The landscape of causation: L. A. Paul and Ned Hall: Causation: A user’s guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 277pp, £18.99 PB

Metascience 23 (3):497-504 (2014)
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Abstract

L. A. Paul and Ned Hall’s book makes an original and important contribution to the philosophical debate on causation. Their aim is not to construct a theory of causation but “to sketch a map” of the “landscape” (1) constituted by a rich set of problem cases and various theories of causation devised to account for them.Chapter 1 presents the scope and aim of the book, justifies the method of evaluating theories of causation by exploring whether they are refuted by counterexamples, and provides an overview of the rest of the book.Chapter 2 justifies the choice of problems and solutions considered in the book. Several assumptions are made from the beginning. Causation is taken to be a relation among particular events rather than types of events. A “reductionist outlook” is adopted, according to which facts about what causes what are determined by (1) facts about what happens and (2) fundamental laws. These assumptions provide the background for a “minimal sufficiency account” of causation ..

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Max Kistler
University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

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References found in this work

The metaphysics within physics.Tim Maudlin - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Causation.David Lewis - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):556-567.
Mental causation.Stephen Yablo - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (2):245-280.
Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):201-202.

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