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2930Cause 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
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741Updating on the Credences of Others: Disagreement, Agreement, and SynergyPhilosophers' Imprint 16 (11): 1-39. 2016.We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one's credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one's peers' reported credences if one's likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting result…Read more
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463Graded 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
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445Prevention, preemption, and the principle of sufficient reasonPhilosophical Review 116 (4): 495-532. 2007.
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384
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378Salmon on explanatory relevancePhilosophy of Science 62 (2): 304-320. 1995.One of the motivations for Salmon's (1984) causal theory of explanation was the explanatory irrelevance exhibited by many arguments conforming to Hempel's covering-law models of explanation. However, the nexus of causal processes and interactions characterized by Salmon is not rich enough to supply the necessary conception of explanatory relevance. Salmon's (1994) revised theory, which is briefly criticized on independent grounds, fares no better. There is some possibility that the two-tiered st…Read more
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345Beauty and the betsSynthese 139 (3). 2004.In the Sleeping Beauty problem, Beauty is uncertain whether the outcome of a certain coin toss was heads or tails. One argument suggests that her degree of belief in heads should be 1/3, while a second suggests that it should be 1/2. Prima facie, the argument for 1/2 appears to be stronger. I offer a diachronic Dutch Book argument in favor of 1/3. Even for those who are not routinely persuaded by diachronic Dutch Book arguments, this one has some important morals.
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339Contrastive explanation and the demons of determinismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (4): 585-612. 1999.It it tempting to think that if an outcome had some probability of not occurring, then we cannot explain why that outcome in fact occurred. Despite this intuition, most philosophers of science have come to admit the possibility of indeterministic explanation. Yet some of them continue to hold that if an outcome was not determined, it cannot be explained why that outcome rather than some other occurred. I argue that this is an untenable compromise: if indeterministic explanation is possible, then…Read more
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324Prediction versus accommodation and the risk of overfittingBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1): 1-34. 2004.an observation to formulate a theory, it is no surprise that the resulting theory accurately captures that observation. However, when the theory makes a novel prediction—when it predicts an observation that was not used in its formulation—this seems to provide more substantial confirmation of the theory. This paper presents a new approach to the vexed problem of understanding the epistemic difference between prediction and accommodation. In fact, there are several problems that need to be disent…Read more
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315Three 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.
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308No 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
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296Causal explanation and scientific realismErkenntnis 37 (2). 1992.It is widely believed that many of the competing accounts of scientific explanation have ramifications which are relevant to the scientific realism debate. I claim that the two issues are orthogonal. For definiteness, I consider Cartwright's argument that causal explanations secure belief in theoretical entities. In Section I, van Fraassen's anti-realism is reviewed; I argue that this anti-realism is, prima facie, consistent with a causal account of explanation. Section II reviews Cartwright's a…Read more
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262Of Humean bondageBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (1): 1-25. 2003.There are many ways of attaching two objects together: for example, they can be connected, linked, tied or bound together; and the connection, link, tie or bind can be made of chain, rope, or cement. Every one of these binding methods has been used as a metaphor for causation. What is the real significance of these metaphors? They express a commitment to a certain way of thinking about causation, summarized in the following thesis: ‘In any concrete situation, there is an objective fact of the ma…Read more
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256A generalized probabilistic theory of causal relevanceSynthese 97 (3). 1993.I advance a new theory of causal relevance, according to which causal claims convey information about conditional probability functions. This theory is motivated by the problem of disjunctive factors, which haunts existing probabilistic theories of causation. After some introductory remarks, I present in Section 3 a sketch of Eells's (1991) probabilistic theory of causation, which provides the framework for much of the discussion. Section 4 explains how the problem of disjunctive factors arises …Read more
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243Probabilistic 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
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236A 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.
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231Probabilistic measures of causal strengthIn Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. pp. 600--627. 2011.
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231The shooting-room paradox and conditionalizing on measurably challenged setsSynthese 118 (3): 403-437. 1999.We provide a solution to the well-known “Shooting-Room” paradox, developed by John Leslie in connection with his Doomsday Argument. In the “Shooting-Room” paradox, the death of an individual is contingent upon an event that has a 1/36 chance of occurring, yet the relative frequency of death in the relevant population is 0.9. There are two intuitively plausible arguments, one concluding that the appropriate subjective probability of death is 1/36, the other that this probability is 0.9. How are t…Read more
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224The role of contrast in causal and explanatory claimsSynthese 107 (3). 1996.Following Dretske (1977), there has been a considerable body of literature on the role of contrastive stress in causal claims. Following van Fraassen (1980), there has been a considerable body of literature on the role of contrastive stress in explanations and explanation-requesting why-questions. Amazingly, the two bodies of literature have remained almost entirely disjoint. With an understanding of the contrastive nature of ordinary causal claims, and of the linguistic roles of contrastive str…Read more
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206The mishap at Reichenbach fall: Singular vs. general causationPhilosophical Studies 78 (3). 1995.
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179The 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
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175Reflections on reflection: Van Fraassen on beliefSynthese 98 (2). 1994.In Belief and the Will, van Fraassen employed a diachronic Dutch Book argument to support a counterintuitive principle called Reflection. There and subsequently van Fraassen has put forth Reflection as a linchpin for his views in epistemology and the philosophy of science, and for the voluntarism (first-person reports of subjective probability are undertakings of commitments) that he espouses as an alternative to descriptivism (first-person reports of subjective probability are merely self-descr…Read more
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163Events 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
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160Making 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
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159Contemporary debates in philosophy of science (edited book)Blackwell. 2004.Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...
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158Conditioning, 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
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152What is the 'Cause' in Causal Decision Theory?Erkenntnis 78 (1): 129-146. 2013.A simple counterfactual theory of causation fails because of problems with cases of preemption. This might lead us to expect that preemption will raise problems for counterfactual theories of other concepts that have a causal dimension. Indeed, examples are easy to find. But there is one case where we do not find this. Several versions of causal decision theory are formulated using counterfactuals. This might lead us to expect that these theories will yield the wrong recommendations in cases of …Read more
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California Institute of TechnologyDepartment of Scientific PhilosophyKoepfli Professor of Philosophy
APA Western Division
Pasadena, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
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Areas of Interest
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