Abstract

Not all testing interventions that we might want to perform, or need to be performable in principle, fail to cause off-path variables. This is a problem for the orthodox interventionist theory of causation, but not the ‘Modified Interventionist Theory’, which I proposed in a previous issue of this journal (Friend 2021). As I explain here, this is because only the modified theory permits ‘soft control’. I will survey three different kinds of case (beyond the case considered previously) in which soft control is necessary for a reasonable application of interventionism. These include cases where soft control makes intervention more practical, physically possible, and causally probative in the context of mechanisms. The result is a strong case for the modified theory.

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