Varieties of Causation Edited by Sara Bernstein (Duke University)

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  1. John Hawthorne & Daniel Nolan (2006). What Would Teleological Causation Be? In John Hawthorne (ed.), Metaphysical Essays. Oxford University Press.
    As is well known, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and many other systems of natural philosophy since, have relied heavily on teleology and teleological causation. Somehow, the purpose or end of an obj ect can be used to predict and explain what that object does: once you know that the end of an acorn is to become an oak, and a few things about what sorts of circumstances are conducive to the attainment of this end, you can predict a lot about the (...)
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  2. Graham Oddie (1990). Backwards Causation and the Permanence of the Past. Synthese 85 (1):71 - 93.
    Can a present or future event bring about a past event? An answer to this question is demanded by many other interesting questions. Can anybody, even a god, do anything about what has already occurred? Should we plan for the past, as well as for the future? Can anybody precognise the future in a way quite different from normal prediction? Do the causal laws and the past jointly preclude free action? Does current physical theory entail a consistent version of backwards (...)
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  3. Carolina Sartorio (2006). On Causing Something to Happen in a Certain Way Without Causing It to Happen. Philosophical Studies 129 (1):119 - 136.
    We tend to identify events by when, where, and how they occur, i.e. by the time at which they occur, the spatial location at which they occur, and the manner in which they occur. But, in most cases, we also tend to conceive of the specific time, spatial location, and manner in which they occur as only accidental to them. For instance, we think that an explosion that occurred at noon could have occurred one minute later, an inch closer to (...)
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  4. Stephen Yablo (2005). Prime Causation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):459–467.
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  5. Dean W. Zimmerman (1997). Immanent Causation. Philosophical Perspectives 11:433-471.
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The Direction of Causation
  1. Hanoch Ben-Yami (2010). Backwards Causation Still Impossible. Analysis 70 (1):89-92.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
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  2. Max Black (1956). Why Cannot an Effect Precede its Cause? Analysis 16 (3):49-58.
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  3. Bob Brier (1973). Magicians, Alarm Clocks, and Backward Causation. Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (4):359-364.
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  4. D. Dieks (1986). Physics and the Direction of Causation. Erkenntnis 25 (1):85 - 110.
    Two proposals for a physicalistic analysis of causation — the so-called transference model and an account given by J. L. Mackie — are examined and found wanting on the score of physical objectivity. This shortcoming can be remedied, but it is further argued that both proposals embody a too restricted conception of what a physicalistic analysis of causation should be. A more general program is proposed.
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  5. Jan Faye, Backward Causation. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Sometimes also called retro causation. A common feature of our world seems to be that in all cases of causation, the cause and the effect are placed in time so that the cause precedes its effect temporally. Our normal understanding of causation assumes this feature to such a degree that we intuitively have great difficulty imagining things differently. The notion of backward causation, however, stands for the idea that the temporal order of cause and effect is a mere contingent feature (...)
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  6. Antony Flew (1973). Magicians, Alarm Clocks, and Backward Causation: A Comment. Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (4):365-366.
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  7. Peter Forrest (1985). Backwards Causation in Defense of Free Will. Mind 94 (April):210-17.
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  8. Adolf Grunbaum (1976). Is Preacceleration of Particles in Dirac's Electrodynamics a Case of Backward Causation? The Myth of Retrocausation in Classical Electrodynamics. Philosophy of Science 43 (2):165-201.
    Is it a "conceptual truth" or only a logically contingent fact that, in any given kind of case, an event x which asymmetrically causes ("produces") an event y likewise temporally precedes y or at least does not temporally succeed y? A bona fide physical example in which the cause retroproduces the effect would show that backward causation is no less conceptually possible than forward causation. And it has been claimed ([9], p. 151; [4], p. 41) that in Dirac's classical electrodynamics (...)
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  9. Adolf Grünbaum & Allen I. Janis (1977). Is There Backward Causation in Classical Electrodynamics? Journal of Philosophy 74 (8):475-482.
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  10. David B. Hershenov (2007). The Memory Criterion and the Problem of Backward Causation. International Philosophical Quarterly 47 (2):181-185.
    Lockeans, as well as their critics, have pointed out that the memory criterion is likely to mean that none of us were ever fetuses or even infants due to the lack of direct psychological connections between then and now. But what has been overlooked is that the memory criterion leads to either backward causation and a violation of Locke’s own very plausible principle that we can have only one origin, or backward causation and a number of overlapping people where we (...)
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  11. David B. Hershenov (2007). The Memory Criterion and the Problem of Backward Causation. International Philosophical Quarterly 47 (2):181-185.
    Lockeans, as well as their critics, have pointed out that the memory criterion is likely to mean that none of us were ever fetuses or even infants due to the lack of direct psychological connections between then and now. But what has been overlooked is that the memory criterion leads to either backward causation and a violation of Locke’s own very plausible principle that we can have only one origin, or backward causation and a number of overlapping people where we (...)
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  12. Michael Huemer & Ben Kovitz (2003). Causation as Simultaneous and Continuous. Philosophical Quarterly 53 (213):556–565.
    We propose that all actual causes are simultaneous with their direct effects, as illustrated by both everyday examples and the laws of physics. We contrast this view with the sequential conception of causation, according to which causes must occur prior to their effects. The key difference between the two views of causation lies in differing assumptions about the mathematical structure of time.
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  13. Daniel Nolan, What Would Teleological Causation Be?
    As is well known, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and many other systems of natural philosophy since, have relied heavily on teleology and teleological causation. Somehow, the purpose or end of an object can be used to predict and explain what that object does: once you know that the end of an acorn is to become an oak, and a few things about what sorts of circumstances are conducive to the attainment of this end, you can predict a lot about the sprouting (...)
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  14. Paul Noordhof (2003). Tooley on Backward Causation. Analysis 63 (2):157–162.
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  15. H. Price (1996). Backward Causation and the Direction of Causal Processes: Reply to Dowe. Mind 105 (419):467 - 474.
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  16. Huw Price (2008). Toy Models for Retrocausality. Studies in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (4):752-761.
    A number of writers have been attracted to the idea that some of the peculiarities of quantum theory might be manifestations of 'backward' or 'retro' causality, underlying the quantum description. This idea has been explored in the literature in two main ways: firstly in a variety of explicit models of quantum systems, and secondly at a conceptual level. This note introduces a third approach, intended to complement the other two. It describes a simple toy model, which, under a natural interpretation, (...)
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  17. Huw Price (2008). Toy Models for Retrocausality. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B 39 (4):752-761.
    Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 39(2008).
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  18. Huw Price (2001). Backward Causation, Hidden Variables and the Meaning of Completeness. PRAMANA - Journal of Physics 56:199-209.
    Bell’s theorem requires the assumption that hidden variables are independent of future measurement settings. This independence assumption rests on surprisingly shaky ground. In particular, it is puzzlingly time-asymmetric. The paper begins with a summary of the case for considering hidden variable models which, in abandoning this independence assumption, allow a degree of ‘backward causation’. The remainder of the paper clarifies the physical significance of such models, in relation to the issue as to whether quantum mechanics provides a complete description of (...)
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  19. Huw Price (1996). Backward Causation and the Direction of Causal Processes: Reply to Dowe. Mind 105 (419):467-474.
    argues that the success of the backward causation hypothesis in quantum mechanics would provide strong support for a version of Reichenbach's account of the direction of causal processes, which takes the direction of causation to rest on the fork asymmetry. He also criticises my perspectival account of the direction of causation, which takes causal asymmetry to be a projection of our own temporal asymmetry as agents. In this reply I take issue with Dowe's argument at three main points: his claim (...)
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  20. Huw Price (1992). Agency and Causal Asymmetry. Mind 101 (403):501-520.
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  21. Huw Price (1992). The Direction of Causation: Ramsey's Ultimate Contingency. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:253 - 267.
    The paper criticizes the attempt to account for the direction of causation in terms of objective statistical asymmetries, such as those of the fork asymmetry. Following Ramsey, I argue that the most plausible way to account for causal asymmetry is to regard it as "put in by hand", that is as a feature that agents project onto the world. Its temporal orientation stems from that of ourselves as agents. The crucial statistical asymmetry is an anthropocentric one, namely that we take (...)
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  22. Huw Price (1984). The Philosophy and Physics of Affecting the Past. Synthese 61 (3):299 - 323.
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  23. Peter J. Riggs (1991). A Critique of Mellor's Argument Against 'Backwards' Causation. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (1):75-86.
    In this paper, criticisms are made of the main tenets of Professor Mellor's argument against ‘backwards’ causation. He requires a closed causal chain of events if there is to be ‘backwards’ causation, but this condition is a metaphysical assumption which he cannot totally substantiate. Other objections to Mellor's argument concern his probabilistic analysis of causation, and the use to which he puts this analysis. In particular, his use of conditional probability inequality to establish the ‘direction’ of causation is shown to (...)
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  24. David H. Sanford (1988). Can There Be One-Way Causal Conditionship? Synthese 76 (3):397 - 408.
    I defend my attempt to explain causal priority by means of one-way causal conditionship by answering an argument by J. A. Cover about Charles'' law. Then I attempt to say what makes a philosophical analysis a counterfactual analysis, so I can understand Cover''s claim that my account is at its base a counterfactual one. Finally I examine Cover''s discussion of my contention that necessary for in the circumstances is nontransitive.
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  25. David H. Sanford (1985). Causal Dependence and Multiplicity. Philosophy 60 (232):215 - 230.
    In "Causes and "If P, Even If X, still Q," Philosophy 57 (July 1982), Ted Honderich cites my "The Direction of Causation and the Direction of Conditionship," journal of Philosophy 73 (April 22, 1976) as an example of an account of causal priority that lacks the proper character. After emending Honderich's description of the proper character, I argue that my attempt to account for one-way causation in terms of one-way causal conditionship does not totally lack it. Rather than emphasize the (...)
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  26. David H. Sanford (1976). The Direction of Causation and the Direction of Conditionship. Journal of Philosophy 73 (8):193-207.
    I criticize and emend J L Mackie's account of causal priority by replacing ‘fixity’ in its central clause by 'x is a causal condition of y, but y is not a causal condition of x'. This replacement works only if 'is a causal condition of' is not a symmetric relation. Even apart from our desire to account for causal priority, it is desirable to have an account of nonsymmetric conditionship. Truth, for example, is a condition of knowledge, but knowledge is (...)
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  27. Jan Hendrik Schmidt (1998). Newcomb's Paradox Realized with Backward Causation. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1):67-87.
    In order to refute the widely held belief that the game known as ‘Newcomb's paradox’ is physically nonsensical and impossible to imagine (e.g. because it involves backward causation), I tell a story in which the game is realized in a classical, deterministic universe in a physically plausible way. The predictor is a collection of beings which are by many orders of magnitude smaller than the player and which can, with their exquisite measurement techniques, observe the particles in the player's body (...)
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  28. Michael Tooley (2002). Backward Causation and the Stalnaker-Lewis Approach to Counterfactuals. Analysis 62 (3):191–197.
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Causal Overdetermination
  1. Yuri Balashov (2003). Restricted Diachronic Composition, Immanent Causality, and Objecthood: A Reply to Hudson. Philosophical Papers 32 (1):23-30.
    Composition, persistence, vagueness, and more constitute an interconnected network of problems. My criticism of Hud Hudson's provocative claims made in a recent paper (Hudson 2002) was focused almost exclusively on the issue of diachronic composition (Balashov 2003). Hudson's response (2003) has highlighted the dangers of such isolationism. But I want to hold to my strategy to the end. Part of the reason is to evade the appalling responsibility of presenting a full-blown theory of all the above phenomena; I must confess (...)
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  2. William Bechtel, Top-Down Causation Without Top-Down Causes.
    We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel causes. The notion of a mechanistically mediated effect is preferable because it can do all of the required work without appealing to mysterious interlevel causes. When interlevel (...)
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  3. Martin Bunzl (1979). Causal Overdetermination. Journal of Philosophy 76 (3):134-150.
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  4. J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. S. Silverstein (2007). Causation and Explanation. MIT Press.
    Leading scholars discuss the development and application of theories of causation and explanation, offering a state-of-the-art view of current work on these two ...
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  5. Brandon Carey (2010). Overdetermination And The Exclusion Problem. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2):251 - 262.
    The exclusion problem is held to show that mental and physical events are identical by claiming that the denial of this identity is incompatible with the causal completeness of physics and the occurrence of mental causation. The problem relies for its motivation on the claim that overdetermination of physical effects by mental and physical causes is objectionable for a variety of reasons. In this paper, I consider four different definitions of ?overdetermination? and argue that, on each, overdetermination in all cases (...)
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  6. John W. Carroll & William R. Carter (2005). An Unstable Eliminativism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (1):1–17.
    In his book Objects and Persons, Trenton Merricks has reoriented and fine-tuned an argument from the philosophy of mind to support a selective eliminativism about macroscopic objects.1 The argument turns on a rejection of systematic causal overdetermination and the conviction that microscopic things do the causal work that is attributed to a great many (though not all) macroscopic things. We will argue that Merricks’ argument fails to establish his selective eliminativism.
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  7. Charles B. Cross (1992). Counterfactuals and Event Causation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (3):307 – 323.
