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Probabilistic Causation and Causal Processes: A Critique of Lewis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Peter Menzies
Peter Menzies*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The Australian National University
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Abstract

This paper examines a promising probabilistic theory of singular causation developed by David Lewis. I argue that Lewis' theory must be made more sophisticated to deal with certain counterexamples involving pre-emption. These counterexamples appear to show that in the usual case singular causation requires an unbroken causal process to link cause with effect. I propose a new probabilistic account of singular causation, within the framework developed by Lewis, which captures this intuition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 642 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Versions of this paper have been read at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, and at the 1987 meeting in Wellington of the New Zealand Division of the Australasian Association of Philosophers. I would like to thank Peter Forrest, Frank Jackson, Huw Price, Michael Shepanski, and especially David Lewis, for comments which improved the presentation and argument of the paper. The paper was partly written during my tenure of a National Research Fellowship.

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