Category Mistakes in M&E∗

A widely accepted account of causation (Lewis, 1973) asserts: (1) If F and E both occur but F would not have occurred unless E had occured, then E causes F . This obviously implies (2) One’s birth causes one’s death. an extremely odd result. But is it a counter-example? Lewis (2000) suggests that the oddness of (2) is due not to obvious falsity but to being “too obvious to be worth mentioning” (p. 196, referring to Grice, 1989). But many quite obvious propositions do not share the oddness of (2). Consider, for example: (3) One’s birth precedes one’s death. This is not at all odd in the way that (2) is. So is (2) a counter-example to (1)? It would seem that a defender of (1) must, either (A) offer some more plausible explanation of the seeming falsity of (2) that is compatible with its truth, or ∗This paper is dedicated to Zeno Vendler. An earlier version was presented at a semantics workshop at Rutgers University in 2002. I am indebted to my commentator on that occasion, Sam Wheeler, to the many people who contributed to the ensuing discussion at Rutgers, and to Mark Moffett.