    I compare the failure of counterfactual dependence as a criterion of event causation to the failure of stochastic dependence as a criterion of causal law. Counterexamples to the stochastic analysis arise from cases of Simpson's Paradox, and Nancy Cartwright has suggested a way of transforming the stochastic analysis into something that avoids these counterexample. There is an analogical relationship between cases of Simpson's Paradox and cases of causal overdetermination. I exploit this analogical relationship to motivate my own view about the (...)
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  8. Ezio Di Nucci & Conor McHugh (2006). Content, Consciousness, and Perception: Essays in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge Scholars Press.
    What sort of thing is the mind? And how can such a thing at the same time - belong to the natural world, - represent the world, - give rise to our subjective experience, - and ground human knowledge? Content, Consciousness and Perception is an edited collection, comprising eleven new contributions to the philosophy of mind, written by some of the most promising young philosophers in the UK and Ireland. The book is arranged into three parts. Part I, Concepts and (...)
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  9. Cian Dorr (2003). Merricks on the Existence of Human Organisms. [REVIEW] Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3):711–718.
    BB Whenever a baseball causes an event, the baseball’s constituent atoms also cause that event, and the baseball is causally irrelevant to whether those atoms cause that event.
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  10. Douglas Ehring (1981). Bunzl on Causal Overdetermination. Philosophical Studies 39 (2):209 - 210.
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  11. Crawford L. Elder (2011). Familiar Objects and Their Shadows. Cambridge University Press.
    Most contemporary metaphysicians are sceptical about the reality of familiar objects such as dogs and trees, people and desks, cells and stars. They prefer an ontology of the spatially tiny or temporally tiny. Tiny microparticles 'dog-wise arranged' explain the appearance, they say, that there are dogs; microparticles obeying microphysics collectively cause anything that a baseball appears to cause; temporal stages collectively sustain the illusion of enduring objects that persist across changes. Crawford L. Elder argues that all such attempts to 'explain (...)
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  12. Crawford L. Elder (2007). On the Phenomenon of “Dog- Wise Arrangement”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1):132-155.
    An influential line of thought in metaphysics holds that where common sense discerns a tree or a dog or a baseball there may be just many microparticles. Provided the microparticles are arranged in the right way -- are “treewise” or “dogwise” or “baseballwise” arranged -- our sensory experiences will be just the same as if a tree or dog or baseball were really there. Therefore whether there really are suchfamiliar objects in the world can be decided only by determining what (...)
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  13. Michael Esfeld (2010). Causal Overdetermination for Humeans? Metaphysica 11 (2):99-104.
    The paper argues against systematic overdetermination being an acceptable solution to the problem of mental causation within a Humean counterfactual theory of causation. The truth-makers of the counterfactuals in question include laws of nature, and there are laws that support physical to physical counterfactuals, but no laws in the same sense that support mental to physical counterfactuals.
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  14. Eric Funkhouser (2002). Three Varieties of Causal Overdetermination. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (4):335-351.
    Causal overdetermination worries arise in a number of domains, but most notably in the philosophy of mind. ln discussions of such worries, alleged examples of causal overdetermination are uniformly viewed as primajzcie problematic. While all alleged cases of overdetermination might (or might not) be problematic, I aim to show that they are so for different reasons. Examples of causal overdetermination neatly divide into three varieties, corresponding to the connections between the mechanisms and the properties of the causes. Future debates over (...)
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  15. Manuel Liz Gutiérrez (2007). Enabling Relations As a Way to Transfer Causal Sufficiency. The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 5:87-93.
    There are important cases where properties not referred to by expressions from the languages of physics are enabled in certain times and circumstances to get causal control over some kinds of physical events. I will argue that in those cases we would have to transfer to those properties the causal sufficiency to bring about these events. This would offer a principle of causal inheritance in sharp contrast with the inheritance principle for the causal sufficiency of second order properties defended by (...)
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  16. Jennifer Hornsby (2002). Review: Causing Actions. [REVIEW] Mind 111 (441):159-161.
    Some of the claims of Paul Petroski's _Causing Actions_ are discussed in this review of the book.
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  17. Hud Hudson (2003). Alexander's Dicta and Merricks' Dictum. Topoi 22 (2).
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  18. Daniel Z. Korman (2007). The Naive Conception of Material Objects: A Defense. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin
    Chapter 1: “Ordinary Objects and the Argument from Strange Concepts.” Chapter 2: “Restricted Composition Without Sharp Cut-Offs.” Chapter 3: “Three Solutions to the Grounding Problem for Coincident Objects.” Chapter 4: “Ordinary Objects Without Overdetermination.” Chapter 5: “Eliminativism and the Challenge from Folk Belief.” Chapter 6: “Unrestricted Composition and Restricted Quantification.”.
