Causation : a defense of a non-reductionist approach / Michael Tooley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tooley, Michael, 1941- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Causation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (462 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

In 'Causation', Michael Tooley offers detailed criticism of various approaches to understanding causation and makes an argument for the superiority of a theoretical-term, non-reductionist analysis of causation. He begins by offering detailed criticisms of alternative approaches, including the competing non-reductionist view that no analysis of the concept of causation is needed, since the relation of causation is directly observable, thereby entailing that the concept of the relation of causation is analytically basic. In response, Tooley argues that the relation of causation is not directly observable.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Preface

Background and Overview

Acknowledgments

1 Causation: Historical Background, Basic Issues, and Alternative Views

1.1 David Hume and the Discovery of the Problem Posed by Causation

1.2 Causation: Four Basic Philosophical Principles

1.2.1 Causal Relations and Causal Laws

1.2.2 Analytically Basic Causal Concepts?

1.2.3 Reductive versus Non-Reductive Analyses

1.2.4 Reductive versus Non-Reductive Accounts of Laws of Nature

1.3 Causal Relations, Causal Laws, and the Concept of Causation

1.4 Analytically Basic Causal Concepts?

1.5 Two Very Different Accounts of the Relations between Causal Concepts and Non-Causal Concepts

1.6 A Second General Type of Reductionist Approach to Causation

1.7 Non-Reductionist Approaches to Causation

1.8 On the Intelligibility of Non-Reductive Analyses of Causation

1.9 Reductive versus Non-Reductive Laws of Nature

1.10 Summing Up: Basic Conceptual Issues and the Highest-Level Gulfs between Different Approaches to the Nature of Causation

1.11 Skepticism concerning the Existence of Causation?

1.12 The Challenge of, and the Refutation of, Causal Pluralism

1.12.1 Causal Pluralism: Summing Up

1.13 A Brief Overview

2 Direct Causal Realism

2.1 A Direct Realist Approach to Causation: Basic Issues

2.2 Causation and the Concept of Direct Awareness

2.3 Is One Ever Directly Aware of the Relation of Causation?

2.4 Is the Concept of Causation Analytically Basic?

2.5 Two Further Objections to a Direct Realist Approach to Causation

2.5.1 The Need to Postulate Synthetic A Priori Truths

2.5.2 The Problem of Explaining the Relevance of Certain Kinds of Evidence

2.6 Summing Up

3 Humean Reductionism and Laws of Nature

3.1 Humean States of Affairs.

3.2 An Initial Humean Reductionist Account of Laws of Nature

3.3 Fundamental Laws of Nature and True, Lawlike Generalizations

3.4 The "Best System," Humean Reductionist View of Laws

3.4.1 Objection 1: The Objectivity of Laws of Nature

3.4.2 Objection 2: The Logical Possibility of Basic Laws of Nature That Have No Positive Instances

3.4.2.1 Argument 1: The Fundamental Particles Argument

3.4.2.2 Argument 2: Neural States and Qualia

3.4.3 Objection 3: It is Very Probable That There Actually Are Basic Laws of Nature That Have No Positive Instances

3.4.3.1 The Case of Visual Experiences

3.4.3.2 Different Types of Experiences

3.4.3.3 Summing Up: Objections 2 and 3

3.4.4 Objection 4: The Dependence of Laws of Nature upon the Existence of a Precise Number of Positive Instances Is Implausible

3.4.5 Objection 5: Laws and Boundary Conditions

3.4.6 Objection 6: The Entailment of Skepticism concerning Non-Probabilistic Laws of Nature

3.4.7 Objection 7: The Entailment of Skepticism Concerning Probabilistic Laws of Nature

3.4.8 Objection 8: Laws of Nature Govern What Events Occur, Rather Than Merely Describing What Events Occur

3.5 Humean Supervenience Approaches to Laws of Nature and the Skeptical Problem

3.6 Summing Up: Humean Reductionism and Laws of Nature

4 Humean Reductionism and the Relation of Causation: General Objections

4.1 Direction of Causation Objections

4.1.1 The First Direction of Causation Objection to Causal Reductionism: Very Simple Worlds Containing Causally Related Events

4.1.1.1 Part 1 of the "Simple Worlds" Objection: The Attempt to Analyze the Direction of Causation in Terms of Temporal Patterns of Events in Time

4.1.1.2 Part 2 of the "Simple Worlds" Objection: The Attempt to Analyze the Direction of Causation in Terms of the Earlier-Than Relation.

4.1.2 Very Complex, Temporally Inverted Worlds

4.2 The Localization of Causation Argument

4.2.1 The Argument

4.2.2 An Objection to the Localization of Causation Principle

4.3 "Underdetermination" Objections

4.3.1 Underdetermination Objections and Competing Accounts of the Logical Form of Statements of Causal Laws

4.3.2 An Argument Based on the Possibility of Non-Probabilistic, Indeterministic Causal Laws

4.3.3 An Argument Based on the Possibility of Uncaused Events

4.3.4 An Argument Based on the Possibility of Uncaused Events plus Probabilistic Causal Laws

4.3.5 An Argument from the Possibility of Co-Located Objects

4.3.6 The Argument from the Possibility of Exact Replicas

4.4 Jonathan Schaffer's Response to Underdetermination Arguments

4.5 Summing Up: Humean Reductionist Approaches to Causation

5 Humean Reductionism: Analyses in Terms of Nomological Conditions

5.1 Causes and Nomological Conditions

5.2 Objections

5.3 The Deepest Problem: Causal Laws versus Non-Causal Laws, and Their Relations to Probabilities

5.4 Summing Up

6 Humean Reductionism: Counterfactual Approaches to Causation

6.1 The Need for an Appropriate Account of Counterfactuals

6.2 Important Objections to Any Attempt to Analyze Causation in Terms of Counterfactuals

6.3 The Stalnaker-Lewis Analysis of Counterfactuals

6.3.1 Robert Stalnaker's Proposal in "A Theory of Conditionals"

6.3.2 David Lewis's Account

6.4 Some Important Initial Objections to a Stalnaker-Lewis Approach to Counterfactuals

6.4.1 Objection 1: The Relation between "p &amp

q" and "p ⊃ q"

