Causal–Continuity Stabilization Theory (CCST) addresses the persistence of macroscopic causal histories within an Everettian, fully unitary ontology. While environmental decoherence accounts for the emergence of approximately autonomous quasi–classical sectors, it does not by itself specify when a continuous descriptive trajectory remains physically well–posed on a finite physicalsubstrate. CCSTintroducesaneffectivegeometricformulationofthermodynamicstrain Σ and a substrate–dependent maximum dissipation bound Φmax, together with a dynamical stability diagnostic expressed by an effective Lyapunov condition λ≤0. The central claim is that sector measure (Born weight) is (...) conceptually independent of de- scriptive admissibility: a sector may be prevalent in the global state yet fail to support stable frame–to–framecontinuityonagivensubstrateiftherequireddissipationexceedsΦmax oriflocal sensitivity renders the coarse–grained closure ill–posed. To avoid any implication of inter–sector transport or physical relocation, CCST defines the projection ΠS,t0 as a stability–constrained partial readout rule acting on the global wavefunction, yielding a descriptive trajectory ES (t) only on domains where admissibility holds. In this framework, a Causal Exit denotes loss of descriptive definability rather than elimi- nation of any Everettian sector, preserving full compatibility with unitary quantum mechanics while providing an explicit physical stability criterion for macroscopic descriptive persistence. (shrink)

A promising development in the philosophy of causation analyzes actual causation using structural equation models, i.e., “causal models”. This paper carefully considers what it means for an interpreted model to be accurate of its target situation. These considerations show, first, that our existing understanding of accuracy is inadequate. Further, and more controversially, they show that any causal model analysis is committed to a kind of relativism – a view whereby causation is a three-part relation holding between a cause, (...) an effect, and something else. In particular, insofar as a causal model analysis construes causation mind-and-language independently, it must treat causation as relative to a specification of background possibilities – i.e., a ‘modal profile.’ Or, so I argue. (shrink)

Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to “independently plausible” and “well grounded” theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional to their effects. I argue that this feature is (...) a bug, and one that generalises: any attempt to rescue the autonomy of the special sciences, or the efficacy of the mental, from exclusion worries had better not look to proportionality for help. (shrink)

Understanding causal structure is a central task of human cognition. Causal learning underpins the development of our concepts and categories, our intuitive theories, and our capacities for planning, imagination and inference. During the last few years, there has been an interdisciplinary revolution in our understanding of learning and reasoning: Researchers in philosophy, psychology, and computation have discovered new mechanisms for learning the causal structure of the world. This new work provides a rigorous, formal basis for theory theories (...) of concepts and cognitive development, and moreover, the causal learning mechanisms it has uncovered go dramatically beyond the traditional mechanisms of both nativist theories, such as modularity theories, and empiricist ones, such as association or connectionism. (shrink)

Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it (...) is argued that various forms of naturalistic dualism, of an emergentist character, are consistent with the strongest physical causal closure principles that can plausibly be advocated. (shrink)

Causal claims are context sensitive. According to the old orthodoxy (Mackie 1974, Lewis 1986, inter alia), the context sensitivity of causal claims is all due to conversational pragmatics. According to the new contextualists (Hitchcock 1996, Woodward 2003, Maslen 2004, Menzies 2004, Schaffer 2005, and Hall ms), at least some of the context sensitivity of causal claims is semantic in nature. I want to discuss the prospects for causal contextualism, by asking why causal claims are context (...) sensitive, what they are sensitive to, and where they are sensitive to it. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is the view that agents can choose between various courses of action. Advocates of libertarian free will largely divide themselves between event-causal libertarianism and agent-causal libertarianism. Robert Kane, a leading contemporary libertarian, recently proposes a hybrid agent-causal, event-causal model, according to which agent involving events such as reasons and efforts play a necessary but insufficient role in causing choices, leaving a necessary role for agents-qua-agents. In this paper I consider the merits and demerits (...) of Kane's hybrid model before introducing a modified event-causal, agent-causal model of libertarian free will that expands upon, but also substantially amends, Kane's model. (shrink)

This paper expounds that besides the well-known spatio-temporal problem there is a causal problem of entanglement: even when one neglects spatio-temporal constraints, the peculiar statistics of EPR/B experiment is inconsistent with usual principles of causal explanation as stated by the theory of causal Bayes nets. The conflict amounts to a dilemma that either there are uncaused correlations or there are caused independences . I argue that the central ideas of causal explanations can be saved if one (...) accepts the latter horn and explains the unfaithful independences by a stable fine-tuning of the causal parameters. (shrink)

In this chapter the received view of causation, according to which causal relations are a distinctive species of external relation, and causal relata are taken to be pairs of events, the causing event preceding its effect, is discussed. The relation itself is presumed to be nonreflexive, asymmetrical, and transitive. This chapter considers the implications of adopting a conception of causation according to which causal relations are understood as the manifestings of reciprocal dispositions or powers. On such a (...) conception, causation would most naturally be seen as a kind of symmetrical, nontransitive, internal relation, a relation founded on non-relational features of its relata. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the consequences of a view of this kind for familiar conceptions of natural necessity. (shrink)

One of Stuart Glennan's most prominent contributions to the new mechanist debate consists in his reductive analysis of higher-level causation in terms of mechanisms (Glennan, 1996). In this paper I employ the causal Bayes net framework to reconstruct his analysis. This allows for specifying general assumptions which have to be satis ed to get Glennan's approach working. I show that once these assumptions are in place, they imply (against the background of the causal Bayes net machinery) that higher-level (...) causation indeed reduces to interactions between component parts of mechanisms. I also briefly discuss the plausibility of these assumptions and some consequences for the mechanism debate. (shrink)

Dualism holds that some mental events are fundamental and non-physical. I develop a prima facie plausible causal argument for dualism. The argument has several significant implications. First, it constitutes a new way of arguing for dualism. Second, it provides dualists with a parity response to causal arguments for physicalism. Third, it transforms the dialectical role of epiphenomenalism. Fourth, it refutes the view that causal considerations prima facie support physicalism but not dualism. After developing the causal argument (...) for dualism and drawing out these implications, I subject the argument to a battery of objections. Some prompt revisions to the argument. Others reveal limitations in scope. It falls out of the discussion that the causal argument for dualism is best used against physicalism as a keystone in a divide and conquer strategy. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr’s classical work on the nature of causation in biology has had a huge influence on biologists as well as philosophers. Although his distinction between proximate and ultimate causation recently came under criticism from those who emphasize the role of development in evolutionary processes, the formal relationship between these two notions remains elusive. Using causal graph theory, this paper offers a unified framework to systematically translate a given “proximate” causal structure into an “ultimate” evolutionary response, and illustrates (...) evolutionary implications of various kinds of causal mechanisms including epigenetic inheritance, maternal effects, and niche construction. These results not only reveal the essential interplay between proximate and ultimate causation in the study of evolution, but also provide a formal method to evaluate or discover non-standard or yet unknown evolutionary phenomena. (shrink)

Causal selection has to do with the distinction we make between background conditions and “the” true cause or causes of some outcome of interest. A longstanding consensus in philosophy views causal selection as lacking any objective rationale and as guided, instead, by arbitrary, pragmatic, and non-scientific considerations. I argue against this position in the context of causal selection for disease traits. In this domain, causes are selected on the basis of the type of causal control they (...) exhibit over a disease of interest. My analysis clarifies the principled rationale that guides this selection and how it involves both pragmatic and objective considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop and defend a model of causation that allows for dualist mental causation in worlds where the physical domain is physically complete. In Part I, I present the dualist ontology that will be assumed throughout the thesis and identify two challenges for models of mental causation within such an ontology: the exclusion worry and the common cause worry. I also argue that a proper response to these challenges requires a thoroughly lightweight account of causation, i.e. an (...) account that allows for causes to be metaphysically distinct from the phenomena that produce or physically necessitate their effects. In Part II, I critically evaluate contemporary responses to these challenges from the philosophical literature. In particular, I discuss List and Stoljar’s criticism of exclusion worries, Kroedel’s alternative dualist ontology, concerns about the notion of causal sufficiency, and Lowe’s models of dualist mental causation. I argue that none of these proposals provide independent motivation for a thoroughly lightweight account of causation and therefore leave room for improvement. In the first four chapters of Part III, I develop a thoroughly lightweight model of causation, which builds on interventionist approaches to causation. First, I explain how so-called ‘holding fixed’-requirements in standard interventionist accounts stand in the way of dualist mental causation. I then argue that interventionist accounts should impose a robustness condition on causal correlations and that, with this condition in place, the ‘holding fixed’-requirements can be weakened such that they do allow for dualist mental causation. I dub the interventionist model with such weakened ‘holding fixed’-requirements ‘insensitive interventionism’, argue that it can counter the exclusion worry as well as the common cause worry, and explain under which circumstances it would predict there to be dualist mental causation. Importantly, these circumstances might, for all we know, hold in the actual world. In the final three chapters of Part III, I defend insensitive interventionism against some objections. I consider the objection that causation must be productive, the objection that causes must physically necessitate their effects, and the objection that insensitive interventionism is too permissive. I respond by drawing from the literature on causation by absences and on the relation between causation and fundamental physics. Overall, insensitive interventionism performs as well as standard interventionist accounts. I conclude that insensitive interventionism is a credible model of causation. (shrink)

Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. These theories begin with the idea that there are mental representations and that thoughts are meaningful in virtue of a causal connection between a mental representation and some part of the world that is represented. In other words, the point of departure for these theories is that thoughts of dogs are about dogs (...) because dogs cause the mental representations of dogs. (shrink)

Social research, from economics to demography and epidemiology, makes extensive use of statistical models in order to establish causal relations. The question arises as to what guarantees the causal interpretation of such models. In this paper we focus on econometrics and advance the view that causal models are ‘augmented’ statistical models that incorporate important causal information which contributes to their causal interpretation. The primary objective of this paper is to argue that causal claims are (...) established on the basis of a plurality of evidence. We discuss the consequences of ‘evidential pluralism’ in the context of econometric modelling. (shrink)

The causal nature of evolution is one of the central topics in the philosophy of biology. The issue concerns whether equations used in evolutionary genetics point to some causal processes or purely phenomenological patterns. To address this question the present article builds well-defined causal models that underlie standard equations in evolutionary genetics. These models are based on minimal and biologically plausible hypotheses about selection and reproduction, and generate statistics to predict evolutionary changes. The causal reconstruction of (...) the evolutionary principles shows adaptive evolution as a genuine causal process, where fitness and selection are both causes of evolution. 1 Introduction2 The Philosophical Puzzle3 Causal Models4 Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics4.1 Univariate quantitative genetics model4.1.1 The causal graph4.1.2 Structural equations4.1.3 Deriving evolutionary transition functions4.2 One-locus population genetics model5 Evolution as a Causal Process5.1 Selection as a causal process5.2 Causes of evolutionary change6 Conclusion. (shrink)

The periodic table represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial, the role that it plays in scientific reasoning remains heavily disputed. Many philosophers deny the explanatory role of the table and insist that it is “merely” classificatory (Shapere, in F. Suppe (Ed.) The structure of scientific theories, University of Illinois Press, Illinois, 1977; Scerri in Erkenntnis 47:229–243, 1997). In particular, it has been claimed that (...) the table does not figure in causal explanation because it “does not reveal causal structure” (Woody in Science after the practice turn in the philosophy, history, and social studies of science, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2014). This paper provides an analysis of what it means to say that a scientific figure reveals causal structure and it argues that the modern periodic table does just this. It also clarifies why these “merely” classificatory claims have seemed so compelling–this is because these claims often focus on the earliest periodic tables, which lack the causal structure present in modern versions. (shrink)

As autonomous systems rapidly become ubiquitous, there is a growing need for a legal and regulatory framework to address when and how such a system harms someone. There have been several attempts within the philosophy literature to define harm, but none of them has proven capable of dealing with with the many examples that have been presented, leading some to suggest that the notion of harm should be abandoned and "replaced by more well-behaved notions". As harm is generally something that (...) is caused, most of these definitions have involved causality at some level. Yet surprisingly, none of them makes use of causal models and the definitions of actual causality that they can express. In this paper we formally define a qualitative notion of harm that uses causal models and is based on a well-known definition of actual causality (Halpern, 2016). The key novelty of our definition is that it is based on contrastive causation and uses a default utility to which the utility of actual outcomes is compared. We show that our definition is able to handle the examples from the literature, and illustrate its importance for reasoning about situations involving autonomous systems. (shrink)

The causal theory of properties is standardly combined with a realist's ontology of universals or tropes. In this paper, I consider an uncharted alternative – a nominalist causal theory of properties. I discuss advantages and disadvantages of the resulting theory of properties, and explore the Rylean understanding of causal powers that emerges.

