On Counterfactual Mental Causation

Mind, 1997

On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counterfactually) depends on the former one. But, this requirement precludes the possibility of late pre-emptive causation, of causation by fragile events, and of indeterministic causation. Lewis proposes three different strategies for accommodating these three kinds of cases, but none of these turn out to be satisfactory. I offer a single analysis of causation that resolves these problems in one go but which respects Lewis's initial insights. One distinctive feature of my account is that it accommodates indeterministic causation without resorting to probabilities.

Analysis, 2002

Whether backward causation is logically possible is a deeply controversial matter, and one on which, in the present paper, I shall take no stand. The question to be considered is what relation, if any, there is between the logical possibility of backward causation and a Stalnaker-Lewis-style account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and the thesis that I shall be defending is that, if backward causation is logically possible, then a Stalnaker-Lewis-style account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals cannot be sound.

Thought, 2015

Among the many philosophers who hold that causal facts 1 are to be explained in terms of-or more ambitiously, shown to reduce to-facts about what happens, together with facts about the fundamental laws that govern what happens, the clear favorite is an approach that sees counterfactual dependence as the key to such explanation or reduction. The paradigm examples of causation, so advocates of this approach tell us, are examples in which events c and e-the cause and its effect-both occur, but: had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. From this starting point ideas proliferate in a vast profusion. But the remarkable disparity among these ideas should not obscure their common foundation. Neither should the diversity of opinion about the prospects for a philosophical analysis of causation obscure their importance. For even those philosophers who see these prospects as dim-perhaps because they suffer post-Quinean queasiness at the thought of any analysis of any concept of interest-can often be heard to say such things as that causal relations among events are somehow "a matter of" the patterns of counterfactual dependence to be found in them.

Humana.Mente, 2011

Siegal, Elitzur and Nora Boneh (eds.), Perspectives on Causation, Springer., 2020

Counterfactual conditionals are used extensively in causal reasoning. This observation has motivated a philosophical tradition that aims to provide a counterfactual analysis of causation. However, such analyses have come under pressure from a proliferation of counterexamples and from evidence that suggests that the truth-conditions of counterfactuals are themselves causal. I offer an alternative account of the role of counterfactuals in causal thought that is consistent with these data: counterfactuals are used in a common method of causal reasoning related to John Stuart Mill's method of difference. The method uses background beliefs about causal relationships, history, and the natural laws to establish a new causal claim. Counterfactuals serve as a convenient tool for stating certain intermediate conclusions in this reasoning procedure, and that is part of what makes counterfactuals useful. This account yields a functional explanation of why our language contains a construction with the truth-conditions of counterfactuals. 3 For an interesting alternative explanation of the connection between causation and counterfactuals, see Maudlin (2004). 4 I do not claim that that is the only function of counterfactual conditionals. They clearly also serve other purposes, e.g. in making practical decisions.

2018

David Lewis in his remarkable project of counterfactual analysis of causation tries to formulate causal relations in terms of counterfactual statements and his account of possible worlds that he introduces in his account of modal realism. Lewis’s analysis consists of many various aspects that could not all be looked up in this paper. Nonetheless, in this paper, I am going to evaluate one of the most famous components of his analysis and critically point out one of the most critical issue concerning counterfactual analysis; namely the “temporal asymmetry of counterfactual dependence”. I will argue that Lewis’s argument for the temporal asymmetry of counterfactual dependence relies on the conceptual f iat that there is time asymmetry, even though Lewis himself would say that this claim is philosophically well argued.

Theoria, 2009

In a 2004 Analysis article, Jonathan Schaffer proposes an ingenious amendment to David Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals. This amendment explicitly invokes the notion of causal independence, thus giving up Lewis’s ambitions for a reductive counterfactual account of causation. But in return, it rescues Lewis’s semantics from extant counterexamples. I present a new counterexample that defeats even Schaffer’s amendment. Further, I argue that a better approach would be to follow the causal modelling literature and evaluate counterfactuals via an explicit postulated causal structure. This alternative approach easily resolves the new counterexample, as well as all the previous ones. Up to now, its perceived drawback relative to Lewis’s scheme has been its non-reductiveness. But since the same drawback applies equally to Schaffer’s amended scheme, this becomes no longer a point of comparative disadvantage.

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2007

The counterfactual analysis of causation has focused on one particular counterfactual conditional, taking as its starting point the suggestion that C causes E iff (~C □→ ~E). In this paper, some consequences are explored of reversing this counterfactual, and developing an account starting with the idea that C causes E iff (~E □→ ~C). This suggestion is discussed in relation to the problem of preemption. It is found that the “reversed” counterfactual analysis can handle even the most difficult cases of preemption with only minimal complications. The paper closes with a discussion of the wider philosophical implications of developing a reversed counterfactual analysis, especially concerning the differentiation of causes from causal conditions, causation by absences, and the extent to which causes suffice for their effects.

The problems of how the world is made, how things could have gone, and how causal relations work (if any such relation is at play) cross the entire historical development of philosophy. In the last forty years, the philosophical debate has given these problems a prominent role in its agenda, and David Lewis has suggested methodologies and theories that have contributed to enrich our notions in the fields of mereology, modality and the theory of causation. Such contributions have been among the most influential in analytic philosophy. The following theses -among others -have been milestones for the current philosophical debate: