CAUSATION- lec 9 Flashcards
alteration
of an event is a possible event which is either identical to the event or very similar to it but differing slightly in time, location, or manner.
influences
Event c influences distinct event e iff there is a substantial range, c1 ,…,cn of
alterations of c (including c itself), and there is a range, e1 ,…,en of alterations of e, at least some
of which differ, such that C 1 □→ E1 and C 2 □→ E2 and … and C n □→En .
(These are counterfactuals
saying that if the c-event occurs then so does the e-event
An account of causation in terms of causal influence
According to the ‘Causation as Influence’ view, c causes e iff there is a chain of events running
from c to e such that each event is influenced by its predecessor in the chain.
Pre-emption and the move to the ‘Causation as Influence’ view
pre-emption: a case where c causes e, even though there is
a back-up (pre-empted) cause that would have brought e about if c had not occurred.
Lewis’s ‘Causation’ framework
Lewis’s ‘Causation’ framework generates a nice-looking account of cases of early pre-emption.
In intuitive terms, these are cases where the pre-empting causal chain cuts off the pathway by
which the pre-empted cause would have brought about the effect.
For this kind of case, Lewis can say the following:
a) There is an actual chain of events, each causally dependent on the one before, running from
the effect back to the pre-empting cause.
b) There is a possible chain of events which, in a world where the pre-empting cause failed,
would have run from the effect back to the pre-empted cause.
c) In the actual world, the events making up the possible chain at (b) do not take place.
So
d) The pre-empting cause is a cause of the effect; the pre-empted cause is not
late pre-emption: cases
late pre-emption: cases where c causes e in the
presence of a backup causal chain (originating with c*) which is complete right up to the last
link, so that what prevents the backup chain from running to completion is just that the c-chain
does so instead
Interventionism
s a view of causation which takes off from this initial ‘manipulationist’ claim.
The interventionists’ basic suggestion is most easily introduced by reference to a causal graph.
This is a diagram laying out causal relations between variables. For example, suppose we have
variables X and Y, where there is a causal relation running from X-levels to Y-levels, and where
there are also causal relations running to X-levels from the levels of further variables R and S.
Here is a causal graph representing these relations
reductive accounts
of how the causal relatedness arrows in the diagram are to be understood
non-reductive view
according to which a causal relation just is a
relation with the structural features characteristic of the relations depicted by arrows in causal
graphs.