Physicalism is often characterized by the slogan that “There is nothing over and above the physical.” Thus, making physicalism precise requires making “the physical” precise. In this paper I advance one such way of making the physical precise and in doing so defend a new approach to defining the physical. I argue that a property is physical iff it belongs to the largest strong-component of a causal network that includes exemplary physical properties. This avoids the triviality problem faced by (...) physics-based accounts and withstands an important argument against accounts that are not physics-based. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I consider an easier-to-read and improved to a certain extent version of the causal chance-based analysis of counterfactuals that I proposed and argued for in my A Theory of Counterfactuals. Sections 2, 3 and 4 form Part I: In it, I survey the analysis of the core counterfactuals (in which, very roughly, the antecedent is compatible with history prior to it). In section 2 I go through the three main aspects of this analysis, which are (...) the following. First, it is a causal analysis, in that it requires that intermediate events to which the antecedent event is not a cause be preserved in the main truth-condition schema. Second, it highlights the central notion to the semantics of counterfactuals on the account presented here -- the notion of the counterfactual probability of a given counterfactual, which is the probability of the consequent given the following: the antecedent, the prior history, and the preserved intermediate events. Third, it considers the truth conditions for counterfactuals of this sort as consisting in this counterfactual probability being higher than a threshold. In section 3, I re-formulate the analysis of preservational counterfactuals in terms of the notion of being a cause, which ends up being quite compact. In section 4 I illustrate this analysis by showing how it handles two examples that have been considered puzzling – Morgenbesser's counterfactual and Edgington's counterfactual. Sections 5 and on constitute Part II: Its main initial thrust is provided in section 5, where I present the main lines of the extension of the theory from the core counterfactuals (analyzed in part I) to counterfactuals (roughly) whose antecedents are not compatible with their prior history. In this part II, I elaborate on counterfactuals that don't belong to the core, and more specifically on so-called reconstructional counterfactuals (as opposed to the preservational counterfactuals, which constitute the core counterfactual-type). The heart of the analysis is formulated in terms of processes leading to the antecedent (event/state), and more specifically in terms of processes likely to have led to the antecedent, a notion which is analyzed entirely in terms of chance. It covers so-called reconstructional counterfactuals as opposed to the core, so-called preservational counterfactuals, which are analyzed in sections 2 and 3 of part I. The counterfactual probability of such reconstructional counterfactuals is determined via the probability of possible processes leading to the antecedent weighed, primarily and roughly, by the conditional probability of the antecedent given such process: The counterfactual probability is thus, very roughly, a weighted sum for all processes most likely to have led to the antecedent, diverging at a fixed time. In section 6 I explain and elaborate further on the main points in section 5. In section 7 I illustrate the reconstructional analysis. I specify counterfactuals which are so-called process-pointers, since their consequent specifies stages in processes likely to have led to their antecedent. I argue that so-called backtracking counterfactuals are process-pointers counterfactuals, which fit into the reconstructional analysis, and do not call for a separate reading. I then illustrate cases where a speaker unwittingly employs a certain counterfactual while charitably construable as intending to assert (or ‘having in mind’) another. Here I also cover the issue of how to construe what one can take as back-tracking counterfactuals, or counterfactuals of the reconstructional sort, and more specifically, which divergence point they should be taken as alluding to (prior to which the history is held fixed). Some such cases also give rise to what one can take as a dual reading of a counterfactual between preservational and reconstructional readings. Such cases may yield an ambiguity, where in many cases one construal is dominant. In section 8 I illustrate the analysis by applying it to the famous Bizet-Verdi counterfactuals. This detailed analysis of counterfactuals (designed for the indeterministic case) has three main distinctive elements: its being chance-based, its causal aspect, and the use it makes of processes most likely to have led to the antecedent-event. This analysis is couched in a very different conceptual base from, and is an alternative account to, analyses in terms of the standard notion of closeness or distance of possible worlds, which is the main feature of the Stalnaker-Lewis-type analyses of counterfactuals. This notion of closeness or distance plays no role whatsoever in the analysis presented here. (This notion of closeness has been left open by Stalnaker, and to significant extent also by Lewis's second account.) . (shrink)

