Philosophisches Seminar

Causal theories of action, perception and knowledge are each beset by problems of so-called ‘deviant’ causal chains. For each such theory, counterexamples are formed using odd or coincidental causal chains to establish that the theory is committed to unpalatable claims about some intentional action, about a case of veridical perception or about the acquisition of genuine knowledge. In this paper I will argue that three well-known examples of a deviant causal chain have something in common: they each violate Yablos proportionality constraint on causation. I will argue that this constraint provides the key to saving causal theories from deviant chains.

Is the relation of causation transitive? If c is a cause of d, and d is a cause of e does it follow of necessity that c is a cause of e? To many the transitivity of causation seems like a fundamental part of our causal concept and yet in recent years there have been several counterexamples which purport to show failures of transitivity in fairly ordinary cases. In this paper I will offer a novel treatment of these cases. First I will show that treating events as individuals within a counterpart theory provides the expressive resources to disambiguate and dissolve some of these counterexamples. Next, I will show that a tougher sort of example is immune to this strategy. I will then show that by applying a proportionality constraint to causal claims (akin to Yablo (1992)) we can deal with even the tougher sorts of case. This leaves us with a dilemma: is causation always proportional and therefore transitive, or is it sometimes not proportional and therefore not a transitive relation? I will argue that causation is not transitive but that conceding this is not as costly as one might think.

This paper argues that a counterpart-theoretic treatment of events, combined with a counterfactual theory of causation (call this combination CCT), can help resolve three puzzles from the causation literature. First, CCT traces the apparent contextual shifts in our causal attributions to shifts in the counterpart relation which obtains in those contexts. Second, being sensitive to shifts in the counterpart relation can help diagnose what goes wrong in certain prominent examples where the transitivity of causation appears to fail. Third, CCT can help us resurrect the much-maligned fragility response to the problems of late pre-emption by understanding fragility in counterpart-theoretic terms. Some reasons to prefer this CCT approach to rivals are discussed.

Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to "independently plausible" and "well grounded" theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional (in Yablo's sense) to their effects. I argue that this feature is a bug, and one that generalises: any attempt to rescue the autonomy of the special sciences, or the efficacy of the mental, from exclusion worries had better not look to proportionality for help.

What is it for an event not to occur? This is an urgent, yet under explored, question
for counterfactual analyses of causation quite generally. In this paper I take a lead
from Lewis in identifying two different possible standards of non-occurrence that we
might adopt and I argue that we need to apply them asymmetrically: one standard
for the cause, another for the effect. This is a surprising result. I then offer a
contextualist refinement of the Lewis approach in light of initial problems, and
discuss how the asymmetry remained hidden until now. I then relate the non-
occurrence problem to issues of transitivity and proportionality in causation, before
showing that a parallel problem exists for contrastivist and interventionist
approaches to causation too.

PurposeGlobal and local processing is part of human perceptual organisation, where global processing helps extract the “gist” of the visual information and local processing helps perceive the details. Individual differences in these two types of visual processing have been found in autism and ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Virtual reality (VR) has become a more available method of research in the last few decades. No previous research has investigated perceptual differences using this technology.Design/methodology/approachThe objective of the research is to threefold: (1) identify if there is association between ADHD and autistic traits and the performance on the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure (ROCF) task, (2) investigate practical effects of using VR drawing tools for research on perceptual experiences and (3) explore any perceptual differences brought out by the three-dimensional nature of the VR. The standard ROCF test was used as a baseline task to investigate t...

This paper explores the practice of explanation by status, in which a truth with a certain status (i.e. necessary status, essential status, or status as a law) is supposed to be explained by its having that status. It first investigates whether such explanations are possible. Having found existing accounts of the practice wanting, it then argues for a novel account of explanation by status as empty-base explanation. The latter notion captures a certain limiting case of ordinary explanation so that according to the empty-base account, explanation by status can be fruitfully understood as a corresponding limiting case of ordinary explanation. One way in which the empty-base account is argued to be superior to other treatments of explanation by status is that it allows for a principled assessment of the possibility of particular kinds of explanation by status. Thus, one result of the present discussion is that explanation by essential status and status as a law are possible, while expl...

No€ el Blas Saenz has recently argued for a counterfactual condition on grounding called Sensitivity, with which he tries to show that there are no mereological sums and that universalism about composition is false. This reply argues, first, that, while Sensitivity may show that there are no mereological sums in Saenz's idiosyncratic sense, this does not establish the failure of universalism and, second, that Sensitivity is false and ill-motivated in any case.

This paper first identifies several plausible desiderata on satisfactory explanations of logical theorems, shows that ordinary grounding explanations cannot satisfy them and argues that there is reason to believe that no alternative grounding explanations of logical theorems can be given. It then develops an alternative explanation of logical theorems based on Yablo’s (Aboutness, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014) idea of reductive truthmaking. The resulting proposal invokes instances of reductive truthmaking that bear an interesting structural similarity to the notion of zero-ground, in virtue of which it is able to satisfy the identified desiderata.

This paper explores a novel notion of self-explanation that combines ideas from two sources: (1) the tripartite account of explanation, according to which a proposition can help explain another either in the capacity of a reason why the latter obtains or in the capacity of an explanatory link, and (2) the notion of an empty-base explanation, which generalizes the ideas of explanation by zero-grounding and explanation by status. After having introduced these ideas and the novel notion of self-explanation, I argue that the latter has the potential to resist extant arguments against the possibility of self-explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss candidates for such self-explanatory propositions and suggest possible applications for Humeanism about laws of nature, the debate on the grounds of ground, the rationalist tradition, and philosophical theology.