(1997). Sign, cause, or general habit? Toward a “historicist ontology” of character on the early modern stage. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 217-222.

I argue that, on a dispositionalist account of causation and indeed on any other view of causation according to which causation is a real relation, general relativity does not give causal principles a role in explaining phenomena. In doing so, I bring out a surprisingly substantial constraint on adequate views about the explanations and ontology of GR, namely the requirement that such views show how GR can explain motion that is free of disturbing influences.

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel (...) experimental evidence for it. (shrink)

After an exposition of some key concepts in scholastic ontology, this paper examines four arguments presented by Francisco Suarez for the thesis, commonly held by Christian Aristotelians, that God's causal contribution to effects occurring in the ordinary course of nature goes beyond His merely conserving created substances along with their active and passive causal powers. The postulation of a further causal contribution, known as God's general concurrence (or general concourse), can be viewed as an attempt to accommodate an (...) element of truth present in occasionalist accounts of divine causality. (shrink)

My topic is God's activity in the ordinary course of nature. The precise mode of this activity has been the subject of prolonged debates within every major theistic intellectual tradition, though it is within the Catholic tradition that the discussion has been carried on with the most philosophical sophistication. The problem, in its simplest form, is this: Given the fundamental theistic tenet that God is the provident Lord of nature, the First Efficient Cause who creates the universe, sustains it (...) in being, and exists in all things by His essence, presence, and power,1 how exactly do the actions of secondary (i.e., created) causes fit in with God's own activity in the ordinary course of nature? Or, to put it a bit more neutrally, how exactly is God's own action as the First Cause in nature related to the causal activity, if any , of His creatures? (shrink)

This paper studies the question: How should one handle inconsistencies that derive from the inadequacy of the criteria by which one approaches the world. I compare several approaches. The adaptive logics defined from CLuN appear to be superior to the others in this respect. They isolate inconsistencies rather than spreading them, and at the same time allow for genuine deductive steps from inconsistent and mutually inconsistent premises. Yet, the systems based on CLuN seem to introduce an asymmetry betweennegated and non-negated (...) formulas, and this seems hard to justify. To clarify and understand the source of the asymmetry, the epistemological presuppositions of CLuN, viz. inadequate criteria, are investigated. This leads to a new type of paraconsistent logic that involves gluts with respect to all logical symbols. The larger part of the paper is devoted to this logic, to the adaptive logics defined from it, and to the properties of these systems. While the resulting logics are sensible and display interesting features, the search for variants of the justification leads to an unexpected justification for CLuN. (shrink)

This study is an analysis of surrogate-focused ethics consultations in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the general wards (Ward) of a large community hospital in Northern California. We identified the major themes of surrogate-focused ethics consultations to better understand the root cause of surrogate conflicts, and identified the similarities and differences between surrogate-based conflicts in the two settings. Consults requested because the surrogate had desires that conflicted with the physicians medical opinion of ‘best interest’, or cases involving (...) surrogates not upholding a patient’s known values reflected the root cause of the majority of surrogate conflicts (72.7% ICU, 83.3% Ward). (shrink)

A condition is formulated in terms of the probabilities of two pairs of correlated events in a classical probability space which is necessary for the two correlations to have a single (Reichenbachian) common-cause and it is shown that there exists pairs of correlated events probabilities of which violate the necessary condition. It is concluded that different correlations do not in general have a common common-cause. It is also shown that this conclusion remains valid even if one weakens (...) slightly Reichenbach's definition of common-cause. The significance of the difference between common-causes and common common-causes is emphasized from the perspective of Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

It may seem obvious that causing disability in another person is morally problematic in a way that removing or preventing a disability is not. This suggests that there is a moral asymmetry between causing disability and causing non-disability. This chapter investigates whether there are any differences between these two types of actions that might explain the existence of a general moral asymmetry. After setting aside the possibility that having a disability is almost always bad or harmful for a person (...) (a view that we have critiqued at length elsewhere), seven putative differences are considered. Ultimately, it is concluded that none of these seven factors can ground a general moral asymmetry between causing disability and causing non-disability, though each factor can provide some moral reason to avoid causing disability in certain particular cases. (shrink)