The causal nature of evolution is one of the central topics in the philosophy of biology. The issue concerns whether equations used in evolutionary genetics point to some causal processes or purely phenomenological patterns. To address this question the present article builds well-defined causal models that underlie standard equations in evolutionary genetics. These models are based on minimal and biologically plausible hypotheses about selection and reproduction, and generate statistics to predict evolutionary changes. The causal reconstruction of (...) the evolutionary principles shows adaptive evolution as a genuine causal process, where fitness and selection are both causes of evolution. 1 Introduction2 The Philosophical Puzzle3 Causal Models4 Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics4.1 Univariate quantitative genetics model4.1.1 The causal graph4.1.2 Structural equations4.1.3 Deriving evolutionary transition functions4.2 One-locus population genetics model5 Evolution as a Causal Process5.1 Selection as a causal process5.2 Causes of evolutionary change6 Conclusion. (shrink)

Minimally, causal realism (as understood here) is the view that accounts of causation in terms of mere, regular or probabilistic conjunction are unsatisfactory, and that causal phenomena are correctly associated with some form of de re necessity. Classic arguments, however, some of which date back to Sextus Empiricus and have appeared many times since, including famously in Russell, suggest that the very notion of causal realism is incoherent. In this paper I argue that if such objections seem (...) compelling, it is only because everyday expressions concerning causal phenomena are misleading with respect to certain metaphysical details. These expressions generally make reference to the relations of events or states of affairs, but ignore or obscure the role played by causal properties. I argue that on a proposed alternative, an analysis in terms of causal processes, more refined descriptions of causal phenomena escape the charge of incoherence. Causal necessity is here located in the relations of causal properties. I distinguish this view from the recent process theories of Salmon and Dowe, which are disinterested in causal realism. (shrink)

Commonsense psychology conceives of propositional knowledge as a causally relevant mental state. But what makes that conception so natural to us? In ‘Knowledge as a Mental State’ Jennifer Nagel approaches this question by reviewing experimental work on the development of a ‘theory of mind’, work she takes to suggest that _belief_ is a more sophisticated concept than _knowledge_. This paper raises some sceptical doubts about Nagel’s strategy and her interpretation of the developmental evidence. It also sketches an alternative view of (...) the rationale and the development of the commonsense conception of the causal role of knowledge, drawing on Perner and Roessler (2010). (shrink)

Invariance is one of several dimensions of causal relationships within the interventionist account. The more invariant a relationship between two variables, the more the relationship should be considered paradigmatically causal. In this paper, I propose two formal measures to estimate invariance, illustrated by a simple example. I then discuss the notion of invariance for causal relationships between non-nominal (i.e., ordinal and quantitative) variables, for which Information theory, and hence the formalism proposed here, is not well suited. Finally, (...) I propose how invariance could be qualified for such variables. (shrink)

Causal theories of mental content (CTs) ground certain aspects of a concept's meaning in the causal relations a concept bears to what it represents. Section 1 explains the problems CTs are meant to solve and introduces terminology commonly used to discuss these problems. Section 2 specifies criteria that any acceptable CT must satisfy. Sections 3, 4, and 5 critically survey various CTs, including those proposed by Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, Ruth Garrett Millikan, David Papineau, Dennis Stampe, Dan Ryder, (...) and the author himself. The final section considers general objections to the causal approach. (shrink)

