KS on Dowe's Conserved Quantity Theory of Causation

Why process theory? Dowe's main motivation for it seems to be that process theories can account for causation as persistence, e.g. the continuing motion of a spaceship is caused by its inertia.  Dowe's motivation for his own version of process theory, as opposed to, say, Salmon's, is that the CQ theory does a better job of separating out causal processes from non-causal ones ("pseudo processes").

 CQ theory from (Dowe 2000):
1. A causal process is a world line of an object that possesses a conserved quantity.

2. A causal interaction is an intersection of world lines that involves exchange of a conserved quantity.

Definitions:

• A process is the world line of an object, regardless of whether or not that object possesses conserved quantities.  So a process can be either causal or non-causal (a pseudo process).  Thus any object existing in time is a process, as long as that object's identity is preserved during the time it exists.
• A world line is the collection of points on a spacetime (Minkowski) diagram that represents the history of an object.  That is, processes are presented by 'worms' in spacetime.  In still other words, a process is an object's trajectory through time.
• An object is anything found in the ontology of science or common sense, including non-causal objects (spots and shadows).  Given the definition of a process above, it is required that an object have identity through time, if that object is to participate in a causal process.  Thus not every worm in spacetime will count as a process because not all worms are world lines of an object.
• A conserved quantity is any quantity that is governed by a conservation law such as mass-energy, linear momentum, and charge (but not velocity).
• An intersection is the overlapping in spacetime of two or more processes.
• An exchange occurs when at least one incoming, and at least one outgoing process undergoes a change in the value of the conserves quantity.
• 'Possesses' is to be understood in term of 'instantiates.'  So an object possessing a conserved quantity is an instance of a particular instantiating or a property.

CQ Theory bottom line: it aims at distinguishing causal from pseudo (i.e. non-causal) processes, and it does this by distinguishing objects that possess conserved quantities from those that don't.  In general, pseudo processes do not possess the type of physical quantities that are governed by conservation laws.

This theory is metaphysically contingent in the sense that it is contingent on the laws of nature.  So in a (close) possible world, which has the same conservation laws as ours, and where only one object possesses a conserved quantity that obeys conservation laws, the word line of that object is a causal process.  So this account is not a (Humean) actual-regularity account.  It is a singularist account in the sense that whether something is a causal process depends only on local facts about the process, namely, the object's possession of a certain kind of physical quantity.  It is an account of particulars, so in that sense being causal is an intrinsic property of a process.

Advantages of the CQ theory:

One of the most notable advantages of the CQ theory, and process theories in general, is that they are able to account for causation as persistence, as well as causation as transference (the more paradigmatic cases).  It accomplishes this because it is so non-committal with respect to the issues of transfer, direction of causation, and identity (genidentity) of physical quantities.  So not only does it pass the 'billiard ball collision test' (case of conserved quantity exchange, condition 2), but it also make continued movement from space count as a causal process due to the inertia of the object (case of conserved quantity possession, condition 1).  Dowe thinks, not unreasonably, that this is a huge advantage of CQ theory since it covers more intuitive examples of causation than other theories, as well as other types of process theories.

• CQ theory makes no use of counterfactuals, so it has none of the problems of the counterfactual theories of causation.  Strangely, however, the one problem of counterfactual accounts that Dowe mentions and is happy about CQ theory avoiding is not a very salient problem, which is the 'hidden powers' problem – the worry that counterfactuals involve non-Humean necessary connections.  (It is also unclear why Dowe thinks this is a noteworthy advantage considering he welcomes the non-Humean component of his own CQ theory in the form of singularism.)
• CQ theory does not appeal to spatiotemporal continuity, which gives it the advantage of accounting for discontinuous causal processes, including Bell's phenomena and backwards-in-time causation.  In other words, CQ theory can account for the rather unusual cases of causation that appear in quantum mechanics.  (Although just how much this is an advantage is debatable.)
• CQ theory, supplemented by counterfactuals, can account for cases of prevention and omission ("negative causation" in Schaffer's terminology).  Some points to keep in mind about Dowe's account of negative causation:
1. Dowe's account of prevention and omission is compatible with any theory of causation, not just CQ; so it's not really an advantage of CQ theory.
2. Dowe thinks that prevention and omission are not cases of genuine causation but are rather counterfactual facts about causation.  So Dowe isn't compromising his view that causation itself is not counterfactual.
3. Dowe's defense of "downgrading" (Schaffer's term) negative causation consists in the appeal to the 'intuition of difference'.  This is the intuition that Dowe claims we all have, and which makes us feel like there is something fishy about negative causation.  So even if we initially might be tempted to assimilate negative causation to causation, if pressed on this issue, the intuition of difference kicks in, which makes us acknowledge that there is something different about the cases of negative causation.  The fact that we have this intuition justifies the "downgrade" of negative causation for Dowe from causation simpliciter to a counterfactual fact about causation.

Dowe's account of negative causation:

(Note: "caused*" is Dowe implementing the intuition of difference, and it means simply "negatively caused")

Prevention: A prevented B (translated as A caused* not-B) if

(P1) A occurred and B did not, and there occurred an x such that

(P2) there is a causal relation between A and the process due to x, such that either

(i) A is a causal interaction with the causal process x, or

(ii) A causes y, a causal interaction with the causal process x, and

(P3) if A had not occurred, x would have caused B,

where A and B name positive events or facts, and x and y are variables ranging over events and/or facts.

The most common case is (ii), where A causes an interference in some process that would otherwise lead to B, e.g. father grabbing his child prevented an accident.

Omission: not-A caused* B if

(O1) B occurred and A did not, and there occurred an x such that

(O2) x caused B, and

(O3) if A had occurred then B would not have occurred, and there would have been a causal relation between A and the process due to x, such that either

(i) A is a causal interaction involving the causal process x, or

(ii) A causes y, a causal interaction involving the causal process x.

An example of omission is: the father's failure to grab the child caused* the accident.

 

There is a mirror relation between prevention and omission: had a preventer A (which caused* not-B) not occurred, its nonoccurrence would have been an omission (which caused* B); and had an omission not-A (which caused* B) occurred, its occurrence would have been a preventer (which cased* not-B).  In other words, a failed omission results in a prevention, and a failed prevention results in an omission.  In both cases, the result is a case of (positive) causation.

This analysis of causation* has the consequence that there is apparently much more causation* happening than we usually think there is.  But Dowe thinks this is not a special problem for causation* but rather a problem of analyzing causation in general, which is mostly a result of the transitivity of causation.

Disadvantages of CQ theory:

The problem of misconnections: some processes that are intuitively non-causal come out as causal on CQ theory and process theories in general.  Dowe distinguishes two types of cases, cases of irrelevance and cases of negative relevance.

• Irrelevance: someone takes a photo of two billiard balls colliding with a camera that flashes just at the time of the collision.  After this (photographed) collision, one of the balls sinks into a pocket.  On CQ theory, the flash was a cause of the ball sinking, although our intuitions tell us that the flash was causally irrelevant to this event.
  Reply: the 'difference' the flash made is probably negligible.  But if it did make a small difference, then indeed it is a partial cause.  This isn't all that counterintuitive considering how small the energy contribution from the flash was.
• Negative relevance: John turns on the heater in a cold room.  Then Jane comes into the room and opens a window, so that the room eventually becomes colder than it was before.  On CQ theory, the heater being turned on was a cause of the room becoming colder, although our intuitions tell us that it was not.
  Reply: in his book (2000), Dowe argues that disjunctive events cannot qualify as causes on CQ theory.  And "is colder than before" is a description of a disjunctive event, so John turning on the heater is not the cause of the room being colder than before.  On the other hand, if we specify the temperatures of the room before and after the heater was turned on (x and y respectively), then the heater being turned on will indeed come out as a partial cause of the room being at the temperature y.  But this is what any theory of causation will tell you, Dowe thinks.  Besides, put this way in terms of actual temperature values, the initial intuition that something is amiss in this case simply vanishes.  So it's all a pragmatic matter in the end.

