List of Figures ................................................. x
Acknowledgements ............................................... xi
PART I CAUSATION IN THE SPECIAL SCIENCES AND THE
INTERVENTIONIST THEORY OF CAUSATION
1 Causation in the Special Sciences ............................ 3
Explicating causation in the special sciences: Criteria of
adequacy .................................................... 11
Outline of the book ......................................... 21
2 The Interventionist Theory of Causation ..................... 25
The interventionist explication of causation ................ 25
The formal background of interventionist theories: causal
graphs and Bayesian networks ................................ 39
Is the interventionist theory adequate? ..................... 51
Conclusion .................................................. 70
PART II WHAT IS WRONG WITH INTERVENTIONIST THEORIES
3 Counterfactuals: A Problem for Interventionists? ............ 73
Interventionist theories of causation involve
counterfactuals ............................................. 73
A problem for interventionists: truth conditions
for counterfactuals ......................................... 75
The easy way out: standard possible worlds semantics ........ 79
The interventionist critique of possible worlds semantics ... 82
Modifying possible worlds semantics ......................... 87
Modified Goodmanian semantics ............................... 92
The suppositional view: the pragmatic meaning
of counterfactuals .......................................... 99
Conclusion ................................................. 101
4 Getting Rid of Interventions ............................... 104
Introduction ............................................... 104
Woodward's concept of intervention ......................... 106
A counter-example: why some interventions are not even
physically possible ........................................ 107
Two arguments against the need for logically possible
interventions .............................................. 112
A reconciling remark ....................................... 122
Conclusion ................................................. 123
5 Non-Universal Laws ......................................... 125
Why we need a theory of non-universal laws ................. 125
Challenge I: falsity and triviality ........................ 130
Challenge II: the requirement of relevance ................. 131
Four dimensions of non-universal laws ...................... 132
Meeting the challenges: Lange's Dilemma and the
requirement of relevance ................................... 143
Conclusion: the explication of special science laws ........ 145
6 Woodward Meets Russell: Does Causation Fit into the World
of Physics? ................................................ 146
Non-reductive explications of causation and metaphysics .... 146
Russell on causation and the neo-Russellian claim .......... 150
The interventionist open-systems argument .................. 156
The statistical-mechanical argument ........................ 165
Conclusion ................................................. 173
PART III AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF CAUSATION IN SPECIAL
SCIENCES
7 In Defence of Conceptually Non-Reductive Explications of
Causation .................................................. 177
Conceptually non-reductive explications of causation ....... 177
A reductive analysis of causation: Lewis's
counterfactual theory ...................................... 180
The trade-off argument for non-reductive approaches ........ 181
The objection against non-reductive approaches ............. 187
Defending non-reductive explications ....................... 188
Conclusion ................................................. 197
8 The Comparative Variability Theory of Causation ............ 199
From interventions to comparative variability .............. 199
Comparative variability semantics for counterfactuals ...... 204
The comparative variability theory: definitions ............ 209
An adequate explication of causation ....................... 217
Conclusion ................................................. 231
9 Consequences ............................................... 233
Causal explanation ......................................... 233
Mechanistic models ......................................... 241
Dispositions ............................................... 244
Conclusion and outlook ..................................... 245
Notes ...................................................... 252
Bibliography .................................................. 264
Index ......................................................... 275
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