Unlike any other monograph on legal liability, Michael S. Moore’s book CAUSATION AND RESPONSIBILITY contains a well-informed and in-depth discussion of the metaphysics of causation. Moore does not share the widespread view that legal scholars should not enter into metaphysical debates about causation. He shows respect for the subtleties of philosophical debates on causal relata, identity conditions for events, the ontological distinctions between events, states of affairs, facts and tropes, and the counterfactual analysis of event causation, and he (...) considers all these issues relevant to law. In this contribution, I defend an amended version of the COUNTERFACTUAL theory of event causation both against Moore’s criticism and against some traits of Lewis’s version of the theory. On a number of counts, I simply defend Lewis against Moore’s misdirected criticism. Moore’s unreasonable demand that all the commonplaces about causation have to FOLLOW from the counterfactual analysis rests on his mistaken claim that the counterfactual theory IDENTIFIES causation with counterfactual dependence. In other respects, I part company with Lewis in order to highlight some underrated strengths of the counterfactual approach. The common denominator of my revisions is that they make the counterfactual theory unambiguously singularist. The suggested revisions comprise: performing the counterfactual analysis with Davidsonian rather than with Lewisian events, taking seriously the ex post-character of singular causal statements, making explicit the indexical ceteris paribus clause that fixes the actual circumstances of the causing event, abandoning the alleged transitivity of causation, and, last but not least, doing everything in the correct order. The correct order is to start with bedrock intuitions about the nature of causality rather than with a general possible world semantics, and then to turn these intuitions into constraints for the class of counterfactuals that a counterfactual analysis of causation has to consider. (shrink)

As physicalisms of various kinds have faced difficulties in recent years, the time has come to explore possible alternatives, one of which is yinyang ontology. A yinyang theorist is expected to provide a plausible account of causation to replace the traditional notion of causation. The present paper is critical of the Humean tradition, which understands the relata of causal relations in terms of passive materiality so that humans use referential terms to describe causal relations constructively. But an (...) alternative notion of reference is available according to which causal relata are active processors of the information with which they interact. On this latter view, humans use referential language to describe the structure in which the relata interrelate themselves so that the structure can be understood hermeneutically. Reference on this view is naturalized. In this article I advance two arguments for this thesis, one concerning the informationality of states and the other related to the essentiality of properties. (shrink)

Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form ‘c causes e’ have context-sensitive truth-conditions. We consider four arguments invoked by Jonathan Schaffer in favor of this view. First, he argues that his brand of contextualism helps solve puzzles about transitivity. Second, he contends that how one describes the relata of the causal relation sometimes affects the truth of one’s claim. Third, Schaffer invokes the phenomenon of contrastive focus to conclude that causal statements implicitly designate salient alternatives (...) to the cause and effect. Fourth, he claims that the appropriateness of a causal statement depends on what is contextually taken for granted or made salient. We show that causal invariantism can explain these linguistic data at least as well as contextualism. We then argue that pace Schaffer, some causal sentences are always correct and can never be plausibly denied, regardless of the context. (shrink)

In order to fulfil their essential roles as the bearers of truth and the relata of logical relations, propositions must be public and shareable. That requirement has favoured Platonist and other nonmental views of them, despite the well-known problems of Platonism in general. Views that propositions are mental entities have correspondingly fallen out of favour, as they have difficulty in explaining how propositions could have shareable, objective properties. We revive a mentalist view of propositions, inspired by Artificial Intelligence work (...) on perceptual algorithms, which shows how perception causes persistent mental entities with shareable properties that allow them to fulfil the traditional roles of (one core kind of) propositions. The clustering algorithms implemented in perception produce outputs which are (implicit) atomic propositions in different minds. Coordination of them across minds proceeds by game-theoretic processes of communication. The account does not rely on any unexplained notions such as mental content, representation, or correspondence (although those notions are applicable in philosophical analysis of the result). (shrink)

Abstract objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, however principled arguments for this claim are rarely given. As a result, a number of recent authors have claimed that abstract objects are causally efficacious. These authors take abstracta to be temporally located in order to enter into causal relations but lack a spatial location. In this paper, I argue that such a position is untenable by showing first that causation requires its relata to have a temporal location, but (...) second, that if an entity is temporally located then it is spatiotemporally located since this follows from the theory of Relativity. Since abstract objects lack a spatiotemporal location, then if something is causally efficacious, it is not abstract. (shrink)

Tropes, as distinguished from other possible kinds of entities such as universals, states of affairs, events and bare particulars, are best-suited to play the role of causal relata.

