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Causation by Disconnection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jonathan Schaffer
Jonathan Schaffer*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Houston
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Abstract

The physical and/or intrinsic connection approach to causation has become prominent in the recent literature, with Salmon, Dowe, Menzies, and Armstrong among its leading proponents. I show that there is a type of causation, causation by disconnection, with no physical or intrinsic connection between cause and effect. Only Hume-style conditions approaches and hybrid conditions-connections approaches appear to be able to handle causation by disconnection. Some Hume-style, extrinsic, absence-relating, necessary and/or sufficient condition component of the causal relation proves to be needed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 285 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Bartlett Hall, Amherst, MA 01003.

‡

Thanks to Phil Dowe, Jim Hawthorne, and David Lewis, and especially to Ned Hall for bringing my attention to this type of case.

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