MECHANISMS AND COUNTERFACTUALS: A DIFFERENT GLIMPSE OF THE (SECRET?) CONNEXION (original) (raw)
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In this chapter we examine the relation between mechanisms and laws/counterfactuals by revisiting the main notions of mechanism found in the literature. We distinguish between two different conceptions of 'mechanism': mechanisms-of underlie or constitute a causal process; mechanisms-for are complex systems that function so as to produce a certain behavior. According to some mechanists, a mechanism fulfills both of these roles simultaneously. The main argument of the chapter is that there is an asymmetrical dependence between both kinds of mechanisms and laws/counterfactuals: while some laws and counterfactuals must be taken as primitive (non-mechanistic) facts of the world, all mechanisms depend on laws/counterfactuals.
Conceptions of Mechanisms And Insensitivity of Causation
Conceptions of mechanisms due to Glennan (1996; 2002), Machamer, Darden, and Craver (2000), Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2005) have developed in opposition to the nomological approach to explanation. It is less emphasized, however, that these conceptions have also developed as alternatives to the causal perspective on explanation. In this paper, I argue that despite their distancing from the topic of causation, the mechanistic conceptions need to incorporate in their definitions of mechanisms the notion of insensitivity of causal relations that was examined by Woodward (2006).
3 Perceptual Causality , Counterfactuals , and Special Causal Concepts
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On one view, an adequate account of causal understanding may focus exclusively on what is involved in mastering general causal concepts (concepts such as ‘x causes y’ or ‘p causally explains q’). An alternative view is that causal understanding is, partly but irreducibly, a matter of grasping what Anscombe called special causal concepts, concepts such as ‘push’, ‘flatten’, or ‘knock over’. We can label these views generalist vs particularist approaches to causal understanding. It is worth emphasizing that the contrast here is not between two kinds of theories of the metaphysics of causation, but two views of the nature and perhaps source of ordinary causal understanding. One aim of this paper is to argue that it would be a mistake to dismiss particularism because of its putative metaphysical commitments. I begin by formulating an intuitively attractive version of particularism due to P.F. Strawson, a central element of which is what I will call naı̈ve realism concerning mechanical t...
A survey of Woodward's counterfactual theory of causation
2011
In his book Making Things Happen (2003), James Woodward proposes aninterventionist account of causation. Such account requires the adoption of a counterfactual analysis of causal claims. However, how should counterfactual claims be understood and interpreted from an interventionist standpoint? I will try to answer this question taking as a guide the influent ial account of counterfactuals presented by David Lewis in his famous paper "Causation" (1979). The aim of this paper is to outline some general considerations that show how Woodward's counterfactual analys is differs from Lewis's, thus gaining immunity against classical objections to Lewis's analysis, and to present some difficulties of Woodward's own approach. The paper is divided in three parts. First, I will present briefly the main ideas of the manipulability theory of causation; in the second part, I will introduce the necessity of adopting a counterfactual analysis in such an account, followed by...
Counterfactuals and causation: history, problems
Among the many philosophers who hold that causal facts 1 are to be explained in terms of-or more ambitiously, shown to reduce to-facts about what happens, together with facts about the fundamental laws that govern what happens, the clear favorite is an approach that sees counterfactual dependence as the key to such explanation or reduction. The paradigm examples of causation, so advocates of this approach tell us, are examples in which events c and e-the cause and its effect-both occur, but: had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. From this starting point ideas proliferate in a vast profusion. But the remarkable disparity among these ideas should not obscure their common foundation. Neither should the diversity of opinion about the prospects for a philosophical analysis of causation obscure their importance. For even those philosophers who see these prospects as dim-perhaps because they suffer post-Quinean queasiness at the thought of any analysis of any concept of interest-can often be heard to say such things as that causal relations among events are somehow "a matter of" the patterns of counterfactual dependence to be found in them.
Mechanisms and Downward Causation
Experimental investigation of mechanisms seems to make use of causal relations that cut across levels of composition. In bottom-up experiments, one intervenes on parts of a mechanism to observe the whole; in top-down experiments, one intervenes on the whole mechanism to observe certain parts of it. It is controversial whether such experiments really make use of interlevel causation, and indeed whether the idea of causation across levels is even conceptually coherent. Craver and Bechtel have suggested that interlevel causal claims can be analysed in a causal and a non-causal component. I accept this idea but argue that their account should be modified so as to account of cases of apparent downward causation. First, constitution must be distinguished from identity; second, the analysis of downward causation requires the concept of a partial constraint. An analysis along these lines shows that the possibility of downward causation is not refuted by Kim's argument according to which it is incompatible with the completeness of physics.
Giornale di Metafisica, 2018
The main thesis proposed by von Wright on causality is: to say that “p causes q” is identical to say that “p makes q happen” or that “by doing p we could bring about q”1. Even though causal relations have an objective status in the world independently of human awareness, knowledge of causal relations depends on our ability to freely make things happen. As we will see, also our attitude to consider counterfactual state of affairs, is linked to this ability. In the work at hand I will argue that counterfactual reasoning and manipulative theory of causation are both grounded on free action.
"Composition, counterfactuals, causation". Humana.Mente 19 (2011)
The problems of how the world is made, how things could have gone, and how causal relations work (if any such relation is at play) cross the entire historical development of philosophy. In the last forty years, the philosophical debate has given these problems a prominent role in its agenda, and David Lewis has suggested methodologies and theories that have contributed to enrich our notions in the fields of mereology, modality and the theory of causation. Such contributions have been among the most influential in analytic philosophy. The following theses -among others -have been milestones for the current philosophical debate:
A counterfactual analysis of causation
Mind, 1997
On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counterfactually) depends on the former one. But, this requirement precludes the possibility of late pre-emptive causation, of causation by fragile events, and of indeterministic causation. Lewis proposes three different strategies for accommodating these three kinds of cases, but none of these turn out to be satisfactory. I offer a single analysis of causation that resolves these problems in one go but which respects Lewis's initial insights. One distinctive feature of my account is that it accommodates indeterministic causation without resorting to probabilities.
Synthese, 2011
This paper defends an interventionist treatment of mechanisms and contrasts this with Waskan (forthcoming). Interventionism embodies a differencemaking conception of causation. I contrast such conceptions with geometrical/ mechanical or "actualist" conceptions, associating Waskan's proposals with the latter. It is argued that geometrical/mechanical conceptions of causation cannot replace difference-making conceptions in characterizing the behavior of mechanisms, but that some of the intuitions behind the geometrical/mechanical approach can be captured by thinking in terms of spatio-temporally organized difference-making information.