Ned Hall and L. A. Paul

Ned Hall (left) and L. A. Paul (right) on causation.

Suzy throws a rock which causes a window to break. That is token causation: a particular event c causes another particular event e. According to a simple counterfactual account of token causation, c is a cause of e exactly if e wouldn’t have occurred if c hadn’t occurred. In this episode, Hall and Paul discuss why the pursuit of a counterfactual account is attractive, and consider problems for such an account raised by preemptive causes, preventive causes, the transitivity of causation, and overdetermination.

Related works

by Hall:

“Rescued from the Rubbish Bin: Lewis on Causation” (2004)

“Causation and the Price of Transitivity” (2000)

by Paul:

“The Counterfactual Analysis of Causation” (2010)

“Constitutive Overdetermination” (2007)

Collaborations:

Collins, Hall, and Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals (2004)

Hall and Paul, “Causation and Preemption” (2003)

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