Lewis Causation is a Special Case of Spohn Causation

Lewis Causation is a Special Case of Spohn Causation

Lewis ([1973a]) famously defined event c to be causally relevant to event e in world w just in case O c ð Þ and O e ð Þ as well as :O c ð Þ !:O e ð Þ are true in w, where O c ð Þ and O e ð Þ say that c occurs and that e occurs, respectively. For him, this implied that O c ð Þ ! O e ð Þ is true, because he was assuming the underlying logic to be VC, which validates ^ ð Þ ! ð Þ. If one works with...

Causation in the Special Sciences: the Case for Pragmatism

Causation and Mental Causation

How the mind of a human being can determine the bodily spirits [i.e., the fluids in the nerves, muscles, etc.] in producing voluntary actions, being only a thinking substance. For it appears that all determination of movement is produced by the pushing of the thing being moved, by the manner in which it is pushed by that which moves it, or else by the qualification and figure of the surface of ...

Is Causation Probabilistic?

One view of causation is deterministic: A causes B means that on any occasion in which A occurs, B occurs. An alternative view is that causation is probabilistic: it means that given A, the probability of B is greater than some criterion, such as the probability of B given not A. Evidence about the induction of causal relations cannot decide between these two accounts, and so we examined how pe...

Introduction to Special Issue on 'Actual Causation'

An actual cause of some token effect is itself a (distinct) token event (or fact, or state of affairs, ...) that helped to bring about that effect. The notion of an actual cause is different from that of a potential cause – for example a pre-empted backup – which had the capacity to bring about the effect, but which wasn't in fact operative on the occasion in question. Sometimes actual causes a...