Counterfactual Dependence Research Articles

Does the counterfactual theory of explanation apply to non-causal explanations in metaphysics?

In the recent philosophy of explanation, a growing attention to and discussion of non-causal explanations has emerged, as there seem to be compelling examples of non-causal explanations in the sciences, in pure mathematics, and in metaphysics. I defend the claim that the counterfactual theory of explanation (CTE) captures the explanatory character of both non-causal scientific and metaphysical explanations. According to the CTE, scientific and metaphysical explanations are explanatory by virtue of revealing counterfactual dependencies between the explanandum and the explanans. I support this claim by illustrating that CTE is applicable to Euler’s explanation (an example of a non-causal scientific explanation) and Loewer’s explanation (an example of a non-causal metaphysical explanation).

Fiction As a Vehicle for Truth: Moving Beyond the Ontic Conception

Despite widespread evidence that fictional models play an explanatory role in science, resistance remains to the idea that fictions can explain. A central source of this resistance is a particular view about what explanations are, namely, the ontic conception of explanation. According to the ontic conception, explanations just are the concrete entities in the world. I argue this conception is ultimately incoherent and that even a weaker version of the ontic conception fails. Fictional models can succeed in offering genuine explanations by correctly capturing relevant patterns of counterfactual dependence and licensing correct inferences. Using the example of Newtonian force explanations of the tides, I show how, even in science, fiction can be a vehicle for truth.

Sufficient Conditions for Causality to Be Transitive

Natural conditions are provided that are sufficient to ensure that causality as defined by approaches that use counterfactual dependence and structural equations will be transitive.

Causality: an empirically informed plea for pluralism

Perhaps now more than ever, the discipline of philosophy finds itself theoretically entwined with the contemporary sciences: the conceptual resources philosophical research affords are increasingly being put to work in everything from fundamental physics to evolutionary biology. That being the case, reflecting on the nature of philosophy‟s theoretical role with respect to the natural sciences is an ever-increasingly important and necessary task. In Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice, Phyllis Illari and Federica Russo do so by examining one of the most central concepts at the foundation of many, if not all, philosophical frameworks employed in conceptualising phenomena in the natural sciences – namely, „causality‟. The aim of the book is to both introduce practising scientists to the various philosophical accounts of causality and introduce practising philosophers to the various scientific applications of that concept. To that end, the book covers an impressively wide range of interrelated topics in the philosophy of causation and their application to the natural sciences, and with a prose highly readable, often entertaining, and sprinkled with interesting, relevant, and illustrative historical anecdotes. For these reasons alone, it‟s easy to recommend this book to interested colleagues in either discipline: a highly accessible and candid treatment of this complex topic which sacrifices neither breadth nor depth no doubt deserves the attention of both parties. The book begins by addressing properly basic, “meta” topics, such as why philosophers ought to be interested in the scientific methodology of experimentally discerning causation, and how philosophical insight into the conceptual structure of „causation‟ might aid in scientific theorising. In keeping with this theme, throughout the book much emphasis is placed on the importance of an awareness and careful study of various evidentiary methods, and their utility in aiding insight into various key concepts in causal reasoning - „invariance‟, „modularity‟, „regularity‟, etc. The main section of the book introduces and critically discusses some of the central philosophical accounts of causality, and although each of the central chapters can be independently understood and digested, Illari and Russo neatly distinguish five important remits of the concept of „cause‟ – inference, prediction, explanation, control, and reasoning – which function as interpretive guidelines through which those principal accounts are measured. Helpfully, nearly every account of causation discussed is prominent in the contemporary literature in some form or another – causation as (1) probability alteration, (2) counterfactual dependence, (3) invariant manipulation, (4) processual tracing, (5) mechanistic mediation, and (6) information transfer. Each account is given its own chapter, and is motivated and discussed in a way which will pique crossdisciplinary interest. And while I suspect that philosophers working in causation may deem their content too thin, due to the scope and aims of the book, this is surely to some degree necessary, and so difficult to see as a significant shortcoming – for the philosophically uninitiated reader, it may even be a virtue; readers wishing for a more in-depth overview of contemporary philosophical accounts of causation might consult Paul & Hall (2013).

Causal Exclusion and Downward Counterfactuals

One of the main line of responses to the infamous causal exclusion problem has been based on the counterfactual account of causation. However, arguments have begun to surface to the effect that the counterfactual theory is in fact ill-equipped to solve the exclusion problem due to its commitment to downward causation. This argumentation is here critically analysed. An analysis of counterfactual dependence is presented and it is shown that if the semantics of counterfactuals is taken into account carefully enough, the counterfactual notion of causation does not need to be committed to downward causation. However, it is a further question whether this is eventually enough to solve the exclusion problem for the analysis shows how the problem itself can take various different forms.

On the Significance of Difference‐Making Principles

AbstractIt has been claimed that difference‐making plays important roles in both metaphysics and epistemology. The idea is that facts often make a difference to other facts. Thus, causes are said to make a difference to their effects, and the world is thought to make a difference to what is believed. One way to cash out this idea is in terms of the notion of counterfactual dependence between the facts in question. It has recently been objected by some philosophers, however, that the counterfactual‐dependence account misrepresents the difference‐making idea, prompting them to offer a different, weaker construal of the idea in question, which, they claim, illuminates a number of problems in both epistemology and metaphysics. This article, while acknowledging that the difference‐making idea is a genuine constraint on some of our concepts, challenges the claim that the weaker interpretation has significant philosophical potentials and, having delineated its real function, spells out the lessons that should be drawn from its failure.

Explanatory Asymmetries: Laws of Nature Rehabilitated

The problem of explanatory non-symmetries provides the strongest reason to abandon the view that laws can figure in explanations without causal underpinnings. I argue that this problem can be overcome. The solution that I propose starts from noticing the importance of conditions of application when laws do explanatory work, and I go on to develop a notion of nomological (non-causal) dependence that can tackle the non-symmetry problem. The strategy is to show how a strong notion of counterfactual dependence as guaranteed by the laws is a plausible account of what we aim towards when we give law-based explanations. The aim of this project is not to deny that causal relations can do explanatory work but to restore laws of nature as capable of being explanatory even in the absence of any knowledge of causal underpinnings.

Asymmetry of counterfactual dependence and defense of Lewis's argument

Arrow of time is well known problem in physics and concerns explanation of the status of the second law of thermodynamics. The problem, however, soon made noise in various philosophical discussions: on knowledge, causality, etc. David Lewis, partially motivated by his counterfactual analysis of causality, introduced the problem of arrow of time in discussion on counterfactuals. After his article in which he had tried to ground asymmetry of counterfactuals in the second law of thermodynamics, there were numerous reactions on such kind of project. In the first part, I will introduce Lewis' theory in detail, and in the second part I will introduce some of the main critiques of such a view, focusing on Elga's critique. The third part will be saved for Loewer's and Albert's argument in favor of a very broad view of Lewis' project. In the part four, I will present strengthening of their argument, while explaining how we could apply it closer to Lewis' original view. Finally, I will make some concluding remarks regarding possible confusion on argument for supporting Lewis, as well as the additional requirements for any future work in that direction. Also, because of the nature of the mentioned arguments, in the appendix I will, very briefly, present an overview of the arrow of time problem from the perspective of physics.

Two Problems for Proportionality about Omissions

Theories of causation grounded in counterfactual dependence face the problem of profligate omissions: numerous irrelevant omissions count as causes of an outcome. A recent purported solution to this problem is proportionality, which selects one omission among many candidates as the cause of an outcome. This paper argues that proportionality cannot solve the problem of profligate omissions for two reasons. First: the determinate/determinable relationship that holds between properties like aqua and blue does not hold between negative properties like not aqua and not blue. Negative properties are those at stake in omissive causation. Second: proportionality misconstrues the nature of the problem to be solved.

Causation in evidence-based medicine: in reply to Strand and Parkkinen.

Strand and Parkkinen criticize our dispositional account of causation in evidence-based medicine for failing to provide a proper epistemology of causal knowledge. In particular, they claim that we do not explain how causal inferences should be drawn. In response, we point out that dispositionalism does indeed have an account of the epistemology of causation, including counterfactual dependence, intervention, prediction and clinical decision. Furthermore, we argue that this is an epistemology that fits better with the known fallibility of even our best-informed predictions. Predictions are made on the basis that causes dispose or tend towards their effects, rather than guarantee them. The ontology of causation remains a valuable study for, among other reasons, it tells us that powers do not always combine additively. This counts against the monocausality that is tested by randomized controlled trials.