In this paper I present a limitation to what may be called strictly-interventionistic causal-model semantic theories for subjunctive conditionals. And I offer a line of response to Briggs’ counterexample to Modus Ponens—given within a strictly-interventionistic framework—for the subjunctive conditional. The paper also contains some discussion of backtracking counterfactuals and backtracking interpretations. The limitation inherent to strict interventionism is brought out via a class of counterexamples. A causal-model semantics is strictly interventionistic just in case the procedure it gives for (...) evaluating a subjunctive conditional requires making the values of the variables implicated in the antecedent independent from the values of the parents of these antecedent variables. Most causal-model semantic theories that have gained attention are strictly interventionistic. (shrink)

Research indicates that actors who intentionally bring about harmful consequences are blamed more for their actions than those who do so unintentionally. However, in many instances of harmful behavior, intentions are ambiguous. The Culpable Control Model of Blame (CCM) predicts that the degree to which an actor is blamed for causing a harmful outcome is strongly influenced by information about the actor’s character, motives, or desires and that initial blame assessments impact important blame-related criteria such as judgements regarding the actor’s (...) intent. Deviant causal sequences, those in which negative outcomes occur in ways that the actor did not foresee, are highly unlikely, or are coerced, include circumstances that could mitigate assignment of blame. Such sequences provide a test of predictions derived from the CCM. Findings of three studies supported a model in which participants ascribed greater blame to an actor with opprobrious character, motives, or desires, which, in turn, affected judgments of a main criterion related to intent, and, in the last step, accounted for ascriptions of intent. These findings support the CCM’s contention that blame-reactions to an actor and outcome influence judgments about criteria, such as intent, that are often considered to be determinants rather than consequences of blame. (shrink)

In this paper, I utilise the tools of analytic philosophy to amalgamate mono-causal and multi-causal theories of disease. My aim is to better integrate viral and socio-economic explanations of AIDS in particular, and to consider how the perceived divide between mono-causal and multi-causal theories played a role in the tragedy of AIDS denialism in South Africa in the early 2000s. Currently, there is conceptual ambiguity surrounding the relationship between mono-causal and multi-causal theories in biomedicine (...) and epidemiology. Mono-causal theories focus on single, typically microbial, sources of illness and are most concerned with infectious diseases. By contrast, multi-causal theories allow for multiple factors to underpin a disease’s aetiology, including socio-economic and behavioural factors, and they usually focus on chronic non-communicable diseases. However, if these theories are taken to be strictly distinct, this prevents the inclusion of both microbial and socio-economic factors in a single explanation of any particular disease. This strict distinction became a problem when trying to explain the disproportionate prevalence of AIDS in southern Africa and ultimately contributed to the tragedy of AIDS denialism in South Africa. In tandem with viewing how the perceived divide between multi-causal and mono-causal theories underpinned AIDS denialism, I examine Thabo Mbeki’s specific role, while acknowledging that AIDS is being deprioritised on a broader international level. Overall, I will demonstrate that any long-term plan to eliminate AIDS will require viral and socio-economic factors to be considered simultaneously and that such a theoretical approach requires a clearer understanding of the underlying concepts of disease aetiology. (shrink)

Causal refutations of external-world scepticism start from our ability to make justified judgements about the order of our own experiences, and end with the claim that there must be perceptible external objects, some of whose states can be causally correlated with that order. In a recent paper, I made a series of objections to this broadly Kantian anti-sceptical strategy. Georges Dicker has provided substantive replies on behalf of a version of the causal refutation of idealism. Here I offer (...) a few final remarks about issues at the heart of our disagreement. (shrink)

Causal decision theory (CDT) cares only about the effects of a contemplated act, not its causes. The article constructs a case in which CDT consequently recommends a bet that the agent is certain to lose, rather than a bet that she is certain to win. CDT is plainly giving wrong advice in this case. It therefore stands refuted. 1 The Argument2 The Argument in More Detail2.1 The betting mechanism2.2 Soft determinism2.3 The content of P 2.4 The argument again3 The (...) Descriptive Premise3.1 Causal decision theory3.2 Causal decision theory prefers A14 The Normative Premise5 Objections5.1 Table 1 and Table 2 are misleading5.2 The agency theory of causation5.3 The payment mechanism5.4 Newcomb’s problem5.5 Against the normative premise5.6 Drop soft determinism. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead that the effects of (...) the mental are always causally overdetermined. I call this strategy the ‘ overdetermination challenge’. One of the main aims of this paper is to show that the overdetermination challenge is the most appropriate response to Kim’s exclusion argument, at least in its latest form. I argue that Kim fails to adequately respond to the overdetermination challenge, thus failing to prevent his opponents from reasonably maintaining that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. Interestingly, this discussion reveals a curious dialectical feature of Kim’s latest response to the overdetermination challenge: if it succeeds, then a new, simpler and more compact version of the exclusion argument is available. While I argue against the consequent of this conditional, thereby also rejecting the antecedent, this dialectical feature should be of interest to philosophers on either side of this debate. (shrink)

