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The Conserved Quantity Theory of Causation and Chance Raising

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Phil Dowe
Phil Dowe*
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
*
†School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania, Box 252–41, Hobart, Australia 7001.
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Abstract

In this paper I offer an ‘integrating account’ of singular causation, where the term ‘integrating’ refers to the following program for analysing causation. There are two intuitions about causation, both of which face serious counterexamples when used as the basis for an analysis of causation. The ‘process’ intuition, which says that causes and effects are linked by concrete processes, runs into trouble with cases of ‘misconnections’, where an event which serves to prevent another fails to do so on a particular occasion and yet the two events are linked by causal processes. The chance raising intuition, according to which causes raise the chance of their effects, easily accounts for misconnections but faces the problem of chance lowering causes, a problem easily accounted for by the process approach. The integrating program attempts to provide an analysis of singular causation by synthesising the two insights, so as to solve both problems.

In this paper I show that extant versions of the integrating program due to Eells, Lewis, and Menzies fail to account for the chance-lowering counterexample. I offer a new diagnosis of the chance lowering case, and use that as a basis for an integrating account of causation which does solve both cases. In doing so, I accept various assumptions of the integrating program, in particular that there are no other problems with these two approaches. As an example of the process account, I focus on the recent CQ theory of Wesley Salmon (1997).

Type
Causation and Laws of Nature
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S486 - S501
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Joseph Berkovitz, Chris Hitchcock, and Ben Rogers for comments on a written draft, and also audiences in Adelaide and Kansas City for fruitful feedback. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council.

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