This article describes some potential uses of Bayesian estimation for time-series and panel data models by incorporating information from prior probabilities in addition to observed data. Drawing on econometrics and other literatures we illustrate the use of informative “shrinkage” or “small variance” priors while extending prior work on the general cross-lagged panel model. Using a panel dataset of national income and subjective well-being we describe three key benefits of these priors. First, they shrink parameter estimates toward zero or toward (...) each other for time-varying parameters, which lends additional support for an income → SWB effect that is not supported with maximum likelihood. This is useful because, second, these priors increase model parsimony and the stability of estimates and thus improve out-of-sample predictions and interpretability, which means estimated effect should also be more trustworthy than under ML. Third, these priors allow estimating otherwise under-identified models under ML, allowing higher-order lagged effects and time-varying parameters that are otherwise impossible to estimate using observed data alone. In conclusion we note some of the responsibilities that come with the use of priors which, departing from typical commentaries on their scientific applications, we describe as involving reflection on how best to apply modeling tools to address matters of worldly concern. (shrink)

In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the (...) first variation the first enemy emptied the canteen and the second enemy threw it away. On this variation, the act of neither enemy comes out, on the analysis employed here, as causally relevant to, and thus not as a cause of, the fact that the traveler died, but the conjunction of the two acts is a cause of it. This version is a case of mutual preemption. I argue that it has the same structure as the voting paradox, which thus has an analogous solution. In the standard version, in which the first enemy added poison to the water in the traveler's canteen, the act of the second enemy (who threw the canteen away) comes out, on the analysis used here, as causally relevant to and as a cause of the fact that the traveler died, but the act of the first enemy comes out as neither. I also make a comparison with Lewis' accounts, and discuss alternative treatments of the puzzle such as those of Hart and Honore and of Gavison, Margalit, and Ullmann-Margalit. (shrink)

We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion article. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent's initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from (...) the literature. 1. Introduction2. Causal models and the definition of actual causality: a review2.1Causal models2.2Syntax and semantics2.3The definition of cause3. Explanation: the basic definition4. Partial explanations and explanatory power5. The general definition6. DiscussionAppendix: the formal definition of causality. (shrink)

Causation is in trouble—at least as it is pictured in current theories in philosophy and in economics as well, where causation is also once again in fashion. In both disciplines the accounts of causality on offer are either modelled too closely on one or another favoured method for hunting causes or on assumptions about the uses to which causal knowledge can be put—generally for predicting the results of our efforts to change the world. The first kind of account supplies no (...) reason to think that causal knowledge, as it is pictured, is of any use; the second supplies no reason to think our best methods will be reliable for establishing causal knowledge. So, if these accounts are all there is to be had, how do we get from method to use? Of what use is knowledge of causal laws that we work so hard to obtain? (shrink)

Crosslinguistically, causative constructions conform to the following generalization: If the causal relation is syntactically concealed, then it is semantically direct. Concealed causatives span a wide syntactic spectrum, ranging from resultative complements in English to causative subjects in Miskitu. A unified type-driven theory is proposed which attributes the understood causal relation—and other elements of constructional meaning—to type lifting operations predictably licensed by type mismatch at LF. The proposal has far-reaching theoretical implications not only for the theory of compositionality and causation, but (...) also for the underlying theory of events, space, and time, in natural language discourse. (shrink)

Biologists studying complex causal systems typically identify some factors as causes and treat other factors as background conditions. For example, when geneticists explain biological phenomena, they often foreground genes and relegate the cellular milieu to the background. But factors in the milieu are as causally necessary as genes for the production of phenotypic traits, even traits at the molecular level such as amino acid sequences. Gene-centered biology has been criticized on the grounds that because there is parity among causes, the (...) “privileging” of genes reflects a reductionist bias, not an ontological difference. The idea that there is an ontological parity among causes is related to a philosophical puzzle identified by John Stuart Mill: what, other than our interests or biases, could possibly justify identifying some causes as the actual or operative ones, and other causes as mere background? The aim of this paper is to solve this conceptual puzzle and to explain why there is not an ontological parity among genes and the other factors. It turns out that solving this puzzle helps answer a seemingly unrelated philosophical question: what kind of causal generality matters in biology? (shrink)