Philosophers of dispositionalism deny the Humean account of causality in terms of constant conjunction, contiguity, temporal priority and contingency. And some of them go further to explain the causal relation not between events or objects, but between properties, in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, intentionality and holism. But their exposition seems to remain fragmented even though they try to make use of the notions of intentionality and holim. I would inquire reasons why it is piecemeal, by analysing that they (...) employ these notions of intentionality and holism which has been constructed within the dualistic tradition. If one wants to make the dispositional project to be powerful, she should look for the notions of intentionality and holism which are free of the dualistic traits and which have been constructed in the tradition of naturalism. The concept of integrationality may be a candidate for such a task. This conception was coined in Zhongyong under the name of cheng in that there is nothing without cheng, and was developed in one of Sok-hon Ham's thesis that any entity in the world contains "seed" within it to realize objectives shared by all involved. Humans are privileged and distinct from other natures, but there is continuity between them. An example of the integrationality applied to the case of humans would be that realization of myself and realizations of all others are one and not two. I would summarize notions of "cheng" and "seed" by offering the integrationality thesis, that is, that there is integrationality in any entity like dispositions such that the integrationality is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. I would claim that integrationality is a metaphysical basis for a way of human thinking, by arguing that it is a necessary part of presupposition for our understanding of the world without which the world is not intelligible. The notion of integrationality is involved empirically as well as conceptually. Empirically, there are numerous reports from physics, biology and information science, which provide with a clue which may well be taken to show the ubiquitous integrationality. But some conceptual considerations would also indicate necessarily toward the same direction. These would include various theses of ontology, epistemology, disposition, modality, naturalized intentionality, fitting and topics like these. I will investigate some of them in order to justify my claim of this paper. (shrink)

A recent account of presentist time travel involves a causal relation between events at two different and discontiguous times, and presentists cannot have such causal relations because presentism rules out the existence of at least one of the two relata in such a relation due to it being non-present. Additionally, presentists cannot have parodies of such causal relations for use in time travel stories because parodies are subject, at least, to the same limitations as the things (...) being parodied. So, the presentist has not successfully given an internally consistent account of presentist time travel. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely (...) characterize causal relata, including their degree of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques. (shrink)

Would it be possible to have an alternative to the physicalist world-view? If any type of dualism is not an option, I am tempted to consider an integrational world view, which was first claimed by Confucius under the notion of cheng. I would propose an integrational thesis that cheng of an entity is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. The notion of compassion may be said to be both (...) dispositional and mental. Then, this notion is one candidate to shed lights on the integrational thesis. The thesis doesn't exclude roles the causal notion has to play in the integrational system. Rather it allows the causal notion in its proper place, not having to exclude other relational notions in the system. What it denies is that the causal relation is all there is among what is there. The notion of compassion is essentialist in two senses. The first is the sense in which Mencius said that compassion is necessary for one to be a human. The second is the sense that compassion is an essentialist disposition. "Compassion" does neither refer to a mental state nor reflect a human relation, but it denotes an abstract property, or a theoretical notion, which can be singled out by a Ramsey sentence. There are many challenges for the integrational thesis to meet. Some of them are how the integrational thesis could allow an essentialism of a kind?, Is there a way for the integrational view of language to meet the requirements of modal semantics?, and so on. The present paper may not able to explain all of these questions but it will try to suggest how to approach toward the task. (shrink)

I want to make sense of the view that singular causation involves a metaphysical necessary connection. By this I understand, where A and B are particulars, that ifA causes B then in every possible world in which A (or an A-indiscernible) or B (or a B-indiscernible) occurs, A (or an Aindiscernible) and B (or a B-indiscernible) occur. In the singularist approach that I will favour causal facts do not supervene on laws, causal relata are best understood as (...) tropes, causation is founded on the nature of its terms, and the necessity thus involved does not entail essentialism, determinism, and other usual problems. (shrink)

In this paper I present a metaphysically minimalist but theoretically strong version of fact causation, in which the causal relata constitute a full Boolean algebra, mirroring the entailment relation of the sentences that express them. I suggest a generalization of the notion of multiple realizability of causes in terms of specificity of facts, and employ this in an interpretation of what goes on in cases of apparently redundant causation.

Presentism usually holds that only present entities exist. In contrast to presentism, eternalism holds that past, present, and future entities all exist. According to some philosophers, presentism is intuitively incompatible with time travel. In this paper, I defend the compatibility between presentism and time travel by arguing for a plausible account of causation in the presentist framework. To achieve my goal, I respond to an objection to presentist time travel that is based on the nonexistence of the past: the Causation (...) Objection. According to the Causation Objection, causal relations between objects at different times are necessary for time travel, but these are impossible for presentists. I evaluate a possible reply based on a non-relational account of causation and show that this reply is not satisfying. Subsequently, I put forward a fact-based account of causal relation. I argue that presentists could accept facts instead of events as causal relata, thus establishing causal relations. As all facts about the past, the present, and the future exist in the present, we could explain how backward causation works and describe the discrepancy between personal time and external time in presentist time travel; in this way, I argue, we could vindicate the compatibility between presentism and time travel. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether a powers ontology facilitates a reduction of causal relations to intrinsic powers of the causal relata. I first argue that there is a tension in the view that powerful causation is an internal relation in this sense. Powers are ontologically dependent on other powers for their individuation, but in that case—given an Aristotelian conception of properties as immanent universals—powers will not be intrinsic on several extant analyses of ‘intrinsic’, since to possess (...) a given power P requires the existence of other concrete particulars as bearers of the powers that individuate P. I suggest several ways for Aristotelians to resolve this tension, but all tenable options involve individuative type-level causal relations between powers. While these individuative relations between powers are internal in the sense that the powers are essentially related, this is a different sense of ‘ internal ’ to the one that entails reducibility. The proposed reduction of token-causal relations to powers succeeds only at the cost of irreducible type-level causal relations between the powers themselves. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the semantics and metaphysics of events and facts, particularly when they are claimed to be causal relata. I relate these issues to various well-known analyses of causation. The approach to the analysis of events is the property exemplification theory. I defend Kim's fine-grained individuation of events against most of Bennett's objections to it, but agree with Bennett that it is too fine-grained to provide a description of our ordinary thought and talk about events, (...) including causal statements. In the final part of the paper, I attempt to show that we need to distinguish between two different senses of 'fact': the term can mean both a true proposition and a situation (truthmaker). I try to show that Bennett seems to hold that facts in the first sense are causal relata. I argue that this view either amounts to a causal irrealism or to a conflation of epistemology with ontology. (shrink)

The short paper is a reply to a review of the author’s book HANDELN UND VERURSACHEN (Frankfurt am Main 2000). The reviewer, Peter Rohs, has focused upon the issues of causation, laws of nature and free will. Both Rohs and the author are libertarians, but they disagree on a number of metaphysical issues. The author maintains that causation is a relation between changes, i. e. time-consuming events, not between instantaneous states. Against Davidson’s “principle of the nomological character of causality”, he (...) holds that no exceptionless generalizations subsuming cause-effect pairs exist. He defends a singularist version of the counterfactual analysis of event causality instead. This analysis has application to both physical and mental events, so that no special kind of mental causation needs to be assumed. The paper is divided into five sections: (1) The skeptical view of laws of nature, (2) Causal relata, (3) Churchland’s law of action, (4) Counterfactual conditionals and knowledge of regularities, (5) Freedom and determinism. The debate is continued in a later issue of the same journal. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real symmetrical and non-causal relations. In the first part, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; in the second part, that they are relations; in the third part, that they are symmetrical relations; in the fourth part, that they are not causal relations, (but causal relata) by which I mean that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-humean to the extent that it defends (...) the existence of forces, irreducible to spatio-temporal relations, but is still compatible with humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are species of causation. (shrink)

E.J. Lowe attempts to meld elements of volitionalism and agent causalism in his recent essay on philosophy of action, Personal Agency. United in the belief that our mental states are inefficacious when it comes to producing volitions, agent causalists disagree over just how to formulate an alternative understanding of how we bring about our actions. We exercise self-control so as to become appropriate objects of reactive attitudes, by being the ultimate sources of our behavior- here they concur. But the precise (...) nature of the relation between agents and the volitions that ensue upon exercises of our will is disputed. Volitionalists, for their part, refuse to countenance talk of substances as causal relata. Only events are effective, they see our mental lives and attendant behavior proceeding without us being in any way involved except, perhaps, as spectators with a rooting interest in their having favorable outcomes, the threat such a nullification would pose to our belief in free will apparently being of less concern to them than the imperative of subsuming all occurrences under natural laws. (shrink)

