Actual Causation : A Stone Soup
نویسندگان
چکیده
We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) novel problem cases occur when more variables are considered; (3) as deployed in discussions of actual causation, “neuron diagrams” and causal Bayes net diagrams are ambiguous; (4) actual causation typically involves changes in a system state that produce changes, and thus, unlike most current proposals, is commonly relative to an initial system state; (5) a welldeveloped principled theory accounting for actual causes that are changes that produce changes has been available for many years using causal Bayes nets; (6) there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about cases are normative, and (7) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Once upon a time a wanderer came into a hungry village. He filled an iron cauldron with water, and built a fire under it. Then he dropped an ordinary looking stone into the water. "I do like a tasty stone soup” he announced. Soon a villager added a cabbage to the pot. Another added some salt beef . And soon other villagers added potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was a meal for all.
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