Causing, delaying, and hastening: Do rains cause fires?

Mind 101 (403):483-500 (1992)
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Abstract

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

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Penelope Mackie
Nottingham University

Citations of this work

Contrastive causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (3):327-358.
Grounding Is Not Causation.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1):21-38.
Causation By Omission: A Dilemma.Sarah McGrath - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 123 (1-2):125-148.
The metaphysics of causation.Jonathan N. D. Schaffer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology.Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John P. Hawthorne (eds.) - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

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