Abstract
A cause is proportional to its effect when, roughly speaking, it is at the right level of detail. There is a lively debate about whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. One of the main arguments against a proportionality constraint on causation is that many ordinary and seemingly perfectly acceptable causal claims cite causes that are not proportional to their effects. In this paper, I suggest that proponents of a proportionality constraint can respond to this objection by developing an idea that is present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality, but which has strangely been ignored by both Yablo and others in the subsequent debate. My suggestion is that proportionality—and, indeed, causation itself—is relative to a domain of events. At the metaphysical level, this means that the causal relation has an extra relatum—namely, a domain of events. At the level of language, it introduces a new way in which causal claims are context-sensitive: what is expressed by a causal claim depends on the contextually relevant domain of events. As I argue, this suggestion allows us to accommodate the truth of ordinary causal claims while extending the explanatory benefits of a proportionality constraint.
Highlights
It is an open question whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation
My proposal can agree with our judgements about ordinary causal claims, as exemplified above, while maintaining that proportionality is a necessary condition for causation: in each case, there exist domains relative to which the purported cause is proportional to the effect; and accommodation ensures that one of these domains is the contextually selected one
I have argued that a proportionality constraint may be reconciled with the truth of our ordinary causal claims by developing a suggestion that is already present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality (1992a): that proportionality, and causation itself, is relative to a domain of events
Summary
It is an open question whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. I suggest that if you want to hold that proportionality is necessary for causation, you should understand proportionality in a particular way—namely, as being relative to a domain of events. A cause is proportional to its effect when it is at just the right level of detail relative to its effect. For example, that the pigeon Sophie has been trained to peck at red to the exclusion of all other colours. She is presented with a scarlet object
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