In the paper it will be shown that Reichenbach’s Weak Common Cause Principle is not valid in algebraic quantum field theory with locally finite degrees of freedom in general. Namely, for any pair of projections A, B supported in spacelike separated double cones ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ , respectively, a correlating state can be given for which there is no nontrivial common cause (system) located in the union of the backward light cones of ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ and commuting (...) with the both A and B. Since noncommuting common cause solutions are presented in these states the abandonment of commutativity can modulate this result: noncommutative Common Cause Principles might survive in these models. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Causation is in trouble—at least as it is pictured in current theories in philosophy and in economics as well, where causation is also once again in fashion. In both disciplines the accounts of causality on offer are either modelled too closely on one or another favoured method for hunting causes or on assumptions about the uses to which causal knowledge can be put—generally for predicting the results of our efforts to change the world. The first kind of account supplies no (...) reason to think that causal knowledge, as it is pictured, is of any use; the second supplies no reason to think our best methods will be reliable for establishing causal knowledge. So, if these accounts are all there is to be had, how do we get from method to use? Of what use is knowledge of causal laws that we work so hard to obtain? (shrink)

Cause is a problematic concept in social science, as in all fields of knowledge. We organise information in terms of cause and effect to impose order on the world, but this can impede a more sophisticated understanding. In his latest book, Richard Ned Lebow reviews understandings of cause in physics and philosophy and concludes that no formulation is logically defensible and universal in its coverage. This is because cause is not a feature of the world but (...) a cognitive shorthand we use to make sense of it. In practice, causal inference is always rhetorical and must accordingly be judged on grounds of practicality. Lebow offers a new approach - 'inefficient causation' - that is constructivist in its emphasis on the reasons people have for acting as they do, but turns to other approaches to understand the aggregation of their behaviour. This novel approach builds on general understandings and idiosyncratic features of context. (shrink)

When two rocks shatter the window at once, what causes the window to shatter? Is the throwing of each individual rock a cause of the window shattering, or are the throwings only causes collectively? This question bears on the analysis of causation, and the metaphysics of macro-causation. I argue that the throwing of each individual rock is a cause of the window shattering, and generally that individual overdeterminers are causes.

In general, the false cause fallacy occurs when the “link between premises and conclusion depends on some imagined causal connection that probably does not exist”. There are three different ways an argument can commit the false cause fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc; cum hoc ergo propter hoc; and ignoring common cause. This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'ignoring common cause'. The commercial exploited the false cause fallacy to (...) get consumers to buy its product. This fallacy is also present in many of the arguments concerning the alleged connection between vaccines and autism despite the plethora of evidence otherwise. The chapter consists of various examples showcasing the fallacy of ignoring common cause. It also compares the examples, showing that slight changes can lead the other types of false cause fallacies to occur. (shrink)

THE WISH "to know the cause of things" is as old as man- kind itself. In medicine the scientific period dawned at the moment when the question as to the connexion of disease with environment was clearly propounded by Diodorus and by Hippo- crates, "the father of medicine." In former times men were generally satisfied, and they are fre- quently satisfied to-day, with the vaguest conceptions of things, conceptions based on the common ground of a search after animate causes (...) or personifications. Universal knowledge is plainly unat- tainable in a given section of time ; hence men have always been forced to piece out in imagination part of the lacking facts,—that is to theorise; and the form such speculation takes on is naturally in accordance with the measure of cultivation prevailing at the time. Even now, as is clearly shown by a glance at the concep- tions of image-worship among educated and uneducated individuals and peoples, there is for wide strata of society an imperative neces- sity for personification, for animate cause... (shrink)

Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out to be markedly different from Dretske’s meaning (...) facts. Our argument proceeds in three steps. First, we set forth the problem of meaning individuation: We argue that the proposal that meaning facts are structuring causes of behavior commits Dretske to a very fine-grained individuation of meanings that is deeply counterintuitive. In a second step, we show that even these finely individuated meaning facts cannot do the job that they are supposed to do, since information facts—which are constitutive of, but distinct from Dretske’s meaning facts—are better candidates for the role of structuring causes. Finally, we argue that it is not even information facts, but facts of co-instantiation which are the real structuring causes of behavior. In concluding, we briefly consider the options that are left for Dretske if our arguments succeed. (shrink)

South Africa has recently experienced a series of public protests. The common element is that violence is becoming evident in these protests. This article uses the June 2016 protests in the city of Tshwane as an example to address the root causes of such protests. On 20 June 2016, the African National Congress announced that the city of Tshwane mayoral candidate for the 3 August 2016 municipal elections in South Africa is the former public works minister and ANC National Executive (...) Committee member, Thoko Didiza. Consequently, public protests in the city of Tshwane emerged immediately after this announcement. These public protests were very violent, such as protesters killed one another, burned buses, looted shops and barricaded roads. The root causes of these violent protests are identified as factionalism, tribalism, sexism, economic exclusion and patronage politics. The purpose of this article is a practical theological reflection on the root causes of June 2016 protests in the city of Tshwane. The main aim of this article is a practical theological solution to the general problem of violent protests. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Aristotle and His Predecessors The Theory of the Physics The Model Applied: Causation in Nature The Relations between the Causes Chance and Explanation Explanation and Generality Explanation, Necessity, and Finality Bibliography.

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized (...) conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

Causal pluralists hold that that there is not just one determinate kind of causation. Some causal pluralists hold that ‘cause’ is ambiguous among these different kinds. For example, Hall (2004) argues that ‘cause’ is ambiguous between two causal relations, which he labels dependence and production. The view that ‘cause’ is ambiguous, however, wrongly predicts zeugmatic conjunction reduction, and wrongly predicts the behaviour of ellipsis in causal discourse. So ‘cause’ is not ambiguous. If we are to disentangle (...) causal pluralism from the ambiguity claim, we need to consider what other linguistic approaches are available to the causal pluralist. I consider and reject proposals that ‘cause’ is a general term, that the term is an indexical, and that the term conveys different kinds of causation through implicature or presupposition. Finally, I argue that causal pluralism is better handled by treating ‘cause’ as a univocal term within a dynamic interpretation framework. (shrink)

Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...) accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics. (shrink)

According to Reichenbach’s principle of common cause, positive statistical correlations for which no straightforward causal explanation is available should be explained by invoking the action of a hidden conjunctive common cause. Hofer-Szabó and Rédei’s notion of a Reichenbachian common cause system is meant to generalize Reichenbach’s conjunctive fork model to fit those cases in which two or more common causes cooperate in order to produce a positive statistical correlation. Such a generalization is proved to be unsatisfactory in (...) the light of a probabilistic conception of causation. Accordingly, an alternative model for systems of multiple common causes is offered, which is capable of emulating the explanatory efficacy of Reichenbachian common cause systems, while overcoming their major conceptual shortcomings at the same time. (shrink)

We prove new results on common cause closedness of quantum probability spaces, where by a quantum probability space is meant the projection lattice of a non-commutative von Neumann algebra together with a countably additive probability measure on the lattice. Common cause closedness is the feature that for every correlation between a pair of commuting projections there exists in the lattice a third projection commuting with both of the correlated projections and which is a Reichenbachian common cause of (...) the correlation. The main result we prove is that a quantum probability space is common cause closed if and only if it has at most one measure theoretic atom. This result improves earlier ones published in [1]. The result is discussed from the perspective of status of the Common Cause Principle. Open problems on common cause closedness of general probability spaces (L, ϕ) are formulated, where L is an orthomodular bounded lattice and ϕ is a probability measure on L. (shrink)

Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that "matching" events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the principle, so construed, runs afoul of certain results in quantum mechanics. In (...) this paper a new formulation of the principle is offered that emerges from its use in evolutionary theory. This characterization identifies fairly general conditions in which postulating common causes will be more explanatory than postulating separate causes. (shrink)

Con el presente estudio se pretende analizar el conjunto de fotografías incluidas en la obra Causa General. La dominación roja en España. Avance de la información instruida por el Ministerio Público, publicada por el Ministerio de Justica en diciembre del año 1943, para averiguar su posible influencia en el constructo del imaginario colectivo.De dicha obra se desprenden tres conceptos que serán las imágenes asociadas a aquel período: la anarquía, la persecución de la iglesia y la vinculación del gobierno republicano (...) a Rusia. Así como la idea transversal de la inevitabilidad del golpe de Estado. (shrink)

In everyday life, people typically observe fragments of causal networks. From this knowledge, people infer how novel combinations of causes they may never have observed together might behave. I report on 4 experiments that address the question of how people intuitively integrate multiple causes to predict a continuously varying effect. Most theories of causal induction in psychology and statistics assume a bias toward linearity and additivity. In contrast, these experiments show that people are sensitive to cues biasing various integration rules. (...) Causes that refer to intensive quantities (e.g., taste) or to preferences (e.g., liking) bias people toward averaging the causal influences, whereas extensive quantities (e.g., strength of a drug) lead to a tendency to add. However, the knowledge underlying these processes is fallible and unstable. Therefore, people are easily influenced by additional task‐related context factors. These additional factors include the way data are presented, the difficulty of the inference task, and transfer from previous tasks. The results of the experiments provide evidence for causal model and related theories, which postulate that domain‐general representations of causal knowledge are influenced by abstract domain knowledge, data‐driven task factors, and processing difficulty. (shrink)

this paper offers a new interpretation of Phaedo 96a–103a. Plato has devoted the dialogue up to this point to a series of arguments for the claim that the soul is immortal. However, one of the characters, Cebes, insists that so far nothing more has been established than that the soul is durable, divine, and in existence before the incarnation of birth. What is needed is something more ambitious: a proof that the soul is not such as to pass out of (...) existence. According to Socrates’s initial response to Cebes at 95e8–96a1, giving such a demonstration requires a thorough investigation into “the reason for coming to be and passing away in general” (ὅλως γὰρ δεῖ περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τὴν αἰτίαν διαπραγματεύσασθαι 95e9–96a1). This leads Socrates to the passage with which this paper is concerned. He mentions several changes of different sorts and nominates some purported “causes” that he and other theorists used to accept, but which he now finds scarcely intelligible. He then expounds his own mature view that the Forms are causes. The existing literature on this passage is vast and highly sophisticated, so much so that one might reasonably despair of saying something new at this stage. Nevertheless, I think some of Socrates’s remarks on philosophical methodology in our passage have not yet been appreciated as deeply as they should be. In particular, there has been little work showing how well-integrated they are with his positive proposals about causes. I also think that there are metaphysical models available to modern philosophers, not merely coherent with but actually suggested by Socrates’s methodology, which give a more satisfactory picture of those positive proposals than others available in the contemporary literature. That, at any rate, is what this paper aims to provide. (shrink)

