Causal processes that are technically called deviant or wayward causal chains must be ruled out when analyzing various phenomena, including intentional action, perception, and the operation of causal mechanisms involved in the manifesting of causal powers. Irving Thalberg is incorrect in arguing that this problem does not arise when analyzing intentional action. After criticizing solutions proposed by Christopher Peacocke and David Lewis, I provide a general analysis of non-deviance. In application to intentional action, the account is seen to be (...) preferable to that of Michael H. Robins, and proves to be adequate to rule out what Alfred R. Mele calls cases of tertiary waywardness. (shrink)

What is the role of practical thought in determining the intentional action that is performed? Donald Davidson’s influential answer to this question is that thought plays an efficient-causal role: intentional actions are those events that have the correct causal pedigree in the agent's beliefs and desires. But the Causal Theory of Action has always been plagued with the problem of “deviant causal chains,” in which the right action is caused by the right mental state but in the wrong way. (...) This paper addresses an alternative approach to understanding intentional action inspired by G.E.M. Anscombe, interpreting that view as casting practical thought in the role of formal rather than efficient cause of action and thereby avoiding the problem of deviant (efficient) causal chains. Specifically, on the neo-Anscombean view, it is the agent’s “practical knowledge” – non-observational, non-inferential knowledge of what one is doing – that confers the form of intentional action on an event and is the contribution of thought to determining what is intentionally done. This paper argues that the Anscombean view is subject to its own problematic type of deviance: deviant formal causation. What we know non-observationally about what we are doing often includes more than what we intend to be doing; we also know that we are bringing about the foreseen side effects of acting in the intended way. It is argued that the neo-Anscombean view faces difficulty in excluding the expected side effects from the specification of what is intentionally done, whereas the Causal Theory has no such difficulty. Thus, the discussion amounts to an argument in favor of the Causal Theory of Action. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as (...) an account of intentional action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

In order to perceive something, one must have a sense experience which it causes and which has a content that fits it appropriately. But veridical hallucinations show that more is required, viz., that the experience must also be caused by the object of perception in the right sort of way. The best account of what this amounts to is that the object causes the experience by means of a “reliable mechanism,” i.e., a causal mechanism which is generally apt to connect (...) objects to experiences with contents that fit those objects. The paper advances and defends a careful account of this position and its application to the distinction between state of affairs perception, event perception and thing perception. (shrink)

I provide a theory of causation within the causal modeling framework. In contrast to most of its predecessors, this theory is model-invariant in the following sense: if the theory says that C caused (didn't cause) E in a causal model, M, then it will continue to say that C caused (didn't cause) E once we've removed an inessential variable from M. I suggest that, if this theory is true, then we should understand a cause as something which transmits (...) class='Hi'>deviant or non-inertial behavior to its effect. (shrink)

This paper discusses a puzzling tension in attributions of moral responsibility in cases of resultant moral luck: we seem to hold agents fully morally responsible for unlucky outcomes, but less-than-fully-responsible for unlucky outcomes brought about differently than intended. This tension cannot be easily discharged or explained, but it does shed light on a famous puzzle about causation and responsibility, the Thirsty Traveler.

A gunman intends to shoot and kill Victim. He shoots and misses his target, but the gunshot startles a group of water buffalo, causing them to trample the victim to death. The gunman brings about the intended effect, Victim’s death, but in a “deviant” way rather than the one planned. This paper argues that such causal structures, deviant causal chains, pose serious problems for several key legal concepts. -/- I show that deviant causal chains pose problems for (...) the legal distinction between attempts and completed crimes, and also for the distinction between attempts and mere preparations. I then suggest that cases of deviant causation undermine notions of legal liability for completed crimes in terms of actus reus and mens rea, and argue that natural accounts of negligence misclassify some cases involving deviant causal chains. After diagnosing several conceptual vulnerabilities in the law revealed by deviant causal chains, I show that natural strategies for shoring up legal theories in the face of these examples are unpromising. (shrink)

Necessarily, if S lacks the ability to exercise control, S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In spite of the obvious importance of control, however, no general account of control exists. In this paper I reflect on the nature of control itself. I develop accounts of control ’s exercise and control ’s possession that illuminate what it is for degrees of control (...) —that is, the degree of control an agent possesses or exercises in a given circumstance—to vary. Finally, I demonstrate the usefulness of the account on offer by showing how it generates a solution to a long-standing problem for causalist theories of action, namely, the problem of deviant causation. (shrink)

