Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T09:42:10.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Probabilistic Causation and Causal Processes: A Critique of Lewis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Peter Menzies
Peter Menzies*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The Australian National University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines a promising probabilistic theory of singular causation developed by David Lewis. I argue that Lewis' theory must be made more sophisticated to deal with certain counterexamples involving pre-emption. These counterexamples appear to show that in the usual case singular causation requires an unbroken causal process to link cause with effect. I propose a new probabilistic account of singular causation, within the framework developed by Lewis, which captures this intuition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 642 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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.)

Footnotes

†

Versions of this paper have been read at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, and at the 1987 meeting in Wellington of the New Zealand Division of the Australasian Association of Philosophers. I would like to thank Peter Forrest, Frank Jackson, Huw Price, Michael Shepanski, and especially David Lewis, for comments which improved the presentation and argument of the paper. The paper was partly written during my tenure of a National Research Fellowship.

References

Cartwright, N. (1979), “Causal Laws and Effective Strategies”, Noûs 13: 419–437. Reprinted with additions in Cartwright (1983), pp. 21–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eells, E., and Sober, E. (1983), “Probabilistic Causality and the Question of Transitivity”, Philosophy of Science 50: 35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, D. (1972), “Causation and the Flow of Energy”, Erkenntnis 14: 219–252.Google Scholar
Fetzer, J. (1981), Scientific Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1980), “Cutting the Causal Chain”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61: 305–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1981), “Aleatory Explanations”, Synthese 48: 225–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1982), “Aleatory Explanations Expanded”, in P. D. Asquith and T. Nickles (eds.), PSA 1982, vol. 2. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 208–223.Google Scholar
Kim, J. (1973), “Causation, Nomic Subsumption, and the Concept of Event”, Journal of Philosophy 70: 217–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. (1975), “Events as Property Exemplifications”, in M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Action Theory. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 159–177.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973a), Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwells.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973b), “Causation”, Journal of Philosophy 70: 556–567. Reprinted in Lewis (1986a), pp. 159–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1979), “Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow”, Noûs 13: 455–476. Reprinted in Lewis (1986a), pp. 32–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1980), “A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance”, in R. Jeffrey (ed.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reprinted in Lewis (1986a), pp. 83–133.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986a), Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986b), “Postscripts to ‘Causation‘”, in Lewis (1986a), pp. 172–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986c), “Events”, in Lewis (1986a), pp. 241–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (1986), “Fixed Past, Unfixed Future”, in B. Taylor (ed.), Michael Dummett: Contributions to Philosophy. Amsterdam: Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Menzies, P. (1989), “A Unified Account of Causal Relata”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67: 59–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, D. (1978), “In Defense of a Probabilistic Theory of Causality”, Philosophy of Science 45: 368–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redhead, M. (1986), Incompleteness, Nonlocality, and Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1980), “Probabilistic Causality”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61: 50–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sobel, J. H. (1979), “Probability, Chance, and Choice: A Theory of Rational Agency”. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1984a), The Nature of Selection. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1984b), “Two Concepts of Cause”, P. D. Asquith and P. Kitcher (eds.), PSA 1984, vol. 2. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 405–424.Google Scholar
Suppes, P. (1970), A Probabilistic Theory of Causality. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Suppes, P. (1984), Probabilistic Metaphysics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar