•  1021
    Two concepts of causation
    In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. pp. 225-276. 2004.
  •  595
  •  404
    Two mistakes about credence and chance
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1). 2004.
    David Lewis's influential work on the epistemology and metaphysics of objective chance has convinced many philosophers of the central importance of the following two claims: First, it is a serious cost of reductionist positions about chance (such as that occupied by Lewis) that they are, apparently, forced to modify the Principal Principle--the central principle relating objective chance to rational subjective probability--in order to avoid contradiction. Second, it is a perhaps more serious cos…Read more
  •  383
    Structural equations and causation
    Philosophical Studies 132 (1). 2007.
    Structural equations have become increasingly popular in recent years as tools for understanding causation. But standard structural equations approaches to causation face deep problems. The most philosophically interesting of these consists in their failure to incorporate a distinction between default states of an object or system, and deviations therefrom. Exploring this problem, and how to fix it, helps to illuminate the central role this distinction plays in our causal thinking.
  •  368
    Causation and Counterfactuals (edited book)
    with John Collins and Laurie Paul
    MIT Press. 2004.
    Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection ...
  •  341
    Causation and the Price of Transitivity
    Journal of Philosophy 97 (4): 198. 2000.
  •  331
    On what we know about chance
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (2): 171-179. 2003.
    The ‘Principal Principle’ states, roughly, that one's subjective probability for a proposition should conform to one's beliefs about that proposition's objective chance of coming true. David Lewis has argued (i) that this principle provides the defining role for chance; (ii) that it conflicts with his reductionist thesis of Humean supervenience, and so must be replaced by an amended version that avoids the conflict; hence (iii) that nothing perfectly deserves the name ‘chance’, although somethin…Read more
  •  317
    Writing the Book of the World by Theodore Sider
    Journal of Philosophy 111 (4): 219-224. 2014.
  •  287
    Chalmers on consciousness and quantum mechanics
    with Alex Byrne
    Philosophy of Science 66 (3): 370-90. 1999.
    The textbook presentation of quantum mechanics, in a nutshell, is this. The physical state of any isolated system evolves deterministically in accordance with Schrödinger's equation until a "measurement" of some physical magnitude M (e.g. position, energy, spin) is made. Restricting attention to the case where the values of M are discrete, the system's pre-measurement state-vector f is a linear combination, or "superposition", of vectors f1, f2,... that individually represent states that..
  •  277
    Probability
    In Jessica Pfeifer & Sahotra Sarkar (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Routledge. 2006.
    There are two central questions concerning probability. First, what are its formal features? That is a mathematical question, to which there is a standard, widely (though not universally) agreed upon answer. This answer is reviewed in the next section. Second, what sorts of things are probabilities---what, that is, is the subject matter of probability theory? This is a philosophical question, and while the mathematical theory of probability certainly bears on it, the answer must come from elsewh…Read more
  •  270
    Metaphysically Reductive Causation
    with L. A. Paul
    Erkenntnis 78 (1): 9-41. 2013.
    There are, by now, many rival, sophisticated philosophical accounts of causation that qualify as ‘metaphysically reductive’. This is a good thing: these collective efforts have vastly improved our understanding of causation over the last 30 years or so. They also put us in an excellent position to reflect on some central methodological questions: What exactly is the point of offering a metaphysical reduction of causation? What philosophical scruples ought to guide the pursuit of such a reduction…Read more
  •  258
    Causation and Ceteris Paribus Laws
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 13 (1): 80-99. 2005.
    But of all this more later. To help fix ideas, let’s start with a concrete example
  •  232
    Contemporary philosophical work on causation is a tangled mess of disparate aims, approaches, and accounts. Best to cut through it by means of ruthless but, hopefully, sensible judgments. The ones that follow are designed to sketch the most fruitful avenues for future work.
  •  210
    Induction and Probability
    In Peter Machamer & Michael Silberstein (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. pp. 149-172. 2002.
    Arguably, Hume's greatest single contribution to contemporary philosophy of science has been the problem of induction (1739). Before attempting its statement, we need to spend a few words identifying the subject matter of this corner of epistemology. At a first pass, induction concerns ampliative inferences drawn on the basis of evidence (presumably, evidence acquired more or less directly from experience)—that is, inferences whose conclusions are not (validly) entailed by the premises. Philosop…Read more
  •  200
    How to set a surprise exam
    Mind 108 (432): 647-703. 1999.
    The professor announces a surprise exam for the upcoming week; her clever student purports to demonstrate by reductio that she cannot possibly give such an exam. Diagnosing his puzzling argument reveals a deeper puzzle: Is the student justified in believing the announcement? It would seem so, particularly if the upcoming 'week' is long enough. On the other hand, a plausible principle states that if, at the outset, the student is justified in believing some proposition, then he is also justified …Read more
  •  195
    David Lewis's metaphysics
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.
  •  183
    Against the PCA-analysis
    with A. Byrne
    Analysis 58 (1): 38-44. 1998.
    Jonardon Ganeri, Paul Noordhof, and Murali Ramachandran (1996) have proposed a new counterfactual analysis of causation. We argue that this – the PCA-analysis – is incorrect. In section 1, we explain David Lewis’s first counterfactual analysis of causation, and a problem that led him to propose a second. In section 2 we explain the PCA-analysis, advertised as an improvement on Lewis’s later account. We then give counterexamples to the necessity (section 3) and sufficiency (section 4) of the PCA-an…Read more
  •  173
    Causation and preemption
    In Peter Clark & Katherine Hawley (eds.), Philosophy of Science Today, Oxford University Press Uk. 2003.
  •  158
    Rescued from the rubbish Bin: Lewis on causation
    Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 1107-1114. 2004.
    Lewis's work on causation was governed by a familiar methodological approach: the aim was to come up with an account of causation that would recover, in as elegant a fashion as possible, all of our firm “pre‐theoretic” intuitions about hypothetical cases. That methodology faces an obvious challenge, in that it is not clear why anyone not interested in the semantics of the English word “cause” should care about its results. Better to take a different approach, one which treats our intuitions abou…Read more
  •  122
    David Lewis
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 10 (1): 81-84. 2002.
  •  119
    Comments on Michael Strevens’s Depth (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (2): 474-482. 2012.
  •  101
    An Epistemic Approach to Ground
    The Monist 106 (3): 239-254. 2023.
    Recent enthusiasm for grounding often begins by observing that inquiry in metaphysics (and other areas) features a distinctive species of noncausal explanation. Having labeled this species “grounding explanation,” it’s a short step to the conclusion that we need a philosophical theory of grounding itself: an allegedly fundamental relation of metaphysical dependency between facts, such that a “grounding explanation” of some fact succeeds by providing information about what “grounds” that fact. Th…Read more
  •  96
    Causation: A User’s Guide
    with L. A. Paul
    Oxford University Press UK. 2013.
    Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of exam…Read more
  •  96
    Comments on Woodward, "Making Things Happen" (review)
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (4). 2006.