According to the new mechanistic approach, an acting entity is at a lower mechanistic level than another acting entity if and only if the former is a component in the mechanism for the latter. Craver and Bechtel :547–563, 2007. doi:10.1007/s10539-006-9028-8) argue that a consequence of this view is that there cannot be causal interactions between acting entities at different mechanistic levels. Their main reason seems to be what I will call the Metaphysical Argument: things at different levels of a (...) mechanism are related as part and whole; wholes and their parts cannot be related as cause and effect; hence, interlevel causation in mechanisms is impossible. I will analyze this argument in more detail and show under which conditions it is valid. This analysis will reveal that interlevel causation in mechanisms is indeed possible, if we take seriously the idea that the relata of the mechanistic level relation are acting entities and accept a slightly modified notion of a mechanistic level that is highly plausible in the light of the first clarification. (shrink)

Perceptual experience has representational content. My argument for this claim is an inference to the best explanation. The explanandum is cognitive penetration. In cognitive penetration, perceptual experiences are either causally influenced, or else are partially constituted, by mental states that are representational, including: mental imagery, beliefs, concepts and memories. If perceptual experiences have representational content, then there is a background condition for cognitive penetration that renders the phenomenon prima facie intelligible. Naïve realist or purely relational accounts of perception leave cognitive (...) penetration less well-explained, even when formulated with so-called ‘standpoints’ or ‘third relata.’. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle or antinomy about the role of properties in causation. In theories of properties, a distinction is often made between determinable properties, like red, and their determinates, like scarlet (see Armstrong 1978, volume II). Sometimes determinable properties are cited in causal explanations, as when we say that someone stopped at the traffic light because it was red. If we accept that properties can be among the relata of causation, then it can be argued that (...) there are good reasons for allowing that some of these are determinable properties. On the other hand, there are strong arguments in the metaphysics of properties to treat properties as sparse in David Lewis’s (1983) sense. But then it seems that we only need to believe in the most determinate properties: particular shades of colour, specific masses, lengths and so on. And if we also agree with Lewis that sparse properties are ‘the ones relevant to causal powers’ (1983: 13) it seems we must conclude that if properties are relevant to causation at all, then all of these are determinate properties. I call this ‘the antinomy of determinable causation’. On the one hand, we have a good argument for the claim that determinable properties can be causes, if any properties are. I call this the Thesis. But on the other hand, we have a good argument for the claim that only the most determinate properties can be causes, if any properties are. I call this the Antithesis. Clearly, we need to reject either the Thesis or the.. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle or antinomy about the role of properties in causation. In theories of properties, a distinction is often made between determinable properties, like red, and their determinates, like scarlet (see Armstrong 1978, volume II). Sometimes determinable properties are cited in causal explanations, as when we say that someone stopped at the traffic light because it was red. If we accept that properties can be among the relata of causation, then it can be argued that (...) there are good reasons for allowing that some of these are determinable properties. On the other hand, there are strong arguments in the metaphysics of properties to treat properties as sparse in David Lewis’s (1983) sense. But then it seems that we only need to believe in the most determinate properties: particular shades of colour, specific masses, lengths and so on. And if we also agree with Lewis that sparse properties are ‘the ones relevant to causal powers’ (1983: 13) it seems we must conclude that if properties are relevant to causation at all, then all of these are determinate properties. I call this ‘the antinomy of determinable causation’. On the one hand, we have a good argument for the claim that determinable properties can be causes, if any properties are. I call this the Thesis. But on the other hand, we have a good argument for the claim that only the most determinate properties can be causes, if any properties are. I call this the Antithesis. Clearly, we need to reject either the Thesis or the.. (shrink)

This note calls attention to the fact that efficient causes – the sort of cause that changes something or makes something happen – can play no constitutive role in the immediate, cognitively conscious relation between cognitive subject and a cognit-ive object. It notes that: (1) it is a necessary condition for an efficient causal relation that it alter its relata; and (2) it is a necessary condition for a conscious cognitive relat-ion that it does not alter its (...) class='Hi'>relata. This has important implication for the theories of knowledge and consciousness, the “Hard Problem,” and related puzzles. (shrink)