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  19. Thomas Kroedel (2008). Mental Causation as Multiple Causation. Philosophical Studies 139 (1):125 - 143.
    The paper argues that mental causation can be explained from the sufficiency of counterfactual dependence for causation together with relatively weak assumptions about the metaphysics of mind. If a physical event counterfactually depends on an earlier physical event, it also counterfactually depends on, and hence is caused by, a mental event that correlates with (or supervenes on) this earlier physical event, provided that this correlation (or supervenience) is sufficiently modally robust. This account of mental causation is consistent with the overdetermination (...)
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  20. Louis E. Loeb (1977). Causal Overdetermination and Counterfactuals Revisited. Philosophical Studies 31 (3):211 - 214.
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  21. Louis E. Loeb (1974). Causal Theories and Causal Overdetermination. Journal of Philosophy 71 (15):525-544.
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  22. E. J. Lowe (2003). In Defense of Moderate-Sized Specimens of Dry Goods. [REVIEW] Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3):704–710.
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  23. Trenton Merricks (2003). Replies. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3):727–744.
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  24. Trenton Merricks (2001). Objects and Persons. Oxford University Press.
    With ontology motivated largely by causal considerations, this lucid and provocative work focuses on the idea that physical objects are causally non-redundant. Merricks "eliminates" inanimate composite macrophysical objects on the grounds that they would--if they existed--be at best completely causally redundant. He defends human existence by arguing, from certain facts about mental causation, that we cause things that are not determined by our proper parts. He also provides insight into a variety of philosophical puzzles, while addressing many significant issues like (...)
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  25. John O'Connor (1976). Causal Overdetermination and Counterfactuals. Philosophical Studies 29 (4):275 - 277.
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  26. David Papineau (forthcoming). Causation is Macroscopic but Not Irreducible. In E. J. Lowe & S. Gibb (eds.), The Ontology of Mental Causation.
    In this paper I argue that causation is an essentially macroscopic phenomenon, and that mental causes are therefore capable of outcompeting their more specific physical realizers as causes of physical effects. But I also argue that any causes must be type-identical with physical properties, on pain of positing inexplicable physical conspiracies. I therefore allow macroscopic mental causation, but only when it is physically reducible.
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  27. L. A. Paul, Constitutive Overdetermination.
    If persons, cats and cellphones are not identical to the sums that constitute them, there seems to be a problem with symmetric causal overdetermination: anything the cat causes is also caused by her constitutive sums of microparticles, atoms, molecules, etc. But persons, cats and cellphones are not identical to the sums that constitute them. I argue that the problem of constitutive overdetermination is serious, in particular because of the problem of additivity: if there is constitutive overdetermination, there is a transfer (...)
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  28. Paul Raymont (2004). On Causal Relevance: A Reply to Sullivan. Dialogue 43 (02):367-.
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  29. Jonathan Schaffer (2003). Overdetermining Causes. 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.
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  30. Markus E. Schlosser (2006). Causal Exclusion and Overdetermination. In E. Di Nucci & J. McHugh (eds.), Content, Consciousness and Perception. Cambridge Scholars Press.
    This paper is about the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. Many philosophers think that this argument poses a serious problem for non-reductive theories of the mind — some think that it is decisive against them. In the first part I will outline non-reductive physicalism and the exclusion argument. Then I will distinguish between three versions of the argument that address three different versions of non-reductive physicalism. According to the first, the relation between mental and physical events is token-identity. According (...)
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  31. Robert Schroer (2011). Can Determinable Properties Earn Their Keep? Synthese 183 (2):229-247.
    Sydney Shoemaker’s ‘Subset Account’ offers a new take on determinable properties and the realization relation as well as a defense of non-reductive physicalism from the problem of mental causation. At the heart of this account are the claims that (1) mental properties are determinable properties and (2) the causal powers that individuate a determinable property are a proper subset of the causal powers that individuate the determinates of that property. The second claim, however, has led to the accusation that the (...)
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  32. Aimar Simona (2011). Counterfactuals, Overdetermination and Mental Causation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (3):469-477.
    The Exclusion Problem (EP) for mental causation suggests that there is a tension between the claim that the mental causes physical effects, and the claim that the mental does not overdetermine its physical effects. In response, Karen Bennett (2008, 2003) puts forward an extra necessary condition for overdetermination: if one candidate cause were to occur but the other were not to occur, the effect would still occur. She thus denies one of the assumptions of EP, the assumption that if an (...)