Schaffer's attack on Dowe's account of negative causation:

• Dowe misdescribes the intuition of difference as a genuine intuition when really all it is is theory infection.  Schaffer's evidence for this is that the "intuition" kicks in only after we are pressed by Dowe to question our natural (and genuine) intuition that negative causation is genuine causation.  In that time, Dowe imposes his CQ theory on us, which cannot accommodate negative causation, and thus undermines our intuition that negative causation is genuine causation.
• Dowe understates our intuition that negative causation is genuine causation in two ways.  First, he goes out of his way to talk as little as possible about this intuition of ours.  In fact, he does not even explicitly acknowledge that this is an intuition worth answering to.  Second, he treats the genuine intuition about negative causation and the intuition of difference as equals.  But in reality, intuitions come in degrees, and it should be clear to someone who is not theory-infected that the intuition that negative causation is genuine causation is much stronger than the intuition of difference, if we have it at all (which of course Schaffer thinks we don't).  There is simply no felt tension or conflict between these two intuitions, which would be there is these two intuitions were really equal.
• Schaffer acknowledges that perhaps Dowe is right that there is an intuitive difference between negative and positive causation, but it's not the difference between fake and real causation, respectively.  And in fact, those who treat negative causation as genuine acknowledge this difference by denying the presence of physical connection in negative causation that is present in positive causation.  But this difference in "wiring a causal mechanism" does not make negative causation a less genuine category of causation.

In Dowe's defense:

Even if Schaffer is right about the first two points, the third point puts Schaffer in an equally fishy position.  His suggestion seems to be that negative causation can be as genuine a type of causation as positive causation without sharing the wiring of the causal mechanism.  So there are two types of genuine causation, negative and positive, which have two different wiring of the causal mechanism.  But then what makes something a case of genuine causation if not the wiring of the causal mechanism?  Schaffer owes us a story as to what constitutes the genuineness of causation.  And if all he wants to say here is that causation just is disjunctive in this way, he owes us a story as to why this is less counterintuitive than downgrading negative causation and thus offering a unified account of genuine causation in terms of wiring of the causal mechanism.

What is the debate between Schaffer and Dowe really about?

Dowe is very clear in (Dowe 2000) that he is not interested in the conceptual analysis of causation, only in its empirical analysis, which his CQ theory represents.  So Dowe's concern is to formulate a theory that best captures the physical phenomena that scientists (and physicists in particular) would refer to as 'instances of causation.'  He acknowledges that this is a rather limited project, but he seems to think that this project is of greater importance and enlightenment than the one of capturing in a theory our common sense notion of causation.  Hence his indifference to biting the bullet (to an extent) on the issue of misconnections.

Schaffer, on the other hand, seems to press Dowe to accommodate our pre-theoretic intuitions about which cases count as cases of causation.  So what Schaffer is criticizing Dowe for is his methodology.  Hence his emphasis on our pre-theoretic intuitions.

Summary of Lewis's Influence as Causation

Preemption cases are divided into early cutting, late cutting, and trumping. Quasi-dependence idea is rejected because it doesn't handle trumping plus other problems. We shouldn't have our theory hanging on a prejudiced division among a barely (numerically) different event and a barely (numerically) identical event that is slightly different qualitatively. The solution is to understand counterfactual dependence as there being a significant degree of dependence of a range of alterations of the effect on a range of alterations of the cause. The intuitive idea is that if you alter the cause (in time, manner, existence, etc. in an unspecified range of ways), you get a significantly large change in the effect. This is then shown to accommodate all cases of preemption.

Then, causation is left as the ancestral of counterfactual dependence (influence). The transitivity of causation is defended against the cases where A makes B likely, B makes C likely, but A doesn't seem to cause C.

[Comment on absences as causes.]

Summary of Strevens' Argument against Lewis's Influence as Causation

Bruno and Sylvie throw (qualitatively) identical elastic balls with the same speed.

