Abstract

In this lecture I argue that it is not possible for social scientists or others engaged in making causal claims about the world to be neutral with respect to the question of what causation is. One need not be in possession of a full-blown account, but one must know whether or not, in saying that something is the cause of a given outcome, one intends to say that it has actively produced or generated that outcome. Following Brian Ellis, I refer to accounts according to which the answer would be ‘No’ as ‘passivist’. One is free to be a passivist, but it is not possible to be neither a passivist nor an anti-passivist.