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  33. Michael Strevens (2007). Mackie Remixed. In J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation. MIT Press.
    Cases of overdetermination or preemption continue to play an important role in the debate about the proper interpretation of causal claims of the form "C was a cause of E". I argue that the best treatment of preemption cases is given by Mackie's venerable INUS account of causal claims. The Mackie account suffers, however, from problems of its own. Inspired by its ability to handle preemption, I propose a dramatic revision to the Mackie account – one that Mackie himself would (...)
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  34. Brad Weslake, Exclusion Excluded.
    I argue that an independently attractive account of causation and causal explanation provides a principled resolution of the exclusion problem.
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  35. D. Gene Witmer (2000). Locating the Overdetermination Problem. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (2):273-286.
    Physicalists motivate their position by posing a problem for the opposition: given the causal completeness of physics and the impact of the mental (or, more broadly, the seemingly nonphysical) on the physical, antiphysicalism implies that causal overdetermination is rampant. This argument is, however, equivocal in its use of 'physical'. As Scott Sturgeon has recently argued, if 'physical' means that which is the object of physical theory, completeness is plausible, but the further claim that the mental has a causal impact on (...)
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  36. Eric Yang (forthcoming). Eliminativism, Interventionism and the Overdetermination Argument. Philosophical Studies:-.
    In trying to establish the view that there are no non-living macrophysical objects, Trenton Merricks has produced an influential argument—the Overdetermination Argument—against the causal efficacy of composite objects. A serious problem for the Overdetermination Argument is the ambiguity in the notion of overdetermination that is being employed, which is due to the fact that Merricks does not provide any theory of causation to support his claims. Once we adopt a plausible theory of causation, viz. interventionism, problems with the Overdetermination will (...)
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Causal Preemption
  1. Martin Bunzl (1980). Causal Preemption and Counterfactuals. Philosophical Studies 37 (2):115 - 124.
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  2. J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. S. Silverstein (2007). Causation and Explanation. MIT Press.
    Leading scholars discuss the development and application of theories of causation and explanation, offering a state-of-the-art view of current work on these two ...
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  3. Charles B. Cross (1992). Counterfactuals and Event Causation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (3):307 – 323.
    I compare the failure of counterfactual dependence as a criterion of event causation to the failure of stochastic dependence as a criterion of causal law. Counterexamples to the stochastic analysis arise from cases of Simpson's Paradox, and Nancy Cartwright has suggested a way of transforming the stochastic analysis into something that avoids these counterexample. There is an analogical relationship between cases of Simpson's Paradox and cases of causal overdetermination. I exploit this analogical relationship to motivate my own view about the (...)
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  4. Cei Maslen (2004). Degrees of Influence and the Problem of Pre-Emption. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (4):577 – 594.
    This paper is an investigation into the notion of degree of influence, and its application to the problem of pre-emption. In 'Causation as Influence', Lewis presented a new account of causation under determinism and some new observations on the problem of pre-emption. He claimed that, in cases of pre-emption, the pre-empting cause is much more of a cause than its pre-empted alternative; it has much more influence. I begin by trying to make sense of the notion of degree of influence. (...)
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  5. L. A. Paul, Causation and Preemption.
    Causation is a deeply intuitive and familiar relation, gripped powerfully by common sense. Or so it seems. But as is typical in philosophy, deep intuitive familiarity has not led to any philosophical account of causation that is at once clean, precise, and widely agreed upon. Not for lack of trying: the last 30 years or so have seen dozens of attempts to provide such an account, and the pace of development is, if anything, accelerating. (See Collins, Hall and Paul 2003a (...)
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  6. L. A. Paul (1998). Problems with Late Preemption. Analysis 58 (1):48–53.
    In response to counterexamples involving late preemption, David Lewis (1986) revised his original (1973) counterfactual analysis of causation to include the notion of quasi-dependence. Jonardon Ganeri, Paul Noordhof and Murali Ramachandran (1998) argue that their ‘PCA*-analysis’ of causation solves the problem of late preemption and is superior to Lewis’s analysis. I show that neither quasi-dependence nor the PCA*-analysis solves the problem of late preemption.
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  7. Jonathan Schaffer (2000). Trumping Preemption. Journal of Philosophy 97 (4):165-181.
    Extant counterfactual accounts of causation (CACs) still cannot handle preemptive causation. I describe a new variety of preemption, defend its possibility, and use it to show the inadequacy of extant CACs. Imagine that it is a law of nature that the first spell cast on a given day match the enchantment that midnight.
