Abstract
In this paper I will argue that what makes our ordinary judgements about token causation (‘actual causation’) true can be explicated in terms of interferences into quasi-inertial processes. These interferences and quasi-inertial processes can in turn be fully explicated in scientific terms. In this sense the account presented here is reductive. I will furthermore argue that this version of a process-theory of causation can deal with the traditional problems that process theories have to face, such as the problem of misconnection and the problem of disconnection (Dowe in The Oxford handbook of causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009) as well as with a problem concerning the mis-classification of pre-emption cases (Paul and Hall in Causation: a user’s guide, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013).
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Notes
The behaviour a system would undergo if it were closed (i.e. if it would not interact with other systems) is an example of what I will call “quasi-inertial behaviour” (see Sect. 4).
In contrast to Hart and Honoré, I will not discuss quasi-inertial behaviour in terms of “normality,” but rather in terms of quasi-inertial behaviour, which might be taken to be a different way of spelling out a system’s “characteristic way of behaving”.
As indicated at the outset, my aim in this and the following sections is not to cover all uses of the word ‘cause’, but rather what I have called the ‘disruptive’ concept of cause. So close-system-causation (and that includes “standing factors”, which I take to be causes in virtue of being part of the state of a closed system) will not fall under the disruptive concept of causation. So what I am providing here are necessary and sufficient conditions for this particular concept. In the remainder of the paper I will skip the subscript “DC”.
Strictly speaking the stone hitting the pane is the cause of the shattering. Suzy throwing the stone is the cause of the shattering only we allow it to be the case that if c causes d and d causes e that c is a cause of e (maybe provided further conditions obtain—the issue of the transitivity of causation is dealt with in an extended version of this paper).
Why is there this exception-clause? As I indicated above (fn. 4) Suzy’s throw is not the immediate cause of the shattering. This gives rise to the following consideration: We have at least two interferences: (i) Suzy with the stone, and (ii) the stone with the window. Then, however, it is not true that "If Suzy had not thrown the stone (and thus the interference in terms of momentum and energy transfer from Suzy’s stone had not taken place), the window would not have been shattered, provided all the other interferences are held fixed". For, holding the other interferences fixed (other than Suzy's transference of momentum) implies holding fixed that the stone interferes with the window. So, the window still breaks. The clause in the bracket helps to avoid this problem. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this point).
My criterion for “relevance” which I introduced to solve a problem that traditional process-theories face, namely the problem of misconnection, is similar to a suggestion made in Halpern (2015) for evaluating counterfactual dependence in pre-emption situations (the similarity consists in the requirement to hold actual interactions fixed). Halpern, however, is not in the business of developing a process theory, but rather to specify within a structural equation approach the conditions which have to be held fixed to evaluate the conditional counterfactuals relevant for token causation. In Sect. 7 I will briefly discuss the relation of the process theory presented here and the structural equations approach.
Thanks to Sebastian Schmoranzer and an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
Paul and Hall when discussing conditional counterfactual accounts of causation formulate the following desideratum: “What principles determine the selection of the fact F to be held fixed?” (Paul and Hall 2013, p. 112).
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I would like to thank audiences in Bern, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Jerusalem, Munich, Pittsburgh and Utrecht for helpful discussions as well as Michael Hicks, Vera Hoffmann-Kolss, Siegfried Jaag Christian Loew, Jonathan Schaffer and Sebastian Schmoranzer who had very useful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Hüttemann, A. Processes, pre-emption and further problems. Synthese 197, 1487–1509 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02058-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02058-9