It is reasonably well accepted that the explanation of intentional action is teleological explanation. Very roughly, an explanation of some event, E, is teleological only if it explains E by citing some goal or purpose or reason that produced E. Alternatively, teleological explanations of intentional action explain “by citing the state of affairs toward which the behavior was directed” thereby answering questions like “To what end was the agent’s behavior directed?” Causalism—advocated by causalists—is the thesis that explanations of intentional action (...) are both causal and teleological. By contrast, non-causalism—advocated by non-causalists—is the thesis that explanations of intentional action are teleological but not causal. Familiarly, the problem of causal deviance plagues causalism. But while some have supposed that the problem is grave enough that causalism is bound to suffer a global breakdown, the rumors of causalism’s demise are greatly exaggerated. In what follows, I note that every instance of causal deviance is also an instance of teleological deviance and that teleological deviance is a problem for causalist and non-causalist alike, a problem that causalists may be better able to deal with. Or so I argue. (shrink)

This article introduces the notion of the directedness of a process, which underlies event causation as well as the persistence of things. Using this notion it investigates what happens in typical cases of active event causation. Causes never necessitate their effects because even non- probabilistic causes can be counteracted.

Causal processes that are technically called deviant or wayward causal chains must be ruled out when analyzing various phenomena, including intentional action, perception, and the operation of causal mechanisms involved in the manifesting of causal powers. Irving Thalberg is incorrect in arguing that this problem does not arise when analyzing intentional action. After criticizing solutions proposed by Christopher Peacocke and David Lewis, I provide a general analysis of non-deviance. In application to intentional action, the account is seen to be (...) preferable to that of Michael H. Robins, and proves to be adequate to rule out what Alfred R. Mele calls cases of tertiary waywardness. (shrink)

The single most influential and widely accepted objection against any form of dualism, the belief that human beings are both body and soul, is the objection that dualism violates conservation laws in physics. The conservation laws objection against dualism posits that body and soul interaction is at best mysterious, and at worst impossible. While this objection has been both influential from the time of its initial formulation until present, this paper occupies itself with arguing that this objection is a fleeting (...) one, and has successful answers from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. It is to this end that I provide three groups of responses to the conservation laws objection. First, I outline responses which take the ‘laws of nature’ as the proper entry point into the discussion. Secondly, I provide an analysis of those who argue that contemporary quantum physical data requires that the objection itself involves scientifically unjustified premises. Finally, I layout a philosophically oriented answer which argues that the objection is linguistically problematic since its demands on the dualist are categorically fallacious. From these groups of answers, I conclude that while the conservation laws objection has been arguably the most widely accepted objection against dualism, the objection is without philosophical justification. (shrink)

Any successful account of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation must satisfy at least five key desiderata. In this article, I lay out these five desiderata and explain why existing accounts of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation fail to satisfy them. I then present an alternative account that does satisfy the five desiderata. According to this alternative account, we must resort to a type of ontological entity that is new to metaphysics, but not to science: constraints. In this article, (...) I explain how a constraints-based metaphysics fits best with the emerging consensus on the nature of mechanistic explanation. 1Introduction2Renormalizability2.1The first two desiderata: Intrinsicness and productivity2.2The third desideratum: Scientific validity or non-mysteriousness2.3The fourth desideratum: Directionality2.4The fifth desideratum: Perspectival nature of mechanisms3Constraints and Causation3.1Multi-perspectival realism and causal structure3.2Causal structure as laws3.3Causal structures in analytical mechanics: Constraints3.4A metaphysics inspired by analytical mechanics: Constraints as ontologically primitive modal structures4Constraints and Mechanistic Causal Powers 4.1Inter- versus intra-perspectival categories4.2Mechanistic causal powers are grounded by constraints4.3Intrinsicness and constraints4.4Constraints and productiveness4.5Constraints and directionality5Conclusion. (shrink)