The landscape of causation

Paul and Ned Hall's book makes an original and important contribution to the philosophical debate on causation. Their aim is not to construct a theory of causation but to sketch a map of the landscape (p. 1) constituted by a rich set of problem cases and various theories of causation devised to account for them. Chapter 1 presents the scope and aim of the book, justifies the method of evaluating theories of causation by exploring whether they are refuted by counterexamples, and provides an overview of the rest of the book. Chapter 2 justifies the choice of problems and solutions considered in the book. Several assumptions are made from the beginning. Causation is taken to be a relation among particular events rather than types of events. A reductionist outlook is adopted, according to which facts about what causes what are determined by i) facts about what happens and ii) fundamental laws. These assumptions provide the background for a minimal sufficiency account of causation (p. 16), which is a version of a regularity account. The other approaches that are introduced and examined in light of their capacity to cope with problem cases include the following: probabilistic accounts, transference accounts, and counterfactual accounts. Several versions of the counterfactual account get special attention: 1) Lewis' (1973) theory of chains of non-­‐ backtracking counterfactual dependence, 2) Lewis' (2000) account of causation as influence, 3) accounts of de facto dependence , versions of which have been put forward by Yablo (2004) and Hitchcock (2001), and finally 4) contrastivism, according to which causal relations have the form C rather than C* causes E rather than E* . But Paul and Hall provide more than a useful overview of the literature. They analyze the aims that the various approaches fix themselves or, in the authors' own words, the conflicting motivations and conflicting presuppositions about the very point of providing a philosophical account of causation (p. 1). Their own conception of giving an account of causation is expressed in a list of rules. An account of causation is satisfactory if 1) it is reductive and avoids circular use of causal notions in the analysis, 2) it is metaphysically conservative and avoids the postulation of extravagant entities, such as negative events to account for causation by omission, 3) it is conceptually parsimonious and tries to analyze causation as directly as possible in terms of fundamental categories, 4) it applies not only to our actual world but also to other possible worlds, 5) it leaves open the possibility that some causal intuitions are wrong. Chapters 3 to 5 evaluate in rigorous detail how several approaches, the most promising ones according to Paul and Hall, cope with problem cases. Chapter 3 explores various types of redundant causation , such as preemption and overdetermination, which have been the focus of an important part of the literature on counterfactual approaches to causation. Chapters 4 and 5 explore causation by omission and two types of situation in which it is unclear whether causation is transitive, i.e. double prevention and switching. The last chapter, Chapter 6 contains concluding remarks.

If There Were No Numbers, What Would You Think?

Hartry Field has argued that mathematical realism is epistemologically problematic, because the realist is unable to explain the supposed reliability of our mathematical beliefs. In some of his discussions of this point, Field backs up his argument by saying that our purely mathematical beliefs do not ‘counterfactually depend on the facts’. I argue that counterfactual dependence is irrelevant in this context; it does nothing to bolster Field’s argument.

Proportionality, Contrast and Explanation

If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, the idea that causation is contrastive, and the question of the dimensions along which causal explanations should be evaluated with respect to one another.

Contextualising Causation Part I

AbstractThis is the first instalment of a two‐part paper on the counterfactual theory of causation. It is well known that this theory is ridden with counterexamples. Specifically, the following four features of the theory suffer from problems: it understands causation as a relation between events; counterfactual dependence is understood using a metric of similarity among possible worlds; it defines a non-discriminatory concept of causation; and it understands causation as transitive.A number of philosophers have recently proposed that causation is contrastive because making contrasts explicit defuses counterexamples. A contrastive causal claim has the following form: C rather than C* causes E rather than E*, where C* and E* are alternative or contrast events. In this paper, I show that making contrasts explicit does indeed defuse some counterexamples. However, I also argue that the examples discussed in the literature all share a common feature, viz. that the original causal judgement is ambiguous in one way or another. Contrasting does not help with counterexamples that do not have this feature. Part II of this paper then takes up the hard cases.

Counterfactual Causation and Mental Causation

Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection of counterfactual dependence and genuine causation, as well as a disregard of the requisite evaluation conditions of counterfactuals. In a second step, the paper uses the insights of the foregoing analyses to formulate a set of counterfactuals-based conditions that are characterized as sufficient to establish singular causal claims. The paper concludes that there are ample reasons to believe that some mental events satisfy all these conditions with respect to certain further events and, hence, that mental events sometimes are causes.

Causal and Constitutive Explanation Compared

This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence—i.e. mechanisms—although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation.

Counterfactuals and the fixity of the past

I argue that David Lewis’s attempt, in his ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow’, to explain the fixity of the past in terms of counterfactual independence is unsuccessful. I point out that there is an ambiguity in the claim that the past is counterfactually independent of the present (or, more generally, that the earlier is counterfactually independent of the later), corresponding to two distinct theses about the relation between time and counterfactuals, both officially endorsed by Lewis. I argue that Lewis’s attempt is flawed for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his own theory about the evaluation of counterfactuals requires too many exceptions to the general rule that the past is counterfactually independent of the present. At the end of the paper, I consider a variant of Lewis’s strategy that attempts to explain the fixity of the past in terms of causal, rather than counterfactual, independence. I conclude that, although this variant avoids some of the objections that afflict Lewis’s account, it nevertheless seems to be incapable of giving a satisfactory explanation of the notion of the fixity of the past.

Co-responsibility and Causal Involvement

In discussions of moral responsibility for collectively produced effects, it is not uncommon to assume that we have to abandon the view that causal involvement is a necessary condition for individual co-responsibility. In general, considerations of cases where there is “a mismatch between the wrong a group commits and the apparent causal contributions for which we can hold individuals responsible” motivate this move. According to Brian Lawson, “solving this problem requires an approach that deemphasizes the importance of causal contributions”. Christopher Kutz’s theory of complicitious accountability in Complicity from 2000 is probably the most well-known approach of that kind. Standard examples are supposed to illustrate mismatches of three different kinds: an agent may be morally co-responsible for an event to a high degree even if her causal contribution to that event is a) very small, b) imperceptible, or c) non-existent (in overdetermination cases). From such examples, Kutz and others conclude that principles of complicitious accountability cannot include a condition of causal involvement. In the present paper, I defend the causal involvement condition for co-responsibility. These are my lines of argument: First, overdetermination cases can be accommodated within a theory of coresponsibility without giving up the causality condition. Kutz and others oversimplify the relation between counterfactual dependence and causation, and they overlook the possibility that causal relations other than marginal contribution could be morally relevant. Second, harmful effects are sometimes overdetermined by non-collective sets of acts. Over-farming, or the greenhouse effect, might be cases of that kind. In such cases, there need not be any formal organization, any unifying intentions, or any other noncausal criterion of membership available. If we give up the causal condition for coresponsibility it will be impossible to delimit the morally relevant set of acts related to those harms. Since we sometimes find it fair to blame people for such harms, we must question the argument from overdetermination. Third, although problems about imperceptible effects or aggregation of very small effects are morally important, e.g. when we consider degrees of blameworthiness or epistemic limitations in reasoning about how to assign responsibility for specific harms, they are irrelevant to the issue of whether causal involvement is necessary for complicity. Fourth, the costs of rejecting the causality condition for complicity are high. Causation is an explicit and essential element in most doctrines of legal liability and it is central in common sense views of moral responsibility. Giving up this condition could have radical and unwanted consequences for legal security and predictability. However, it is not only for pragmatic reasons and because it is a default position that we should require stronger arguments (than conflicting intuitions about “mismatches”) before giving up the causality condition. An essential element in holding someone to account for an event is the assumption that her actions and intentions are part of the explanation of why that event occurred. If we give up that element, it is difficult to see which important function responsibility assignments could have.

A Peculiarity in Pearl’s Logic of Interventionist Counterfactuals

We examine a formal semantics for counterfactual conditionals due to Judea Pearl, which formalizes the interventionist interpretation of counterfactuals central to the interventionist accounts of causation and explanation. We show that a characteristic principle validated by Pearl’s semantics, known as the principle of reversibility, states a kind of irreversibility: counterfactual dependence (in David Lewis’s sense) between two distinct events is irreversible. Moreover, we show that Pearl’s semantics rules out only mutual counterfactual dependence, not cyclic dependence in general. This, we argue, suggests that Pearl’s logic is either too weak or too strong.

DISCONNECTION AND RESPONSIBILITY

In Causation and Responsibility, Michael Moore offers an integrated conception of the law, morality, and metaphysics, centered on the notion of causation. I contest Moore's claim that causation cannot relate absences and show how accepting absence causation would improve Moore's view. For denying absence causation drives Moore to a disjunctive account of legal and moral responsibility in order to handle cases such as negligence. It forces him into denying that beheading someone can cause them to die, since the route from beheading to death involves the absence of blood flow to the brain. And it leads him into allowing that responsibility can arise from mere correlation with a crime, given that counterfactual dependence can still hold between correlates.