Rethinking Anscombe on Causation
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (1):89-107 (2007)
| Abstract | Although Elizabeth Anscombe’s work on causation is frequently cited and anthologized, her main arguments have been ignored or misunderstood as havingtheir basis in quantum mechanics or a particular theory of perception. I examine her main arguments and show that they not only work against the Humean causaltheories of her time, but also against contemporary attempts to analyze causation in terms of laws and causal properties. She shows that our ordinary usage does not connect causation with laws, and suggests that philosophers emphasize laws for mostly historical reasons. Moreover, she argues that the core of causation is derivativeness, which is as neglected now as when she wrote. Her focus on derivativeness indicates to us how we can both avoid the position that the causal “because” is truth-functional and yet still hold that causal statements are really explanatory | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesBrian Ellis (2000). Causal Laws and Singular Causation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):329-351.
Markus Schrenk (2010). The Powerlessness of Necessity. Noûs 44 (4):725-739.
Simon Prosser (2012). Emergent Causation. Philosophical Studies 159 (1):21-39.
Douglas Kutach (forthcoming). Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics. Oxford University Press.
Ernest Sosa (ed.) (1975). Causation and Conditionals. Oxford University Press.
Thomas D. Bontly (2005). Exclusion, Overdetermination, and the Nature of Causation. Journal of Philosophical Research 30:261-282.
Richard Corry (2006). Causal Realism and the Laws of Nature. Philosophy of Science 73 (3):261-276.
Christoph Hoerl (2011). Causal Reasoning. Philosophical Studies 152 (2):167-179.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads8 ( #123,218 of 549,546 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,397 of 549,546 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
