Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T13:24:23.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Causation, Agency, and Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Daniel M. Hausman*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
*
Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: dhausman@macc.wisc.edu.

Abstract

This paper explores versions of agency or manipulability theories of causation and argues that they are unacceptable both for the well-known reasons of their anthropomorphism, limited scope, and circularity and because they are subsumed by an alternative “independence” theory of causation, which is free of these difficulties.

Type
Symposium: Causal Asymmetry, Intervention, and Chance
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Collingwood, R. G. (1940), An Essay on Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gasking, Douglas (1955), “Causation and Recipes”, Mind 64: 479487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, Daniel (1998), Causal Asymmetries. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honderich, Ted (1982), “Causes and if p, even if x, still q”, Philosophy 57: 291317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menzies, Peter and Price, Huw (1993), “Causation as a Secondary Quality”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44: 187203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Huw (1992), “Agency and Causal Asymmetry”, Mind 101: 501520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Huw (1996) Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans (1956), The Direction of Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Wright, G H. (1971), “On the Logic and Epistemology of the Causal Relation”, in Sosa, Ernest and Tooley, Michael (eds.), Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 105124.Google Scholar