-
28Unity and Plurality in the Concept of CausationVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 10 217-224. 2003.
-
84The common cause principle in historical linguisticsPhilosophy of Science 65 (3): 425-447. 1998.Despite the platitude that analytic philosophy is deeply concerned with language, philosophers of science have paid little attention to methodological issues that arise within historical linguistics. I broach this topic by arguing that many inferences in historical linguistics conform to Reichenbach's common cause principle (CCP). Although the scope of CCP is narrower than many have thought, inferences about the genealogies of languages are particularly apt for reconstruction using CCP. Quantita…Read more
-
80A probabilistic theory of second order causationErkenntnis 44 (3). 1996.Larry Wright and others have advanced causal accounts of functional explanation, designed to alleviate fears about the legitimacy of such explanations. These analyses take functional explanations to describe second order causal relations. These second order relations are conceptually puzzling. I present an account of second order causation from within the framework of Eells' probabilistic theory of causation; the account makes use of the population-relativity of causation that is built into this…Read more
-
400Prevention, preemption, and the principle of sufficient reasonPhilosophical Review 116 (4): 495-532. 2007.
-
130Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by an international team of experts. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the life and work of Peter Menzies, who made a difference in the lives of students, colleagues, and friends. Topics covered include: the semantics of counterfactuals, agency theories of causation, the context-sensitivity of causal claims, structural equation models, m…Read more
-
148Events and times: a case study in means-ends metaphysicsPhilosophical Studies 160 (1): 79-96. 2012.There is a tradition, tracing back to Kant, of recasting metaphysical questions as questions about the utility of a conceptual scheme, linguistic framework, or methodological rule for achieving some particular end. Following in this tradition, I propose a ‘means-ends metaphysics ’, in which one rigorously demonstrates the suitability of some conceptual framework for achieving a specified goal. I illustrate this approach using a debate about the nature of events. Specifically, the question is whe…Read more
-
176Conditioning, intervening, and decisionSynthese 193 (4). 2016.Clark Glymour, together with his students Peter Spirtes and Richard Scheines, did pioneering work on graphical causal models . One of the central advances provided by these models is the ability to simply represent the effects of interventions. In an elegant paper , Glymour and his student Christopher Meek applied these methods to problems in decision theory. One of the morals they drew was that causal decision theory should be understood in terms of interventions. I revisit their proposal, and …Read more
-
894 What's Wrong with Neuron Diagrams?In J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & H. S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation, Mit Press. pp. 4--69. 2007.
-
86The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and GraphsJournal of Philosophy 98 (6): 273. 2001.
-
2676Cause and NormJournal of Philosophy 106 (11): 587-612. 2009.Much of the philosophical literature on causation has focused on the concept of actual causation, sometimes called token causation. In particular, it is this notion of actual causation that many philosophical theories of causation have attempted to capture.2 In this paper, we address the question: what purpose does this concept serve? As we shall see in the next section, one does not need this concept for purposes of prediction or rational deliberation. What then could the purpose be? We will ar…Read more
-
85Review: The mind's arrows: Bayes nets and graphical causal models in psychology (review)Mind 112 (446): 340-343. 2003.
-
400Graded Causation and DefaultsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2): 413-457. 2015.Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has shown that judgments of actual causation are often influenced by consideration of defaults, typicality, and normality. A number of philosophers and computer scientists have also suggested that an appeal to such factors can help deal with problems facing existing accounts of actual causation. This article develops a flexible formal framework for incorporating defaults, typicality, and normality into an account of actual causation. The resu…Read more
-
222Probabilistic causationStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.“Probabilistic Causation” designates a group of theories that aim to characterize the relationship between cause and effect using the tools of probability theory. The central idea behind these theories is that causes change the probabilities of their effects. This article traces developments in probabilistic causation, including recent developments in causal modeling. A variety of issues within, and objections to, probabilistic theories of causation will also be discussed
-
108Causal processes and interactions: What are they and what are they good for?Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 932-941. 2004.Concerning any object of philosophical analysis, we can ask several questions, including the two posed in the title of this paper. Despite difficulties in formulating a precise criterion to distinguish causal processes from pseudoprocesses, and causal interactions from mere spatiotemporal intersections, I argue that Salmon answered the first of these questions with extraordinary clarity. The second question, by contrast, has received very little attention. I will present two problems: in the fir…Read more
-
3Contrastive ExplanationIn Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy, Routledge/taylor & Francis Group. 2013.
-
301Three concepts of causationPhilosophy Compass 2 (3). 2007.I distinguish three different concepts of causation: The scientific concept, or causal structure, is the subject of recent work in causal modeling. The folk attributive concept has been studied by philosophers of law and social psychologists. The metaphysical concept is the one that metaphysicians have attempted to analyze. I explore the relationships between these three concepts, and suggest that the metaphysical concept is an untenable and dispensable mixture of the other two.
-
225A tale of two effectsPhilosophical Review 110 (3): 361-396. 2001.In recent years, there has been a philosophical cottage industry producing arguments that our concept of causation is not univocal: that there are in fact two concepts of causation, corresponding to distinct species of causal relation. Papers written in this tradition have borne titles like “Two Concepts of Cause” and “Two Concepts of Causation”. With due apologies to Charles Dickens, I hereby make my own contribution to this genre.
-
65Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient ReasonPhilosophical Review 116 (4): 495-532. 2007.
-
278The Oxford Handbook of Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2009.Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in et…Read more
-
1Causal ModellingIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.
-
355
-
44
-
241Structural equations and causation: six counterexamplesPhilosophical Studies 144 (3): 391-401. 2009.Hall [(2007), Philosophical Studies, 132, 109–136] offers a critique of structural equations accounts of actual causation, and then offers a new theory of his own. In this paper, I respond to Hall’s critique, and present some counterexamples to his new theory. These counterexamples are then diagnosed.
-
101Portable Causal Dependence: A Tale of ConsiliencePhilosophy of Science 79 (5): 942-951. 2012.This article describes research pursued by members of the McDonnell Collaborative on Causal Learning. A number of members independently converged on a similar idea: one of the central functions served by claims of actual causation is to highlight patterns of dependence that are highly portable into novel contexts. I describe in detail how this idea emerged in my own work and also in that of the psychologist Tania Lombrozo. In addition, I use the occasion to reflect on the nature of interdiscipli…Read more
-
291No one knows the date or the hour: An unorthodox application of rev. Bayes's theoremPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 353. 1999.Carter and Leslie (1996) have argued, using Bayes's theorem, that our being alive now supports the hypothesis of an early 'Doomsday'. Unlike some critics (Eckhardt 1997), we accept their argument in part: given that we exist, our existence now indeed favors 'Doom sooner' over 'Doom later'. The very fact of our existence, however, favors 'Doom later'. In simple cases, a hypothetical approach to the problem of 'old evidence' shows that these two effects cancel out: our existence now yields no info…Read more
-
1Do All and Only Causes Raise the Probabilities of Effects?In J. Collins, E. J. Hall & L. A. Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. 2004.
-
California Institute of TechnologyDepartment of Scientific PhilosophyKoepfli Professor of Philosophy
APA Western Division
Pasadena, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17 more
Areas of Interest
24 more