Recently some philosophers have emphasized a potentially irreconcilable conceptual antagonism between the statistical characterization of natural selection and the standard scientific discussion of natural selection in terms of forces and causes. Other philosophers have developed an account of the causal character of selectionist statements represented in terms of counterfactuals. I examine the compatibility between such statisticalism and counterfactually based causal accounts of natural selection by distinguishing two distinct statisticalist claims: firstly the suggested impossibility for natural selection to be a cause (...) acting upon populations and secondly the conceptualization that all evolutionary causes occur at the level of interactions between individual organisms. I argue that deriving the latter from the former involves supplementary assumptions concerning precisely what causation is. I critically examine two of these assumptions purportedly preventing natural selection being regarded as a cause: the locality claim and the modularity claim. I conclude that justifying the strongest version of statisticalism—i.e. evolutionary causation only occurs at the level of individual interactions between organisms—would require further metaphysical arguments that are likely to be deemed highly problematic. Additionally, I argue that such a metaphysical position would be considered incongruous with both our scientific and ordinary use of the concepts of causality and explanation as employed within our everyday epistemological framework. (shrink)

Non-Cartesian substance dualism maintains that persons or selves are distinct from their organic physical bodies and any parts of those bodies. It regards persons as ‘substances’ in their own right, but does not maintain that persons are necessarily separable from their bodies, in the sense of being capable of disembodied existence. In this paper, it is urged that NCSD is better equipped than either Cartesian dualism or standard forms of physicalism to explain the possibility of mental causation. A model (...) of mental causation adopting the NCSD perspective is proposed which, it is argued, is consistent with all that is currently known about the operations of the human central nervous system, including the brain. Physicalism, by contrast, seems ill-equipped to explain the distinctively intentional or teleological character of mental causation, because it effectively reduces all such causation to ‘blind’ physical causation at a neurological level. (shrink)

Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in philosophy of science, since the 1980s. However, (...) philosophers have recently begun to break with this causal tradition by shifting their focus to kinds of explanation that do not turn on causal information. The increasing recognition of the importance of such non-causal explanations in the sciences and elsewhere raises pressing questions for philosophers of explanation. What is the nature of non-causal explanations – and which theory best captures it? How do non-causal explanations relate to causal ones? How are non-causal explanations in the sciences related to those in mathematics and metaphysics? This volume of new essays explores answers to these and other questions at the heart of contemporary philosophy of explanation. The essays address these questions from a variety of perspectives, including general accounts of non-causal and causal explanations, as well as a wide range of detailed case studies of non-causal explanations from the sciences, mathematics and metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explains what it is to believe something for a reason. My thesis is that you believe something for a reason just in case the reason non-deviantly causes your belief. In the course of arguing for my thesis, I present a new argument that reasons are causes, and offer an informative account of causal non-deviance.

There is a wide variety of cases of alienation, including (a) when an agent is alienated from her own motivational states and (b) deviant causal cases when an agent's motivational states cause her intended actions but via a deviant causal pathway. Reflecting on the variety of kinds of alienation reveals that action explanation still needs to account for the positive role that agents play in non-alienated actions in general. To fill this gap, this paper identifies a sui generis (...) but crucial notion of control, what I call “synchronic executive control,” where agents act on their reasons, which must be distinguished from (a) endorsing one's reasons as reasonable or as the reasons for action (from the autonomy literature), and (b) other, diachronic notions of executive control such as competence, skills-based control, planning-based control, and counterfactual control generally (from especially the deviant causation literature). The presence of such executive control is crucial for explaining the role of agents in non-alienated actions, and its absence explains the lack of agency in alienation cases. The result is the identification of a relationship agents have with their reasons which unifies the variety of non-alienated actions in a novel way. (shrink)

Given some reasonable assumptions concerning the nature of mental causation, non-reductive physicalism faces the following dilemma. If mental events cause physical events, they merely overdetermine their effects (given the causal closure of the physical). If mental events cause only other mental events, they do not make the kind of difference we want them to. This dilemma can be avoided if we drop the dichotomy between physical and mental events. Mental events make a real difference if they cause actions. But (...) actions are neither mental nor physical events. They are realized by physical events, but they are not type-identical with them. This gives us non-reductive physicalism without downward causation. The tenability of this view has been questioned. Jaegwon Kim, in particular, has argued that non-reductive physicalism is committed to downward causation. Appealing to the nature of actions, I will argue that this commitment can be avoided. (shrink)

Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of (...) supervenience or the assumption of bottom-level indeterminism. I will contend that the former alternative comes at a high cost, while the latter is quite plausible. Therefore, providing that they accept the condition of the truth of indeterminism, non-reductionist accounts of the agent do not have to contradict our scientific worldview. Interestingly, while they should be taken seriously by anyone who is concerned with the passivity of the agent’s role under a reductionist scenario, non-reductivist accounts end up contributing an extra incompatibilist argument to the free will debate. (shrink)

Causation: A Realist Approach Traditional empiricist accounts of causation and laws of nature have been reductionist in the sense of entailing that given a complete specification of the non-causal properties of and relations among particulars, it is therefore logically determined both what laws there are and what events are causally related. It is argued here, however, that reductionist accounts of causation and of laws of nature are exposed to decisive objections, and thus that the time has come (...) for empiricists to break with that tradition. -/- The basic goal of this book, therefore, is to set out and defend realistic accounts of those concepts. In the case of causal relations, for example, Tooley maintains that causation is basically a matter of theoretical relations between states of affairs that underlie and explain relative frequencies. He also argues that such an approach avoids the objections that tell against reductionist accounts and that it does so without making causal relations epistemologically inaccessible. (shrink)

Hume's regularity theory of causation was partly motivated by a criticism of Descartes' causal account of collisions. According to Descartes, bodies are things with extension, and since having extension does not entail any ability to cause changes of motion in other bodies, such changes must be explained by attributing a ‘causal power’ to bodies, logically independent of their extension. Hume's point is that we can't observe any such causal power and we should not use ideas about such unobserved qualities (...) of bodies. Given his form of empiricism, the regularity theory is the only choice; causation is no more than constant correlation. However, there is a third option beside attributing a metaphysical ‘causal power’ and mere regularity; if we follow Newton and say that bodies are characterised and individuated by their mass, not their extension, we can give another analysis of causal interaction between bodies. It is by having mass a body can cause changes in the motion of other bodies. Thus, using classical mechanics we can give an alternative to Hume's regularity theory of causation in which the necessary connection between cause and effect is understood as a conceptual connection between certain descriptions of cause and effect. It does not satisfy Hume's strictures on concept formation, but no additional metaphysics is necessary. In a sense it is an intermediate position between Humean regularity and an account in terms of metaphysical necessity. (shrink)

The paper investigates the question whether the nature of non-locality in quantum mechanics can be better understood by viewing it as grounded in some sort of causation. A general conclusion that may be drawn from the discussion above is that, as far as ordinary quantum mechanics is concerned, we are facing a dilemma: either the notion of causation is interpreted in such general terms so as to lose sight of the original underlying intuition - so that we seem (...) to do nothing but giving a different name to the puzzle under scrutiny - or we are led to ascribe to the special-relativistic spacetime structure a purely phenomenological status in order to make room for a preferred spacetime foliation, with respect to which causal relations can be univocally defined. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making account of causation suggest that the exclusion problem can be solved because mental properties can be difference-making causes of physical effects. Here, we focus on what we dub an incompatibilist implementation of this general strategy and argue against it from a non-reductive physicalist perspective. Specifically, we argue (...) that incompatibilism undermines either the non-reductionist or the physicalist aspirations of non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

The key idea of the interventionist account of causation is that a variable A causes a variable B if and only if B would change if A were manipulated in the appropriate way. This paper raises two problems for Woodward's (2003) version of interventionism. The first is that the conditions it imposes are not sufficient for causation, because these conditions are also satisfied by non-causal relations of nomological dependence expressed in association laws. Such laws ground a relation of (...) mutual manipulability that is incompatible with the asymmetry of causation. Several ways of defending the interventionist account are examined and found unsatisfying. The second problem is that it often seems to be impossible, in a model that contains variables linked by an association law, to satisfy the conditions imposed on interventions on such variables. Various ways to solve this second problem, most importantly the analysis of manipulability in terms of difference making, are examined. Given that none solves the problem, I conclude that the interventionist conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for causation. It is suggested that they provide an analysis of nomological dependence, which may be supplemented with the notion of a causal process to yield an analysis of causation. (shrink)

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, axy042.

