Trans-world causation?

Crítica (México D. F. En línea), 2014

En un artículo reciente, García-Ramírez (2012) ha argumentado que el análisis contrafáctico de la causalidad de Lewis tiene la indeseable consecuencia de hacer posible la causalidad transmundana. En este artículo argumento que, contrario a lo que García-Ramírez sostiene, la causalidad transmundana no se deriva de la teoría de Lewis de la causalidad intramundana, ya que no se puede extender la relación de cercanía entre mundos de Lewis a pares de mundo de una manera que no sea trivial o ad hoc.

The epistemology of modality is gradually coming to play a central role in general discussions about modality. This paper is a contribution in this direction, in particular I draw a comparison between Lewis's Modal realism and Timothy Wil-liamson's recent account of modality in terms of counterfactual thinking. In order to have criteria of evaluation, I also formulate four requirements which are supposed to be met by any theory of modality to be epistemologically adequate.

The Metaphysics Within Physics, 2007

2011

On one view, an adequate account of causal understanding may focus exclusively on what is involved in mastering general causal concepts (concepts such as ‘x causes y’ or ‘p causally explains q’). An alternative view is that causal understanding is, partly but irreducibly, a matter of grasping what Anscombe called special causal concepts, concepts such as ‘push’, ‘flatten’, or ‘knock over’. We can label these views generalist vs particularist approaches to causal understanding. It is worth emphasizing that the contrast here is not between two kinds of theories of the metaphysics of causation, but two views of the nature and perhaps source of ordinary causal understanding. One aim of this paper is to argue that it would be a mistake to dismiss particularism because of its putative metaphysical commitments. I begin by formulating an intuitively attractive version of particularism due to P.F. Strawson, a central element of which is what I will call naı̈ve realism concerning mechanical t...

2018

We explore the relationships between causal rules and counterfactuals, as well as their relative representation capabilities, in the logical framework of the causal calculus. It will be shown that, though counterfactuals are readily definable on the basis of causal rules, the reverse reduction is achievable only up to a certain logical threshold (basic equivalence). As a result, we will argue that counterfactuals cannot distinguish causal theories that justify different claims of actual causation, which could be seen as the main source of the problem of ‘structural equivalents’ in counterfactual approaches to causation. This will lead us to a general conclusion about the primary role of causal rules in representing causation.

docenti.lett.unisi.it

The first part of the paper summarizes Lewis' counterfactual theory of causation and emphasizes Lewis' refusal to require the temporal priority of causes. Lewis holds that in order to achieve a correct theory of causality it is enough to observe that backtracking counterfactuals are ordinarily false. Lewis argues that the well-known asymmetry between an open future and a closed past goes hand in hand with the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence, that in his view is justified by an adequate analysis of the similarity of worlds. Lewis holds that similarity should be intended as Overall Similarity, but with the proviso that "big" miracles create big dissimilarities while "little" miracles before the antecedent may be essential to grant high similarity. §4 examines some criticism of Lewis' conception of similarity and miracles. In §5 it is argued that Lewis' contention that backtracking counterfactuals are normally false is misplaced, since it may be shown that in a suitably rich logical language every factual true forward-looking conditional is equivalent to a true backtracking counterfactual.

Metaphysica, 2011

A major criticism of David Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation is that it allows too many things to count as causes, especially since Lewis allows, in addition to events, absences to be causes as well. Peter Menzies has advanced this concern under the title “the problem of profligate causation.” In this paper, I argue that the problem of profligate causation provides resources for exposing a tension between Lewis’ acceptance of absence causation and his modal realism. The result is a different problem of profligate causation—one that attacks the internal consistency of Lewisian metaphysics rather than employing common sense judgments or intuitions that conflict with Lewis’ extensive list of causes.

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:

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.