Whitehead’s cosmology centers on the self-creation of actual occasions that perish as they come to be, but somehow do combine to constitute societies that are persistent agents and/or patients. “Instance Ontology” developed by D.W. Mertz concerns unification of relata into facts of relatedness by specific intensions. These two conceptual systems are similar in that they both avoid the substance-property distinction: they differ in their understanding of how basic units combine to constitute complex unities. “Process Structural Realism” (PSR) draws from (...) both of these approaches in developing an account of how combinations of processes may produce ontologically significant coherences. When a group of processes achieves such closure that a set of states recurs continually, the effects of that coherence differ from what would occur in the absence of that closure. Such altered effectiveness is an attribute of the system as a whole, and would have consequences. This indicates that the network of processes, as a unit, has ontological significance. The closed network of processes, together with the conditions that prevail, constitute the form of definiteness of the coherence. That form continues to obtain as long as the coherence persists. Constituents contribute to, rather than share, that characteristic. Aspects of some recent research in systems biology, microeconomics, and social psychology illustrate the application of PSR. (shrink)

I present Aristotle’s theory of causation in a way that privileges a comparison with contemporary discussion on causation. I do so by selecting in Aristotle’s theory points that are interesting to contemporary discussion and by translating Aristotle in the contemporary philosophical terminology. I compare Aristotle’s views with Mackie’s (1993/1965) and Sosa’s (1993/1980). Mackie is a humean regularist regarding the metaphysics of causal necessity, but his theory postulates some formal aspects of the causal relation which are similar to the (...) Aristotelian theory. By introducing the notion of causal field as a third causal relatum – a sample in which the cause must be picked out as a explanation coextensive to the effect –, Mackie holds a point very similar to Aristotle, inasmuch as both defend that the causal relation is triadic and both have the extensional desideratum. Sosa (1993/1980) defends that every cause necessitates its effect, arguing against classical Humeanism, and he also proposes a causal pluralism. Both these theses are clearly Aristotelian. Aristotle comprehends that the causal relation has three relata: a subjacent C, a property of that subjacent A and a cause B that explains why such property is attributed to that subjacent. The subjacent is similar to Mackie’s notion of causal field, for in regard to it the cause must be coextensive to the property. But Aristotle also says that for each explanandum (property attributed to a subjacent of which one aims to investigate a cause) there is only one cause, which necessitates it. Sosa and Aristotle are similar because both develop a causal pluralism from a theory of causes as having intrinsic necessitation. For Aristotle, causes/explanations [aitiai] are central for attaining scientific knowledge, and its triadic structure determines the syllogistic structure of scientific demonstrations. Aristotle’s theory of causation also involves comprehending the actualisation of capacities (dispositional properties of objects) affirming that the causal relation is resultant from intrinsic properties of the objects, and the cause B is the essence of the explanandum. (shrink)

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes — and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide (...) a principled solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples, including to a debate concerning the ‘causal democracy’ of organismal development, with an anti-democratic (though not a gene-centric) moral. (shrink)

The classic formulation of causal decision theory (CDT) appeals to counterfactuals. It says that you should aim to choose an option that would have a good outcome, were you to choose it. However, this version of CDT faces trouble if the laws of nature are deterministic. After all, the standard theory of counterfactuals says that, if the laws are deterministic, then if anything—including the choice you make—were different in the present, either the laws would be violated or the distant (...) past would be changed. And as several authors have shown, it's easy to transform this upshot of the standard theory of counterfactuals into full-blown counterexamples to CDT. In response to these counterexamples, I argue here that the problem lies, not so much with CDT's guiding idea—that it's the expected causal consequences of your actions that matter for rational decision-making—but with the fact that the classic formulation of CDT doesn't pay sufficient attention to the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals. I develop a contextualist version of CDT which better accounts for this context-sensitivity. And I show that my theory avoids the problems faced by the classic formulation of CDT in determinstic worlds. (shrink)

Causation appears to present us with an interpretative difficulty. While arguably a redundant relation given fundamental physics, it is nevertheless apparently pragmatically indispensable. This chapter revisits certain arguments made previously by the author for these claims with the benefit of hindsight, starting with the role of causal models in the human sciences, and attempting to explain why it is not possible to straightforwardly ground such models in fundamental physics. This suggests that further constraints, going beyond physics, are needed to (...) legitimate such models. These supplementary constraints could be reified, but that would seem to conflict with the completeness of physics. A response is to emphasize the practical role of causal talk, and the author suggests that a fictionalist approach might be worth exploring. After clarifying fictionalism as a general approach, they carry out in some detail the project of clarifying what a fictionalist attitude to causation would involve. (shrink)

Causal theories of perception typically have problems in explaining deviant causal chains. They also have difficulty with other unusual putative cases of perception involving prosthetic aids, defective perception, scientifically extended cases of perception, and so on. But I show how a more adequate reflexive causal theory, in which objects or properties X cause a perceiver to acquire X-related dispositions toward that very same item X, can provide a plausible and principled perceptual explanation of all of these kinds (...) of cases. A critical discussion of David Lewis's perceptual descriptivist views is also provided, including a defense of the logical possibility of systematic misperception or perceptual error for a perceiver, in spite of its empirical improbability. (shrink)

The chapter explores whether, or to what extent, recent work in experimental philosophy puts pressure on the idea that the concept of causation is ‘egalitarian’. Causal selection – where experimental subjects tend to rate the causal strength of (for example) a norm-violator more strongly than a non-norm-violator – is a well established phenomenon, and is in prima facie tension with an egalitarian conception of causation; it also, indirectly, puts prima facie pressure on the idea that causation is a (...) worldly phenomenon whose obtaining is independent of facts about norms. The chapter explores both the various psychological mechanisms and the broadly pragmatic approaches to explaining causal selection. It argues that the answer to the question whether or not the concept of causation is egalitarian is currently significantly empirically underdetermined, and suggests some avenues for further investigation. (shrink)

How reliable are causal inferences in complex empirical scenarios? For example, a physician prescribes a drug to a patient, and then the patient undergoes various changes to their symptoms. They then increase their confidence that it is the drug that causes such changes. Are such inferences reliable guides to the causal relation in question, particularly when the physician can gain a large volume of such clinical experience by treating many patients? The evidence-based medicine movement says no, while some (...) physicians and philosophers support such appeals to first-person experience. We develop a formal model and simulate causal inference based on clinical experience. We conclude that in very particular clinical scenarios such inference can be reliable, while in many other routine clinical scenarios such inferences are not reliable. (shrink)

We develop a new version of the causal theory of spacetime. Whereas traditional versions of the theory seek to identify spatiotemporal relations with causal relations, the version we develop takes causal relations to be the grounds for spatiotemporal relations. Causation is thus distinct from, and more basic than, spacetime. We argue that this non-identity theory, suitably developed, avoids the challenges facing the traditional identity theory.

Traditionally, causal arguments for physicalism have been taken to favour a ‘reductive’ brand of physicalism, according to which all the mental stuff is identical to some of the physical stuff. Many flaws have been found with these traditional causal arguments. Zhong (Asian Journal of Philosophy, 2(2), 1–9, 2023) develops a new causal argument that avoids these flaws and favours a milder, non-reductive brand of physicalism instead. The conclusion is that all mental stuff is metaphysically necessitated by some (...) of the physical stuff. I argue that neither the traditional nor the new causal argument holds much sway over non-physicalism. The problem is that causation just does not run that deep. It is a fairly superficial relationship and a poor guide to the metaphysically weighty facts of our world, such as what is identical to what, and what metaphysically necessitates what. (shrink)

According to orthodox causal decision theory, performing an action can give you information about factors outside of your control, but you should not take this information into account when deciding what to do. Causal decision theorists caution against an irrational policy of 'managing the news'. But, by providing information about factors outside of your control, performing an act can give you two, importantly different, kinds of good news. It can tell you that the world in which you find (...) yourself is good in ways you can't control, and it can also tell you that the act itself is in a position to make the world better. While the first kind of news does not speak in favor of performing an act, I believe that the second kind of news does. I present a revision of causal decision theory which advises you to manage the news about the good you stand to promote, while ignoring news about the good the world has provided for you. (shrink)

Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it (...) is argued that various forms of naturalistic dualism, of an emergentist character, are consistent with the strongest physical causal closure principles that can plausibly be advocated. (shrink)

Causal accounts of scientific explanation are currently broadly accepted (though not universally so). My first task in this paper is to show that, even for a causal approach to explanation, significant features of explanatory practice are not determined by settling how causal facts bear on the phenomenon to be explained. I then develop a broadly causal approach to explanation that accounts for the additional features that I argue an explanation should have. This approach to explanation makes (...) sense of several aspects of actual explanatory practice, including the widespread use of equilibrium explanations, the formulation of distinct explanations for a single event, and the tight relationship between explanations of events and explanations of causal regularities. (shrink)

