle. In addition I argue that if causation is to be explicated in terms of probabilities, then it (...)
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  • Bringing about the past.Michael Dummett - 1964 - Philosophical Review 73 (3):338-359.
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  • Time and Chance.S. French - 2005 - Mind 114 (453):113-116.
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  • Causation: Reductionism versus realism.Michael Tooley - 1990 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50:215-236.
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  • Does a Low-Entropy Constraint Prevent Us from Influencing the Past.Mathias Frisch - 2010 - In Gerhard Ernst & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Time, chance and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13--33.
    David Albert and Barry Loewer have argued that the temporal asymmetry of our concept of causal influence or control is grounded in the statistical mechanical assumption of a low-entropy past. In this paper I critically examine Albert's and Loewer 's accounts.
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  • Counterfactuals and the Past Hypothesis.Mathias Frisch - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):739-750.
    Albert provides a sketch of an entropy account of the causal and counterfactual asymmetries. This paper critically examines a proposal that may be thought to fill in some of the lacunae in Albert’s account.
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  • Causality, utility, and decision.Ellery Eells - 1981 - Synthese 48 (2):295 - 329.
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  • Entropy and Counterfactual Asymmetry.Douglas Kutach - 2001 - Dissertation, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick
    I assess the thesis that counterfactual asymmetries are explained by an asymmetry of the global entropy at the temporal boundaries of the universe by developing a new semantic element for counterfactuals called objective assertibility and a method of evaluating counterfactuals that constrains consideration to possibilities where the early universe has low entropy. The resulting theory vindicates the common practice of holding the past mostly fixed under counterfactual supposition while at the same time allowing the counterfactual's antecedent to obtain by a (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Causation.Michael Tooley - 2009 - In Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.
    This volume presents a selection of the most influential recent discussions of the crucial metaphysical questions: what is it for one event to cause another? The subject of causation bears on many topics, such as time, explanation, mental states, the laws of nature, and the philosphy of science.
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