In acting intentionally, it is no accident that one is doing what one intends to do. In this paper, I ask how to account for this non-accidentality requirement on intentional action. I argue that, for systematic reasons, the currently prevailing view of intentional action – the Causal Theory of Action – is ill-equipped to account for it. I end by proposing an alternative account, according to which an intention is a special kind of cause, one to which it is essential (...) that it represents its effect. (shrink)

This paper examines an important but neglected topic in Suárez’s metaphysics–—namely, his theory of efficient causation. According to Suárez, efficient causation is to be identified with action, one of Aristotle’s ten highest genera or categories. The paper shows how Suárez’s identification of efficient causation with action helps to shed light on his views about the precise nature of efficient causation, and its role in his ontology. More specifically, it shows that Suárez understands efficient causation to (...) be a distinctive or sui generis type of entity, and that he thinks we must adopt this view in order to account for the facts of efficient causation. The paper also examines several objections to Suárez’s account. (shrink)

In a preceding paper, I studied the significance of Jarrett's and Shimony's analyses of 'factorisability' into 'parameter independence' and 'outcome independence' for clarifying the nature of non-locality in quantum phenomena. I focused on four types of non-locality; superluminal signalling, action-at-a-distance, non-separability and holism. In this paper, I consider a fifth type of non-locality: superluminal causation according to 'logically weak' concepts of causation, where causal dependence requires neither action nor signalling. I conclude by considering the compatibility of non-factorisable theories (...) with relativity theory. In this connection, I pay special attention to the difficulties that superluminal causation raises in relativistic spacetime. My main findings in this paper are: first, parameter-dependent and outcome-dependent theories both involve superluminal causal connections between outcomes and between settings and outcomes. Second, while relativistic deterministic parameter-dependent theories seem impossible on pain of causal paradoxes, relativistic indeterministic parameter-dependent theories are not subjected to the same challenge. Third, current relativistic non-factorisable theories seem to have some rather unattractive characteristics. (shrink)

I argue that so-called ‘absence causation’must be treated in terms of counterfactuals about causation such as ‘had a occurred, a would have caused b’. First, I argue that some theories of causation that accept absence causation are unattractive because they undermine the idea of possible causation. And second, I argue that accepting absence causation violates a principle commonly associated with relativity.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of conscious control. As a result, experiments suggesting that we lack conscious control over our actions cannot be properly evaluated. Joshua Shepherd (2015; 2021) aims to fill this gap. His proposal is grounded in the standard causalist account of action, according to which, simply put, bodily movements are controlled by the agent if and only if they are caused, in the right way, by the relevant psychological states. In this paper, I (...) argue that the proposal does not succeed in distinguishing between mere causation and actual control; it does not solve the problem of deviant causation. On the basis of my criticism, Anscombean action theory promises to offer a valuable perspective. It suggests that an important function of consciousness is to integrate an action into a rational whole. If this is on the right track, it supports Shepherd’s overall claim that the importance of consciousness for action control is often underestimated, because this contribution of consciousness may often go unnoticed in experimental settings. (shrink)

Recently, a new problem has arisen for an Anscombean conception of intentional action. The claim is that the Anscombean’s emphasis on the formally causal character of practical knowledge precludes distinguishing between an aim and a merely foreseen side effect. I propose a solution to this problem: the difference between aim and side effect should be understood in terms of the familiar Anscombean distinction between acting intentionally and the intention with which one acts. I also argue that this solution has advantages (...) over an alternative that has already been endorsed in the literature: it is a better fit for the Anscombean theory, and it naturally accommodates intuitions about the moral significance of aiming vs. merely foreseeing. (shrink)

The basic question of this article is whether Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of divine providence through his understanding of primary and secondary causation can be understood as a theological causal or non-causal explanation. To answer this question, I will consider some contemporary discussions about the nature of causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science and metaphysics, in order to integrate them into a theological discourse that appeals to the classical distinction between God as first cause and creatures as secondary (...) causes to explain God's presence and providence in the created universe. My main argument will hold that, even if there are some philosophical models of explanation that seem to allow one to suggest that, at least partially, this doctrine could be seen as a non-causal theological explanation, there are other models that offer seemingly stronger reasons to see this doctrine in full as a causal theological explanation. (shrink)

Research on deviant organizational practices has demonstrated that normative and cognitive institutional forces contribute to making deviance acceptable. Data from a survey of 3,751 Chinese firms were applied to test the idea that a clearly articulated alternative identity is necessary if a firm is to resist the normalization of deviance. Widespread acceptance of delinquency in repaying loans was shown to make it more likely that a firm adopts that practice, but this normalization process is less likely for firms with (...) a stronger anti-deviance identity. (shrink)

