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.

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.

This paper discusses an asymmetry in the way that we think about causation. Put roughly, the asymmetry is this. We tend to regard hastening some event or result as a way of causing it, whereas we do not tend to regard delaying an event or result as a way of causing it. In the first two sections of this paper, I illustrate the asymmetry with some examples, characterize it more precisely, and explain why I think it is puzzling. In the (...) third section I discuss some responses to the puzzle that I take to be inadequate. In the following sections I present my own solution. I argue that the key to the asymmetry puzzle is a difference in the ways in which delaying and hastening are related to preventing. My explanation is compatible with the view that, in general, what delays an event or result is not among its causes. But it is also compatible with the view (to which I incline) that although delayers really are always causes of what they delay, there are pragmatic reasons why it is, in general, odd or unnatural so to describe them. (shrink)

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.

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 (...) as landmarks. They clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency.The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation. (shrink)