Causality and determinism: Tension, or outright conflict?

Revista de Filosofía (Madrid) 29 (2):99-115 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In the philosophical tradition, the notions of determinism and causality are strongly linked: it is assumed that in a world of deterministic laws, causality may be said to reign supreme; and in any world where the causality is strong enough, determinism must hold. I will show that these alleged linkages are based on mistakes, and in fact get things almost completely wrong. In a deterministic world that is anything like ours, there is no room for genuine causation. Though there may be stable enough macro-level regularities to serve the purposes of human agents, the sense of “causality” that can be maintained is one that will at best satisfy Humeans and pragmatists, not causal fundamentalists.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Causality and determinism.Germund Hesslow - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):591-605.
Causality and the self.Duane H. Whittier - 1965 - The Monist 49 (April):290-303.
Impotence and causal determinism.Peter Unger - 1977 - Philosophical Studies 31 (May):289-305.
Causality and determinism.Georg Henrik von Wright - 1974 - New York,: Columbia University Press.
The situation of causality.Glenn Shafer - 1995 - Foundations of Science 1 (4):543-563.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
247 (#74,265)

6 months
18 (#104,803)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Carl Hoefer
Universitat de Barcelona

References found in this work

How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Nature's capacities and their measurement.Nancy Cartwright - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The cement of the universe.John Leslie Mackie - 1974 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.
Humean Supervenience Debugged.David Lewis - 1994 - Mind 103 (412):473--490.

View all 20 references / Add more references