Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T22:37:09.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Causality Without Counterfactuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Wesley C. Salmon
Wesley C. Salmon*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department University of Pittsburgh
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Philosophy Department, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a drastically revised version of the theory of causality, based on analyses of causal processes and causal interactions, advocated in Salmon (1984). Relying heavily on modified versions of proposals by P. Dowe, this article answers penetrating objections by Dowe and P. Kitcher to the earlier theory. It shows how the new theory circumvents a host of difficulties that have been raised in the literature. The result is, I hope, a more satisfactory analysis of physical causality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 297 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I should like to express my sincere thanks to Philip Kitcher, Allen Janis, and an anonymous referee for extremely valuable comments on this paper.

References

Clendinnen, F. J. (1992), “Nomic Dependence and Causation”, Philosophy of Science 59: 341–360.10.1086/289674CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, P. (1992a), “An Empiricist Defence of the Causal Account of Explanation”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6: 123–128.10.1080/02698599208573420CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, P. (1992b), “Process Causality and Asymmetry”, Erkenntnis 37: 179–196.10.1007/BF00209321CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, P. (1992c), “Wesley Salmon's Process Theory of Causality and the Conserved Quantity Theory”, Philosophy of Science 59: 195–216.10.1086/289662CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, D. (1979), “Causation and the Flow of Energy”, Erkenntnis 14: 219–250.10.1007/BF00174894CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, N. (1955), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grünbaum, A. (1963), Philosophical Problems of Space and Time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1989), “Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World”, in P. Kitcher and W. Salmon (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 13, Scientific Explanation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 410–505.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973), “Causation”, Journal of Philosophy 70: 556–567.10.2307/2025310CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loeb, L. (1974), “Causal Theories and Causal Overdetermination”, Journal of Philosophy 71: 525–544.10.2307/2025296CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mühlhölzer, F. (forthcoming), “Scientific Explanation and Equivalent Descriptions”, in Salmon, W. and Wolters, G. (eds.), Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1956), The Direction of Time. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.10.1063/1.3059791CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichenbach, H. ([1928] 1957), The Philosophy of Space and Time. Originally published as Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). New York: Dover.10.1515/9783111485676CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, B. (1948), Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1985), “Conflicting Concepts of Scientific Explanation”, Journal of Philosophy 82: 651–654.10.2307/2026421CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, W. (1990), “Causal Propensities: Statistical Causality vs. Aleatory Causality”, Topoi 9: 95–100.10.1007/BF00135890CrossRefGoogle Scholar