I argue that psychologists interested in human causal judgment should understand and adopt a representation of causal mechanisms by directed graphs that encode conditional independence (screening off) relations. I illustrate the benefits of that representation, now widely used in computer science and increasingly in statistics, by (i) showing that a dispute in psychology between ‘mechanist’ and ‘associationist’ psychological theories of causation rests on a false and confused dichotomy; (ii) showing that a recent, much-cited experiment, purporting to show that human subjects, (...) incorrectly let large causes ‘overshadow’ small causes, misrepresents the most likely, and warranted, causal explanation available to the subjects, in the light of which their responses were normative; (iii) showing how a recent psychological theory (due to P. Cheng) of human judgment of causal power can be considerably generalized: and (iv) suggesting a range of possible experiments comparing human and computer abilities to extract causal information from associations. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Preface.- 1. Introduction; Mauricio Suárez.- PART I: PROBABILITIES.- 2. Probability and time symmetry in classical Markov processes; Guido Bacciagaluppi.- 3. Probability assignments and the principle of indifference: An examination of two eliminative strategies; Sorin Bangu.- 4. Why typicality does not explain the approach to equilibrium; Roman Frigg; PART II: CAUSES.- 5. From metaphysics to physics and back: The example of causation; Federico Laudisa.- 6. On explanation in retro-causal interpretations of quantum mechanics; Joseph Berkovitz.- 7. Causal completeness in (...) general probability theories; Balasz Gyenis, Miklós Rédei.- 8. Causal Markov, robustness and the quantum correlations; Mauricio Suárez, Iñaki San Pedro.- PART III: PROPENSITIES.- 9. Do dispositions and propensities have a role in the ontology of quantum mechanics? Some critical remarks; Mauro Dorato.- 10. Is the quantum world composed of propensitons?; Nicholas Maxwell.- 11. Derivative dispositions and multiple derivative levels; Ian Thompson. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question whether a mechanistic approach can account for evolutionary causes. The last decade has seen a major attempt to account for natural selection as a mechanism. Nevertheless, we stress the relevance of broadening the debate by including the other evolutionary causes inside the mechanistic approach, in order to be a legitimate conceptual framework on the same footing as other approaches to evolutionary theory. We analyse the current debate on natural selection as a mechanism, and (...) extend it to the rest of the evolutionary causes. We focus on three approaches that we call the stochastic view, the functional view, and the minimalist view. We argue that all of them are unable to account for evolutionary causes as mechanisms. It is concluded that the current mechanistic proposals cannot be accepted as a common framework for evolutionary causes. Finally, we outline some guidelines and requirements that any mechanistic proposal should meet in order to be applied to evolutionary theory. (shrink)

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of (...) some bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes. (shrink)

Explanations in psychiatry often integrate various factors relevant to psychopathology. Identifying genuine causes among them is theoretically and clinically important, but epistemically challenging. Woodward’s interventionism appears to provide a promising tool to achieve this. However, Woodward’s interventionism is too demanding to be applied to psychiatry. I thus introduce difference-making interventionism, which detects relevance in general rather than causation, to make interventionist reasoning viable in clinical practice. DMI mirrors the empirical reality of psychiatry even more closely than interventionism, but it (...) needs to be supplied with additional heuristics to disambiguate between causes and other difference-makers. To achieve this, I suggest employing heuristics based on multiple experiments, temporal order and scientific domain. (shrink)

This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the (...) effects do not extend in this way, and moreover that the cases where we do find the same pattern are those where the causal verb used has a negative valence of its own. We draw two main conclusions from this finding. First, it reveals how the almost exclusive focus on "cause"-statements in the experimental study of causal judgment has led to findings that are unrepresentative of the full range of ordinary causal thinking, and provides a proof of concept as to how this thinking can be studied in its full variety. Second, the results of our experiments provide significant indirect support for the contention that the effect of moral considerations on agreement with "cause"-statements reflect the fact that these statements are most often used to assign responsibility for an event, and not just to describe the causal structure of what happened. It is not causal judgments in general that result from a process in which normative considerations play a role, but perhaps only those judgments that express a determination of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of (...) some bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes. (shrink)

My Ph.D. dissertation written under the supervision of Prof. Tomasz Placek at the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In one of its most basic and informal shapes, the principle of the common cause states that any surprising correlation between two factors which are believed not to directly influence one another is due to their common cause. Here we will be concerned with a version od this idea which possesses a purely probabilistic formulation. It was (...) introduced, in the form of a general principle, by Hans Reichenbach in his posthumously published book "The Direction of Time". The central notion of the principle in Reichenbach's formulation, and of the current essay, is that of screening off: two correlated events are screened off by a third event if conditioning on the third event makes them probabilistically independent. Reichenbach's principle marks also the beginning of a new field of philosophy: namely, that of ``probabilistic causality''. For the most part, the current essay can be seen as an effort at checking how far one can go with the purely statistical notions revolving around Reichenbach's idea of common cause. In short, the answer is ``surprisingly far''; in some classes of probability spaces all correlations between ``interesting'' events possess explanations of such sort. However, this fact lends itself to opposing interpretations; more on that in the conclusion. Chapters 6 and 7 contain mathematical results concerning these issues. The screening-off condition requires an equality of a probabilistic nature to hold; chapter 8 is a short discussion of slightly weakened versions of the condition, which hold if the sides of the above mentioned equality differ to a small degree. In chapter 2, after some mathematical preliminaries, we study the various formulations of the principle which might be said to stem from the original idea of Reichenbach. We also examine a few of the most salient counterarguments, which undermine at least some of the formulations. Chapter 3 is of a formal nature, dealing with various probabilistic notions which can be thought of as generalizations of Reichenbach's concept of common cause. The next chapter concerns the relationship between the idea of common causal explanation and the Bell inequalities. In chapter 5 we briefly present the form of Reichenbach's principle which can be found in the field of representing causal structures by means of directed acyclic graphs. (shrink)

Review of Paul Pietroski, Causing Actions.

An important distinction is that between selective abductions, which select an optimal candidate from given multitude of possible explanations, and creative abductions, which introduce new theoretical concepts and models. The article focuses on creative abductions, which are essential for scientific progress, although they are rarely discussed in the literature. Scientifically, fruitful creative abductions are demarcated from purely speculative abductions by means of three virtues which are possessed by the former but not by the latter: (i) providing unification, (ii) detecting common (...) causes and (iii) generating novel predictions by means of which they can be independently tested. Based on historical examples it is demonstrated that common cause abduction from correlated dispositions is the fundamental abductive operation by which new theoretical concepts and models are scientifically generated. Statistical factor analysis can be regarded as a statistical generalization of common cause abduction. (shrink)

What one is ultimately interested in with regard to ‘just cause’ is whether a specific war, actual or potential, is justified. I call this ‘the applied question’. Answering this question requires knowing the empirical facts on the ground. However, an answer to the applied question regarding a specific war requires a prior answer to some more general questions, both descriptive and normative. These questions are: What kind of thing is a ‘just cause’ for war (an aim, an (...) injury or wrong suffered, or something different altogether)? I call this ‘the formal question’. Then there is what I call the ‘the general substantive question’. Depending on the previous answer to the formal question, the general substantive question can be formulated as: ‘Which causes are just?’ or as ‘Under what conditions is there a just cause?’ A final question, which has recently elicited increased interest, is what I call ‘the question of timing’: does the ‘just cause’ criterion only apply to the initiation of a war or also to the continuation of a war, that is, can a war that had a just cause at the beginning lose it at some point in its course (and vice versa)? I argue that a just cause is a state of affairs. Moreover, the criterion of just cause is not independent of proportionality and other valid jus ad bellum criteria. One cannot know whether there is a just cause without knowing whether the other (valid) criteria (apart from ‘right intention’) are satisfied; and this account has certain theoretical and practical advantages. As regards the general substantive question, I argue that all kinds of aims can, in principle, be legitimately pursued by means of war, even aims that might sound dubious at first, like vengeance or the search for glory. Thus, the pursuit of such aims does not make the war disproportionate or deprive it of just cause. As regards the question of timing, I argue that the criteria of jus ad bellum apply throughout the war, not only at the point of its initiation. While starting a war at t1 might be justified, continuing it at time t2 might be unjustified (and vice versa), and this insight does not require an addition to jus ad bellum but is already contained in it. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism (...) for a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)