Processes, pre-emption and further problems

Abstract

In this paper I will argue that what makes our ordinary judgements about token causation (‘actual causation’) true can be explicated in terms of interferences into quasi-inertial processes. These interferences and quasi-inertial processes can in turn be fully explicated in scientific terms. In this sense the account presented here is reductive. I will furthermore argue that this version of a process-theory of causation can deal with the traditional problems that process theories have to face, such as the problem of misconnection and the problem of disconnection (Dowe in The Oxford handbook of causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009) as well as with a problem concerning the mis-classification of pre-emption cases (Paul and Hall in Causation: a user’s guide, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013).