In his book Personal Agency, E. J. Lowe has argued that a dualist theory of mental causation is consistent with “a fairly strong principle of physical causal closure” and, moreover, that it “has the potential to strengthen our causal explanations of certain physical events.” If Lowe’s reasoning were sound, it would undermine the most common arguments for reductive physicalism or epiphenomenalism of the mental. For it would show not only that a dualist theory of mental causation is consistent (...) with a widely held scientific principle, but also that there is some positive reason for accepting the theory. However, I argue that Lowe’s reasoning is unsound, for it requires that causation both is, and is not, transitive: a contradiction. I conclude that if Lowe succeeds in proving that a dualist theory is consistent with physical causal closure, he fails to show that it serves an explanatory purpose. (shrink)

Causation Accounts of the concept of causation can be divided up into four general types: direct non-reductionist, Humean reductionist, non-Humean reductionist, and indirect, or theoretical-term, non-reductionist accounts. This fourfold division, in turn, rests upon the following three distinctions: first, that between reductionism and non-reductionism; secondly, that between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and, thirdly, that between states that are directly observable and those that are not. Let us, then, consider each of these distinctions in turn. Non-Reductionism versus (...) Reductionism The non-reductionism-versus-reductionism distinction in this area arises in connection with both causal laws, and causal relations between states of affairs, and it gives rise to a number of related theses. In the case of causal relations between states of affairs, a thesis that is essential to reductionism is this: Basic Reductionism with respect to Causal Relations Any two worlds that agree both with respect to all of the non-causal properties of, and relations between, particulars, and with respect to all causal laws, must also agree with respect to all of the causal relations between states of affairs. Causal relations are, then, logically supervenient upon the totality of instances of non-causal properties and relations, together with causal laws. But while this thesis is an essential part of a reductionist view of causation, it is not sufficient, since this thesis can be combined with a view of causal laws according to which they obtain in virtue of atomic, and therefore irreducible, facts. What is needed, then, is a reductionist thesis concerning causal laws, and here there are two important possibilities: Strong Reductionism with respect to Causal Laws Any two worlds that agree with respect to all of the non-causal properties of, and relations between, particulars, must also agree with respect to causal laws. Causal laws are, then, logically supervenient upon the totality of instances of non-causal properties and relations. Moderate Reductionism with respect to Causal Laws Any two worlds that agree both with respect to all of the non-causal properties of, and relations between, particulars, and with respect to all laws of nature, must also agree with respect to all causal laws. Causal laws are, then, logically supervenient upon the totality of instances of non-causal properties and relations, together with laws of nature. What lies behind this strong-reductionism-versus-moderate-reductionism distinction? The answer is that while most philosophers who are reductionists with regard to causation tend to identify laws of nature with certain cosmic regularities, it is possible to be a reductionist with regard to causation while holding that laws are more than certain cosmic regularities: one might hold, for example, that laws of nature are second-order relations between universals (Dretske, 1977; Tooley, 1977; Armstrong, 1983). Such a person would reject Strong Reductionism with regard to causal laws, while accepting Moderate Reductionism. Each of these two reductionist theses concerning causal laws then entails, in conjunction with the Basic Reductionist thesis concerning causal relations, a corresponding thesis concerning causal relations between states of affairs: Strong Reductionism with respect to Causal Relations Any two worlds that agree with respect to all of the non-causal properties of, and relations between, particulars, must also agree with respect to all of the causal relations between states of affairs. Causal relations are, in short, logically supervenient upon the totality of instances of non-causal properties and relations. Moderate Reductionism with respect to Causal Relations Any two worlds that agree both with respect to all of the non-causal properties of, and relations between, particulars, and with respect to all laws of nature, must also agree with respect to all of the causal relations between states of affairs. Causal relations are, then, logically supervenient upon the totality of instances of non-causal properties and relations, together with laws of nature. To be a reductionist with regard to causation, then, is to accept the Basic Reductionist thesis with respect to causal relations, and either the Strong or the Moderate Reductionist thesis with respect to causal laws. This then commits one either to the Strong Reductionist thesis or the Moderate Reductionist thesis with respect to causal relations. A non-reductionist with regard to causation, accordingly, is one who rejects either the Basic Reductionist thesis concerning causal relations, or else both the Strong and the Moderate Reductionist theses with regard to causal laws, or all of these. (shrink)