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  8. Michael Strevens (2007). Mackie Remixed. In J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation. MIT Press.
    Cases of overdetermination or preemption continue to play an important role in the debate about the proper interpretation of causal claims of the form "C was a cause of E". I argue that the best treatment of preemption cases is given by Mackie's venerable INUS account of causal claims. The Mackie account suffers, however, from problems of its own. Inspired by its ability to handle preemption, I propose a dramatic revision to the Mackie account – one that Mackie himself would (...)
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Causation by Absences
  1. P. Dowe (2001). A Counterfactual Theory of Prevention and 'Causation' by Omission. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2):216 – 226.
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  2. Ned Hall (2002). Non-Locality on the Cheap? A New Problem for Counterfactual Analyses of Causation. Noûs 36 (2):276–294.
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  3. Christopher Hitchcock (2004). Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Blackwell Pub..
    Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...
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  4. Jonathan Livengood & Edouard Machery (2007). The Folk Probably Don't Think What You Think They Think: Experiments on Causation by Absence. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):107–127.
    Folk theories—untutored people’s (often implicit) theories about various features of the world—have been fashionable objects of inquiry in psychology for almost two decades now (e.g., Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994), and more recently they have been of interest in experimental philosophy (Nichols 2004). Folk theories of psy- chology, physics, biology, and ethics have all come under investigation. Folk meta- physics, however, has not been as extensively studied. That so little is known about folk metaphysics is unfortunate for (at least) two reasons. (...)
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  5. Sarah McGrath (2005). Causation by Omission: A Dilemma. Philosophical Studies 123 (1-2):125--48.
    Some omissions seem to be causes. For example, suppose Barry promises to water Alice’s plant, doesn’t water it, and that the plant then dries up and dies. Barry’s not watering the plant – his omitting to water the plant – caused its death. But there is reason to believe that if omissions are ever causes, then there is far more causation by omission than we ordinarily think. In other words, there is reason to think the following thesis true.
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  6. Sarah McGrath (2003). Causation and the Making/Allowing Distinction. Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2):81 - 106.
    Throw: Harry throws a stone at Dick, hitting him. Intuitively, there is a moral difference between the first and the second case of each of these pairs.1 In the second case, the agent’s behavior is morally worse than his behavior in the first case. But in each pair, the agent’s behavior has the same outcome: in No Check and Shoot, the outcome is that a child dies, and Jim saves $40; in No Catch and Throw, the outcome is that Dick (...)
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  7. Peter Menzies, A Structural Equations Account of Negative Causation.
    This paper criticizes a recent account of token causation that states that negative causation involving absences of events is of a fundamentally different kind from positive causation involving events. The paper employs the structural equations framework to advance a theory of token causation that applies uniformly to positive and negative causation alike.
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  8. Stephen Mumford & Rani Lill Anjum (2009). Double Prevention and Powers. Journal of Critical Realism 8 (3):277-293.
    Does A cause B simply if A prevents what would have prevented B? Such a case is known as double prevention: where we have the prevention of a prevention. One theory of causation is that A causes B when B counterfactually depends on A and, as there is such a dependence, proponents of the view must rule that double prevention is causation.<br><br>However, if double prevention is causation, it means that causation can be an extrinsic matter, that the cause and effect (...)
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  9. Johannes Persson (2002). Cause, Effect, and Fake Causation. Synthese 131 (1):129 - 143.
    The possibility of apparently negative causation has been discussed in a number of recent works on causation, but the discussion has suffered from beingscattered. In this paper, the problem of apparently negative causation and its attemptedsolutions are examined in more detail. I discuss and discard three attempts that have beensuggested in the literature. My conclusion is negative: Negative causation shows that thetraditional cause & effect view is inadequate. A more unified causal perspective is needed.
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  10. Jonathan Schaffer (forthcoming). Disconnection and Responsibility: On Moore's Causation and Responsibility. Legal Theory.
    Michael Moore’s Causation and Responsibility offers an integrated conception of the law, morality, and metaphysics, centered on the notion of causation, grounded in a detailed knowledge of case law, and supported on every point by cogent argument. This is outstanding work. It is a worthy successor to Harte and Honoré’s classic Causation in the Law, and I expect that it will guide discussion for many years to come.
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  11. Jonathan Schaffer (2004). Causes Need Not Be Physically Connected to Their Effects: The Case for Negative Causation. In Christopher Read Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Basil Blackwell.
    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.
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  12. Jonathan Schaffer (2000). Causation by Disconnection. 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.
