Causation, Transitivity, and Causal Relata

Journal of Philosophical Research 15:263-277 (1990)
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Abstract

I consider an alleged example of a non-transitive causal chain, on the basis of which J. Lee has argued that causation is non-transitive. I show that his analysis of the example rests on too coarse-grained an approach to causal relata. I develop a fine-grained analysis of events which owes much to Dretske’s notion of an allomorphic event, and I use this analysis to show that in the example all the genuine causal chains are indeed transitive. It emerges that when fine-grained analyses of events are possible, causal contexts are aIlomorphicaIly sensitive.

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Dale Lynn Holt
Mississippi State University

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