Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1):62 – 77 (2003)
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If we seek to analyse causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals then we must assume that there is a class of counterfactuals whose members (i) are all and only those we need to support our judgements of causation, (ii) have truth-conditions specifiable without any irreducible appeal to causation. I argue that (i) and (ii) are unlikely to be met by any counterfactual analysis of causation. I demonstrate this by isolating a class of counterfactuals called non-projective counterfactuals, or NP-counterfactuals, and indicate how counterfactual analyses of causation must appeal to them to account for the correct causal judgements we make. I show that the truth-conditions of NP-counterfactuals are specifiable only by irreducible appeal to causation. A dilemma then holds: if counterfactual analyses of causation eschew appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are empirically inadequate, but if they appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are circular and thus conceptually inadequate.
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DOI | 10.1080/713659585 |
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References found in this work BETA
A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1981 - In William Harper, Robert C. Stalnaker & Glenn Pearce (eds.), Ifs. Reidel. pp. 87-104.
A Causal Theory of Counterfactuals.Frank Jackson - 1977 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 55 (1):3 – 21.
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Citations of this work BETA
Counterfactuals and Historical Possibility.Tomasz Placek & Thomas Müller - 2007 - Synthese 154 (2):173-197.
Counterfactuals and Double Prevention: Trouble for the Causal Independence Thesis.David Turon - 2020 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):198-206.
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