Causation as a Secondary Quality

2. The agency theory: a probabilistic version outlined. 3. Metaphysics confused with epistemology? 4. Unavoidable circularity? 5. Unmanipulable causes? 6. Unacceptable anthropocentricity? 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents. 1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory. 2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B just in case bringing about the occurrence of A would be an effective means by which a free agent could bring about the occurrence of B. In our view the unpopularity of the agency approach to causation may be traced to two factors. The first is a failure to appreciate certain distinctive advantages that this approach has over its various rivals. We have drawn attention to some of these advantages elsewhere, and we summarize below. However, the second and more important factor is the influence of a number of stock objections, objections that seem to have persuaded many philosophers that agency accounts face insuperable obstacles. In this paper we want to show that these objections have been vastly overrated. There are four main objections: 1. Agency accounts confuse the epistemology of causation with its metaphysics. It is widely conceded that experimentation is an invaluable source of evidence for causal claims; the objection is that it is a confusion to suppose that the notion of agency should thereby enter into the analysis of causal claims. 2. Agency accounts are vitiated by circularity. It is argued that the bringing about is itself a causal notion, and that this introduces a vicious circularity into an agency account. 3. An agency account cannot make sense of causal relations between events which are outside the control of any agent. For example, it is argued that such an account cannot make sense of the claim that the earth's revolution around the sun causes us to experience the seasons. 4. Agency accounts make causation an unacceptably anthropocentric phenomenon. Agency accounts are said to imply what is obviously false, namely that there would be no causal relations if there were no human agents (or …