PHL232 tutoial week 4 Causation Regularity accounts Causation prior to Hume Humes empiricist argument Hume in effect reduces

causality to constant conjunction. Event A causes event B if and only if B-type events invariably follow upon A-type events. Problems with regularity accounts Imperfect regularities: We know that A caused B, but B-type events do not always follow upon A-type events. Causes vs. non-causal regularities Regularity accounts do nto distinguish between causal and other non-causal correlations. Did the height of the flagpole and the length and direction fo its shaddow cause the position of the sun? Counterfactual accounts (Lewis) David Lewis: We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects some of them, at least, and usually all would have been absent as well. (Causation, Causation, Journal of Philosophy, 70: 55667; p.161) Counterfactual dependence Event B is counterfactually dependent on event A iff the counterfactual if A had not occurred B would not have occurred is true. How is the counterfactual to be understood? C: If I had not had coffee at 8am I would have been tired at 10am. Consider all worlds in which the conditions of the actual world at 8am obtain. Suppose that at 8am a small miracle happens such that I do not drink coffee. And suppose that the laws of nature otherwise remain unviolated.

C is true if and only if in all of those worlds I am tired at 10am. This condition rules out backtracking counterfactuals. Suppose that A causally necessitates B. A, on a backtracking interpretation, counterfactually depends on B. C*: If B had not occurred then A would nto have occurred. But we can run the above test on C* and see that A would have occurred without B. This is important for the theory of causation. Causation Event C causes event E iff there is a chain of events, C, D1 Dn, E, such that each (other than C) counterfactually depends on the one before it. Causation is the ancestral of counterfactual dependence. Why not just say that C causes E iff E ic counterfactually dependent on C? Why the bit about chains? The problem of (early) pre-emption Suzy throws a rock which hits a window and breaks it. We want to say that her throw caused the window to break. But if she had not thrown the stone Billy would have thrown a stone. Thus the effect was not causally dependent on her throw. To fix the problem Lewis adds the bit about chains. There is an event between the throw event and the window breaking event. There is the event of the rock flying through the air. A (suzy throwing) B (the rock flying) C (window shattering) Each event (apart from A) counterfactually depends on the one before. Suzys throw caused Billy not to throw. It removed him from the picture. Subsequently, C causally depens on B and B on A.

Although E does not causally depend on A, A is connected to E by way of a chain of counterfactual dependencies. How does this account overcome the problems faced by regularity accounts? The problem of late pre-emption Suppose that Suzys throw does not cause Billy not to throw. Suppose that he throws at the same time as Suzy throws but that her rock shatters the window before his can. In this case C does not counterfactually depend on B. And so the introduction of B does not help. Lewis overcomes late pre-emption by changing his account of causality. He begins by introducing the notion of quasi-dependence. From the SEP article David Lewis B quasi-depends on A if and only if there is a process starting with A*, and ending with B*, and B* counterfactually depends on A*, and the process from A* to B* is an intrinsic duplicate of the process from A to B, and the laws governing the process from A* to B* (i.e. the laws of the world in which A* and B* happen) are the same as the laws governing the process from A to B. Thus the shattering of the window in the late pre-emption case is quasi-dependent on Suzys throw. And he then identifies causation as the ancestral not of counterfactual dependence but of quasi-dependence. A problem is introduced. The quasi-dependence strategy makes causation an intrinsic relation. But its not always an intrinsic relation as in cases of double prevention. Car A is about to hit car B and ao to prevent B from continuing to move forward. Car C hits A thus preventing A from preventing Bs forward motion. C thus causes Bs forward motion. A further problem is introduced: trumping pre-emption

Sometimes an event A sufficient for an effect B occurs but As causation of B is trumped by Cs causing B. From Jonathan Schaffer: Soldiers are trained to follow the orders of the sergeant and the major but to gove priority to those of the major. Both the seargent and the major order them to attack. They do. Presumably it was the major and not the sergeant who caused them to do this. But the attack quasi-depended on (and so ex hypothesi was caused by) the sergeants order. Lewis dumps quasi-dependence. Causation as influence. See class overheads.