A causal argument for physicalism is widely held to pose a problem for dualism. This view has an unobvious presupposition, namely that the causal closure of the physical has a special sort of ground. The requisite sort of ground must distinguish the causal argument for physicalism from many defective causal arguments. On behalf of physicalists, I develop an account of the ground for the causal closure of the physical, thereby putting the causal argument for (...) physicalism back in the business of causally problematizing dualism. One consequence of my account is that physicalists can pose a causal problem for dualism using a much weaker closure premise than is generally assumed. (shrink)

Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science to fill explanatory gaps seen to be left by reductivist and eliminativist accounts of previous generations. This volume revisits the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles across history to foster deeper discussions about their metaphysical natures.

The causal closure of physics is usually discussed in a context free way. Here I discuss it in the context of engineering systems and biology, where strong emergence takes place due to a combination of upwards emergence and downwards causation. Firstly, I show that causal closure is strictly limited in terms of spatial interactions because these are cases that are of necessity strongly interacting with the environment. Effective Spatial Closure holds ceteris parabus, and can be violated by Black (...) Swan Events. Secondly, I show that causal closure in the hierarchy of emergence is a strictly interlevel affair, and in the cases of engineering and biology encompasses all levels from the social level to the particle physics level. However Effective Causal Closure can usefully be defined for a restricted set of levels, and one can experimentally determine Effective Theories that hold at each level. This does not however imply those effective theories are causally complete by themselves. In particular, the particle physics level is not causally complete by itself in the contexts of solid state physics, digital computers, or biology. Furthermore Inextricably Intertwined Levels occur in all these contexts. (shrink)

The causal impacts of genes and environment on any one biological trait are inextricably entangled, and consequently it is widely accepted that it makes no sense in singleton cases to privilege either factor for particular credit. On the other hand, at a population level it may well be the case that one of the factors is responsible for more variation than the other. Standard methodological practice in biology uses the statistical technique of analysis of variance to measure this latter (...) kind of causal efficacy. In this paper, I argue that: 1) analysis of variance is in fact badly suited to this role; and. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that mind-body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in (...) every introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation. (shrink)

The term ‘realism’ and its contrasting terms have various related senses, although often they occlude as much as they illuminate, especially if ontological and epistemological issues and their tenable combinations are insufficiently clarified. For example, in 1807 the infamous ‘idealist’ Hegel argued cogently that any tenable philosophical theory of knowledge must take the natural and social sciences into very close consideration, which he himself did. Here I argue that Hegel ably and insightfully defends Newton’s causal realism about gravitational force, (...) in part by exposing a fatal equivocation in the traditional concept of substance, by criticizing some still-standard empiricist misconceptions of force, by emphasizing the role of explanatory integration in Newtonian mechanics, and by using his powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference to justify fallibilism regarding empirical justification, together with the semantic core of Newton’s Rule Four of (experimental) Philosophy—in a way that highlights a key fallacy in many arguments against realism, both in epistemology and within philosophy of science. (shrink)

Counterfactuals are inherently ambiguous in the sense that the same counterfactual may be true under one mode of counterfactualization but false under the other. Many have regarded the ambiguity of counterfactuals as consisting in the distinction between forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactuals. This is incorrect since the ambiguity persists even in cases not involving backtracking counterfactualization. In this paper, I argue that causal modeling semantics has the resources enough for accounting for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. Specifically, we need to distinguish (...) two types of causal manipulation, which I call “intervention” and “extrapolation” respectively. To intervene in a causal model M is to change M’s structural equations in some specific ways, while to extrapolate M is to change the value assignment of M’s variables in some specific ways. I argue that intervention and extrapolation offer a natural explanation for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. (shrink)