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  13. Achille Varzi, Omissions and Causal Explanations.
    Little Johnny: “Can we be punished for something we have not done?” Mother: “Of course not!” Johnny: “Good—because I didn’t turn off the gas…” At this point Johnny smiles and thinks he got away with it. Unfortunately, his mother is smarter than he expected. “I said we cannot be punished for something we have not done”, she says, “but certainly we can be punished for not having done something”.
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  14. Brad Weslake, Proportionality, Contrast and Explanation.
    I explore the connections between the idea that causes must be proportional to their effects, the idea that causation is contrastive, and the idea that more general explanations are superior in one respect to less general explanations.
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Downward Causation
  1. Michael Baumgartner (2009). Interventionist Causal Exclusion and Non-Reductive Physicalism. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (2):161-178.
    The first part of this paper presents an argument showing that the currently most highly acclaimed interventionist theory of causation, i.e. the one advanced by Woodward, excludes supervening macro properties from having a causal influence on effects of their micro supervenience bases. Moreover, this interventionist exclusion argument is demonstrated to rest on weaker premises than classical exclusion arguments. The second part then discusses a weakening of interventionism that Woodward suggests. This weakened version of interventionism turns out either to be inapplicable (...)
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  2. William Bechtel, Top-Down Causation Without Top-Down Causes.
    We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel causes. The notion of a mechanistically mediated effect is preferable because it can do all of the required work without appealing to mysterious interlevel causes. When interlevel (...)
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  3. Mark A. Bedau (2002). Downward Causation and the Autonomy of Weak Emergence. Principia 6 (1):5-50.
    Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.
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  4. Robert C. Bishop (2005). Downward Causation in Fluid Convection. Synthese 160 (2):229 - 248.
    Recent developments in nonlinear dynamics have found wide application in many areas of science from physics to neuroscience. Nonlinear phenomena such as feedback loops, inter-level relations, wholes constraining and modifying the behavior of their parts, and memory effects are interesting candidates for emergence and downward causation. Rayleigh–Bénard convection is an example of a nonlinear system that, I suggest, yields important insights for metaphysics and philosophy of science. In this paper I propose convection as a model for downward causation in classical (...)
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  5. Michel Bitbol (forthcoming). Downward Causation Without Foundations. Synthese.
    Emergence is interpreted in a non-dualist framework of thought. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a duality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization: They are supposed to be constitutive of them, in Kant’s sense. The emergent levels of organization, and the inter-level causations as well, are therefore neither illusory nor ontologically real: They are objective in the (...)
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  6. Richard Campbell & Mark H. Bickhard (2011). Physicalism, Emergence and Downward Causation. Axiomathes 21 (1):33-56.
    The development of a defensible and fecund notion of emergence has been dogged by a number of threshold issues neatly highlighted in a recent paper by Jaegwon Kim. We argue that physicalist assumptions confuse and vitiate the whole project. In particular, his contention that emergence entails supervenience is contradicted by his own argument that the ‘microstructure’ of an object belongs to the whole object, not to its constituents. And his argument against the possibility of downward causation is question-begging and makes (...)
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  7. Justin A. Capes (2010). Can 'Downward Causation' Save Free Will? Philosophia 38 (1):131-142.
    Recently, Trenton Merricks has defended a libertarian view of human freedom. He claims that human persons have downward causal control of their constituent parts, and that downward causal control of this sort is sufficient for free will. In this paper I examine Merricks’s defense of free will, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I show that having downward causal control is not sufficient for for free will. In an Appendix I also argue that Merricks’s defense of free will, together with (...)
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  8. Xiaoping Chen (2010). How Does Downward Causation Exist?—A Comment on Kim's Elimination of Downward Causation. Frontiers of Philosophy in China 5 (4):652-665.
    The importance of downward causation lies in showing that it shows that functional properties such as mental properties are real, although they cannot be reduced to physical properties. Kim rejects nonreductive physicalism, which includes leading functionalism, by eliminating downward causation, and thereby returns to reductionism. In this paper, I make a distinction between two aspects of function—functional meaning and functional structure and argue that functional meaning cannot be reduced to the physical level whereas functional structure can. On this basis, I (...)
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  9. Philip Clayton & P. C. W. Davies (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis From Science to Religion. Oxford University Press.
    This volume introduces readers to emergence theory, outlines the major arguments in its defence, and summarizes the most powerful objections against it. It provides the clearest explication yet of this exciting new theory of science, which challenges the reductionist approach by proposing the continuous emergence of novel phenomena.
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