Evidential decision theory (EDT) says that the choiceworthiness of an option depends on its evidential connections to possible outcomes. Causal decision theory (CDT) holds that it depends on your beliefs about its causal connections. While Newcomb cases support CDT, Arif Ahmed has described examples that support EDT. A new account is needed to get all cases right. I argue that an option A's choiceworthiness is determined by the probability that a good outcome ensues at possible A‐worlds that match (...) actuality in the facts causally unaffected by your decision (the “unaffected facts”). Moreover, you should evaluate A on the assumption that A is compossible with the unaffected facts. This view entails that you should use EDT when evaluating A on the assumption that the unaffected facts determine your action, but use CDT when assessing A on the opposite assumption. A's choiceworthiness equals a weighted average of these conditional assessments. The weights are determined by your beliefs about whether the unaffected fact determine your action. This account gets both Newcomb and Ahmed cases right. According to an influential view, whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action can make a difference to whether you can regard yourself as free and the action as being under your control. While my account is neutral on this issue, it entails that whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action is important in a different way: it matters to whether you should follow EDT or CDT. (shrink)

In this contribution, I explore the possibility of characterizing the emergence of time in causal set theory (CST) in terms of the growing block universe (GBU) metaphysics. I show that although GBU seems to be the most intuitive time metaphysics for CST, it leaves us with a number of interpretation problems, independently of which dynamics we choose to favor for the theory —here I shall consider the Classical Sequential Growth and the Covariant model. Discrete general covariance of the CSG (...) dynamics does not allow us to individuate a single history of the universe (defined by a causal history of different causal sets), thereby making the claim that ‘the past exists’ at best problematic. In addition, because the evolution of the universe in CSG dynamics leads to an outward branching causal tree, it becomes impossible to determine a proper ‘line of becoming’, thereby blurring the presentists’ claim that only the present exists. Similarly, the covariant approach runs into the same, if not even more severe problems, since each configuration of the universe would amount to a set of possible causal sets, thereby making the individuation of a single configuration of the universe —and thus the physical interpretation of the theory— implausible. (shrink)

When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that norm violations also affect the causality attributed to other agents, a phenomenon we refer to as "causal superseding." We propose and test a counterfactual reasoning model of this phenomenon in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 provide an initial demonstration of the causal superseding effect and distinguish it from previously studied effects. Experiment 3 shows that (...) this causal superseding effect is dependent on a particular event structure, following a prediction of our counterfactual model. Experiment 4 demonstrates that causal superseding can occur with violations of non-moral norms. We propose a model of the superseding effect based on the idea of counterfactual sufficiency. (shrink)

What are the roles of scientific causal knowledge in relation to the evidential requirements of policy making? In this chapter, I review the existing approaches in philosophy of science to the policy relevance of causal knowledge. I assess the specific concerns and questions on which these philosophical accounts have focused and show how they only offer a partial perspective of the relation between causal knowledge and policy making. Most existing views are top-down approaches: they start from philosophical (...) concerns about causation and evidence, and then make general claims about (potential) policy implications, but leave the notion of “policy” unanalyzed. As an alternative, I put forward some ideas toward a bottom-up approach: one that understands policy making as a dynamic process with several stages, and that starts from concrete policy problems, to then examine how causal notions and methods can contribute in various ways to the specifics of the process of policy making. (shrink)

The physical realm is causally closed, according to physicalists like me. But why is it causally closed, what metaphysically explains causal closure? I argue that reductive physicalists are committed to one explanation of causal closure to the exclusion of any independent explanation, and that as a result, they must give up on using a causal argument to attack mind–body dualism. Reductive physicalists should view dualism in much the way that we view the hypothesis that unicorns exist, or (...) that the Kansas City Royals won the 2003 World Series: false, but not objectionable in any distinctively causal way. My argument turns on connections between explanation, counterfactuals, and inductive confirmation. (shrink)

Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This (...) paper is concerned with the attempt of confronting the challenge coming from the Causal Parity Thesis by offering principles of causal selection that are spelled out in terms of an explicit philosophical account of causation, namely an interventionist account. I show that two such accounts that have been developed, although they contain important insights about causation in biology, nonetheless fail to provide an adequate reply to the Causal Parity challenge: Ken Waters's account of actual-difference making and Jim Woodward's account of causal specificity. A combination of the two also doesn't do the trick, nor does Laura Franklin-Hall's account of explanation (in this volume). We need additional conceptual resources. I argue that the resources we need consist in a special class of counterfactual conditionals, namely counterfactuals the antecedents of which describe biologically normal interventions. (shrink)

