Three Concepts of Actual Causation

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I argue that we need to distinguish between three concepts of actual causation: total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. I provide two lines of argument in support of this account. First, I address three thought experiments that have been troublesome for unified accounts of actual causation, and I show that my account provides a better explanation of corresponding causal intuitions. Second, I provide a functional argument: if we assume that a key purpose of causal concepts is to guide agency, we are better off making a distinction between three concepts of actual causation.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Actual Causation and Compositionality.Jonathan Livengood & Justin Sytsma - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (1):43-69.
Cause and Norm.Christopher Hitchcock & Joshua Knobe - 2009 - Journal of Philosophy 106 (11):587-612.
The Transitivity and Asymmetry of Actual Causation.Sander Beckers & Joost Vennekens - 2017 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4:1-27.
Causation and Free Will.Carolina Sartorio - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press UK.
Graded Causation and Defaults.Joseph Y. Halpern & Christopher Hitchcock - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):413-457.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-05-08

Downloads
108 (#150,820)

6 months
17 (#107,227)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Enno Fischer
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Citations of this work

Broken brakes and dreaming drivers: the heuristic value of causal models in the law.Enno Fischer - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (1):1-20.
Actual Causation.Enno Fischer - 2021 - Dissertation, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Add more citations

References found in this work

Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Causation.David Lewis - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):556-567.
Causation as influence.David Lewis - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (4):182-197.

View all 27 references / Add more references