6.4.2 Objection 2: The Relation Between "Would" Counterfactuals and Probabilistic Counterfactuals

6.4.3 Objection 3: The "Agreement with the Actual World" Objection

6.5 The "Simple Worlds" Objection

6.5.1 The Case of a Single-Particle World.

6.5.2 Lewis's Response to the "Simple Worlds" Objection

6.6 A Causally Isolated Simple Part in a Very Complex World

6.7 The "Temporally Inverted" Worlds Objection

6.8 The Most Basic Objection to the Stalnaker-Lewis Theory: Jonathan Bennett, Kit Fine, and the Unsound Weight Assigned to Future Similarities

6.8.1 The "Irrelevance of Future Similarities" Objection Advanced by Jonathan Bennett and Kit Fine

6.8.2 Lewis's Response to the Fundamental Objection

6.8.3 The "Nixon and the Button" Objection Revisited

6.9 A Possible Response: Causation and Stalnaker-Lewis Conditionals

6.10 Summing Up: Lewis's Approach to Counterfactuals

6.11 An Alternative Attempt to Set Out a Defensible Counterfactual Approach to Causation: John Collins, Ned Hall, and L. A. Paul

6.11.1 The Concept of Temporal Priority Objection

6.11.2 Temporal Priority and Undesirable Immediate Entailments

6.11.3 The Greater Explanatory Power of a Non-Reductionist Approach to Causation

6.11.4 A Plethora of Unanswered "Underdetermination" Objections

6.11.5 The Failure to Tackle the Case of Probabilistic Causal Laws

6.11.6 The Unjustified Rejection of a Realist/Non-Reductionist Approach to Causation

6.11.7 The "Core Probability Principle for Causation"

6.11.8 An Ontological Reduction of Causation, and the Views of L. A. Paul and Ned Hall

6.12 Summing Up: Counterfactual Analyses of Causation

7 Humean Probabilistic Analyses of Causation

7.1 Early Formulations of a Humean Reductive, Probabilistic Analysis of the Concept of Causation: Basic Ideas

7.1.1 Relative Frequencies and Conditional and Unconditional Probabilities

7.1.2 The Core Idea: Causes Raise the Probabilities of Their Effects

7.1.3 Probability Relations and the Asymmetry and the Direction of Causation

7.2 Hans Reichenbach's Account of the Direction of Causation.

7.2.1 Reichenbach's Idea of Open Forks and the Direction of Causation

7.2.2 Objections to Reichenbach's Account

7.2.2.1 Accidental, Open Forks Involving Common Effects

7.2.2.2 "Temporally Inverted," Twin Worlds

7.2.2.3 Simple, Deterministic, Temporally Symmetric Worlds

7.2.2.4 Simple, Probabilistic, Temporally Non-Symmetric Worlds

7.3 Recent Reductionist, Probabilistic Approaches to Causation

7.4 Objections to Glynn's Reductionist Attempt to Analyze Causation in Terms of Probability and Temporal Priority

7.4.1 Causally Ambiguous Situations in Probabilistic Worlds: Underdetermination Objections

7.4.1.1 An Underdetermination Argument Based Simply on Probabilistic Laws

7.4.1.2 An Underdetermination Argument Based on Probabilistic Laws and Uncaused Events

7.4.2 Direct Causation without Increase in Probability

7.4.3 Temporal Priority and Causation

7.5 Summing Up

8 Causation, Agency, and Intervention

8.1 Douglas Gasking's Account

8.2 Peter Menzies and Huw Price, and Causation as a Secondary Quality

8.2.1 The Proposed Analysis of Causation

8.2.2 The Crucial, "Vicious Circularity" Objection

8.2.2.1 The Basic, Purely Philosophical Argument

8.2.2.2 A Supplementary, Neurological Argument

8.2.3 The Responses by Menzies and Price to Three Other Objections

8.2.4 Summing Up

8.3 James F. Woodward's Intervention-Based Approach to Causation

8.3.1 The Concept of an Intervention

8.3.2 Interventionist Approaches and the Analysis of the Concept of Causation

8.3.3 The Crucial Objection to Interventionist Approaches to the Concept of Causation: Truthmakers and Counterfactuals

8.4 On the Appeal of Agency and Interventionist Accounts of Causation

9 Causation, Conserved Quantities, and Continuous Processes

9.1 The Nature of This Reduction

9.2 A Critical Evaluation.

9.2.1 The Problem of a Contingent Identity Relation between the Relation of Causation and Any Physicalistic Relation of the Relevant Type.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on November 7, 2025).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-780163-3

0-19-780162-5

0-19-780164-1

OCLC:

1548661667