A promising development in the philosophy of causation analyzes actual causation using structural equation models, i.e., “causal models”. This paper carefully considers what it means for an interpreted model to be accurate of its target situation. These considerations show, first, that our existing understanding of accuracy is inadequate. Further, and more controversially, they show that any causal model analysis is committed to a kind of relativism – a view whereby causation is a three-part relation holding between a cause, (...) an effect, and something else. In particular, insofar as a causal model analysis construes causation mind-and-language independently, it must treat causation as relative to a specification of background possibilities – i.e., a ‘modal profile.’ Or, so I argue. (shrink)

Decision-making typically requires judgments about causal relations: we need to know the causal effects of our actions and the causal relevance of various environmental factors. We investigate how several individuals' causal judgments can be aggregated into collective causal judgments. First, we consider the aggregation of causal judgments via the aggregation of probabilistic judgments, and identify the limitations of this approach. We then explore the possibility of aggregating causal judgments independently of probabilistic ones. Formally, (...) we introduce the problem of causal-network aggregation. Finally, we revisit the aggregation of probabilistic judgments when this is constrained by prior aggregation of qualitative causal judgments. (shrink)

Causal Bayes nets (CBNs) provide one of the most powerful tools for modelling coarse-grained type-level causal structure. As in other fields (e.g., thermodynamics) the question arises how such coarse-grained characterisations are related to the characterisation of their underlying structure (in this case: token-level causal relations). Answering this question meets what is called a “coherence-requirement” in the reduction debate: How are different accounts of one and the same system (or kind of system) related to each other. We argue (...) that CBNs as tools for type-level causal inference are abstract enough to roughly fit any current token-level theory of causation as long as certain modelling assumptions are satisfied, but accounts of actual causation, i.e. accounts that attempt to infer token-causation based on CBNs, for the very same reason, face certain limitations. (shrink)

In this note, I will discuss one issue concerning the main argument of Mind in a Physical World (Kim, 1998), the Causal Exclusion Argument. The issue is whether it is a consequence of the Causal Exclusion Argument that all macro level causation (that is, causation above the level of fundamental physics) is an illusion, with all of the apparent causal powers of mental and other macro properties draining into the bottom level of physics. I will argue that (...) such a consequence would give us reason to reject the Causal Exclusion Argument. But there is also a stronger challenge, the charge that, if there is no bottom level of physics, the Causal Exclusion Argument has the consequence that “causal powers would drain away into a bottomless pit and there wouldn’t be any causation anywhere.” (81--page numbers that are not attributed to other works are to Kim, 1998). (shrink)

The epistemic theory of causality views causality as a tool that helps us to predict, explain and control our world, rather than as a relation that exists independently of our epistemic practices. In this chapter, we first provide an introduction to the epistemic theory of causality. We then outline four considerations that motivate the epistemic theory: the failure of standard theories of causality; parsimony; the epistemology of causality; and neutrality. We illustrate these four considerations in the contexts of the social (...) sciences and the cognitive sciences. We argue that the epistemic theory provides a very natural account of causality across these contexts. (shrink)

Causal models show promise as a foundation for the semantics of counterfactual sentences. However, current approaches face limitations compared to the alternative similarity theory: they only apply to a limited subset of counterfactuals and the connection to counterfactual logic is not straightforward. This paper addresses these difficulties using exogenous interventions, where causal interventions change the values of exogenous variables rather than structural equations. This model accommodates judgments about backtracking counterfactuals, extends to logically complex counterfactuals, and validates familiar principles (...) of counterfactual logic. This combines the interventionist intuitions of the causal approach with the logical advantages of the similarity approach. (shrink)

Recent attempts to resolve the Paradox of the Gatecrasher rest on a now familiar distinction between individual and bare statistical evidence. This paper investigates two such approaches, the causal approach to individual evidence and a recently influential (and award-winning) modal account that explicates individual evidence in terms of Nozick's notion of sensitivity. This paper offers counterexamples to both approaches, explicates a problem concerning necessary truths for the sensitivity account, and argues that either view is implausibly committed to the impossibility (...) of no-fault wrongful convictions. The paper finally concludes that the distinction between individual and bare statistical evidence cannot be maintained in terms of causation or sensitivity. We have to look elsewhere for a solution of the Paradox of the Gatecrasher. (shrink)

The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’ deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal decision theory, Murder Lesion, (...) is considered; a simple response shows how Murder Lesion and similar examples fail to be counterexamples, and clarifies the use of the unadorned theory in problems of decision instability. I compare unadorned causal decision theory to previous treatments by Frank Arntzenius and by Jim Joyce, and recommend a well-founded heuristic that all three accounts can endorse. Whatever course deliberation takes, causal decision theory is consistently a good guide to rational action. (shrink)