Causal compatibilism claims that even though physics is causally closed, and even though mental properties are multiply realizable and are not identical to physical causal properties, mental properties are causal properties nonetheless. This position asserts that there is genuine causation at multiple descriptive/ontological levels; physics-level causal claims are not really incompatible with mentalistic causal claims. I articulate and defend a version of causal compatibilism that incorporates three key contentions. First, causation crucially involves robust patterns (...) of counterfactual dependence among properties.Second, often several distinct such patterns, all subsuming a single phenomenon, exist at different descriptive/ontological levels (e.g., microphysical, neurobiological, macrobiological, and psychological). Third, the concept of causation is governed by an implicit contextual parameter that normally determines a specific descriptive/ontological level as the contextually relevant level, for the context-sensitive semantic evaluation of causal statements. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that kinds can be construed as mereologically complex structural properties. This essay examines several strategies aimed at construing a certain class of natural kinds, namely isomeric chemical kinds, in accordance with this view. In particular, the essay examines views which posit structural proper parts in addition to micro-constitutive parts to individuate isomeric chemical kinds. It then goes on to argue that the phenomenon of chirality in stereochemistry gives the proponent of kinds-as-complex-properties evidence for positing the existence (...) of causal-cum-dispositional individuating proper parts, in addition to structural parts, for chemical enantiomeric kinds. (shrink)

Event-causal libertarianism concerning free will faces two challenging problems of control. Indeterminism so diminishes control that it is incompatible with an indeterministically caused act's being free. Since event-causal libertarianism's metaphysical or agency commitments are no richer than those of its best compatibilist rivals, how does event-causal libertarianism secure for libertarian free agents more control than these rivals? I argue that the two problems are inextricably associated in that whether event-causal libertarianism can deliver enhanced control depends upon (...) a solution to problem , but there are formidable hurdles in the way of reaching this solution. (shrink)

Suppositions can be classified as indicative vs. subjunctive and full vs. partial. We propose a causal account of suppositional reasoning that naturally unifies all four types of reasoning based on this classification, provides a justification of the rather heterogenous canonical update rules, and gives rise to a new update rule for the partial subjunctive case in terms of generalized imaging.

Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) € C at a causal model M as (...) a weighted average of the probability of C in those submodels that truthmake A ∨ B (Briggs 2012; Fine 2016, 2017). The weights of the submodels are given by the inverse distance to the original model M, based on a distance metric proposed by Eva, Stern, and Hartmann (2019). Apart from solving a major problem in the epistemology of counterfactuals, our paper shows how work in semantics, causal inference and formal epistemology can be fruitfully combined. (shrink)

Compatibilists respond to the problem of causal exclusion for nonreductive physicalism by rejecting the exclusionist’s ban on overdetermination. By the compatibilist’s lights there are two forms of overdetermination, one that’s problematic and another that is entirely benign. Furthermore, multiple causation by “tightly related” causes requires only the benign form of overdetermination. Call this the tight relation strategy for avoiding problematic forms of overdetermination. To justify the tight relation strategy, modal compatibilists appeal to a widely accepted counterfactual test. The argument (...) of this paper is that the counterfactual test fails to legitimize the tight relation strategy as it fails to adequately distinguish between problematic and benign overdetermination. Contrary to modal compatibilists, modal dependence does not suffice for benignity. I conclude by arguing that adequately addressing overdetermination worries requires a much heavier metaphysical burden than modal compatibilists have typically recognized. (shrink)

Causal pluralism is currently a hot topic in philosophy. However, the consequences of this view on causation for scientific knowledge and scientific methodology are heavily underexposed in the present debate. My aim in this paper is to argue that an epistemological-methodological point of view should be valued as a line of approach on its own and to demonstrate how epistemological- methodological causal pluralism differs in its scope from conceptual and metaphysical causal pluralism. Further, I defend epistemological-methodological (...) class='Hi'>causal pluralism and try to illustrate that scientific practice needs diverse causal concepts in diverse domains, and even diverse causal concepts within singular domains. (shrink)