The metaphysics of causation

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008)
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Abstract

Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided as follows. First, there are questions about the nature of the causal relata, including (1.1) whether they are in spacetime immanence), (1.2) how fine grained they are individuation), and (1.3) how many there are adicity). Second, there are questions about the metaphysics of the causal relation, including (2.1) what is the difference between causally related and causally unrelated sequences connection), (2.2) what is the difference between sequences related as cause to effect, and those related as effect to cause or as joint effects of a common cause direction), and (2.3) what is the difference between sequences involving the cause, and those involving mere conditions selection).

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Jonathan Schaffer
Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

Laws and their instances.Nina Emery - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (6):1535-1561.
Causation as folk science.John Norton - 2003 - Philosophers' Imprint 3:1-22.
Causation comes in degrees.Huzeyfe Demirtas - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-17.

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References found in this work

How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation.Michael Strevens - 2008 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1997 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.

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