Section 3: Lewis's new account can't explain all preemption because the preempting cause (Sylvie's throw) may have a qualitatively identical effect as the preempted cause (Bruno's throw). Thus, it's non-occurrence wouldn't result in a difference of effect. Thus, causation is not the same thing as (a chain of causal influence) causal influence.

Section 4: Lewis's new account can't explain what caused the dart to go too low, given that one cause was making it go low and another to the right because there are no resources to capture which aspects of the effect depended on which aspects of the causes.

Section 5: Lewis's new account has counterexamples where the intuitively correct cause (Sylvie's throw) has the effect depending on it less than the preempted backup (Bruno's throw). In this case, almost all modifications to Sylvie's throw eventuate in Bruno's ball hitting the jar in exactly the same way, whereas many modifications to Bruno's throw make a modification to the jar's breaking.

The final moral he draws seems to be along the line of an intrinsic/extrinsic distinction between causal difference-making which depends only on actual causes, and the hopelessly problematic counterfactual (or "would be") difference-makers.

Summary of Schaffer's Argument against Lewis's Influence as Causation

The counterexample is that Vic is electrocuted by a button that Pam presses while Bob is merely watching his array of buttons. Fill in the details so that Pam's action is binary. She has no significant influence on the manner of electrocution, only that it happens. Also, have Bob be a preempted backup. In such a case, the most Pam does to influence the electrocution is to hurry it by some arbitrarily small amount of time. But since she is clearly the cause, influence is not necessary for causation. Bob, however has lots of influence, and is not the cause. Thus, influence is not sufficient for causation.

Schaffer's moral is that the causation is determinable only by way of the process that links the cause to the effect. Intuitively, it was the electrical signal coming from Pam's button that did the deed. (Not all causal processes need to have a physically continuous process, according to Schaffer, but there needs to be some kind of process filling in.)

JS on The Problem of Effects in Lewis' 1976 Account of Causation

1. c causes e and could not have failed to do so. Therefore (the problem goes) if e hadn't happened, c wouldn't have either. So e caused c!

Lewis denies the problematic counterfactual. If e hadn't happened, he maintains that c WOULD have happened anyway. Why? Because it's less of a departure from reality to go this route, even though we violate a natural law, than to keep the law and say c wouldn't have happened. Lewis is supposing determinism, so, if e doesn't happen, either there are no violations of laws, in which case the entire past is different, or there is a 'miracle.' As a small miracle avoids the entirely different past, there's a miracle. But if the miracle happens after c (so that c happens and e doesn't) there's a longer perfect match with the actual world than if the miracle happens before c; so c happens in the closest world where e doesn't happen.

But now suppose the world is somewhat indeterministic (as it probably is). There's a piece of radioactive stuff floating in deep space. What's indeterministic is whether or not it will decay, however if it does decay, suppose it's an invariant natural law that it will emit a particle that will fly off into empty space. I want to suppose, too, that this emission is the only effect. Suppose the stuff decays (c) and emits the particle (e). Now consider the counterfactual 'If e hadn't happened, c wouldn't have happened.' The closest world where e doesn't happen but c does involves a miracle: the natural law is violated. The closest world where neither c nor e happen involves no miracle at all; in addition the past in both worlds (before c) is the same, as c wasn't determined by the past. The second world, even though it lacks c, is surely less of a departure from reality, because the preservation of natural law trumps the absence of c. So the problematic counterfactual is true on Lewis's account (as well as intuitively). Lewis must say that this scenario is metaphysically impossible–but surely that shouldn't be a consequence of an account of causation.

In short, when an indeterministic event c necessitates a single effect e, Lewis's semantics makes the problematic counterfactual true. And there's nothing problematic about allowing a measure of indeterminism–not a zany scenario.

Epiphenomenalism: Suppose for argument's sake that c (still indeterministic) has two effects, e and f. e doesn't cause f, c does. The closest world where e doesn't happen is still one where c doesn't happen. That world contains no miracles. The world where e doesn't happen but c and f do shares a bit more detail with the actual world, but that doesn't trump the miracle. So, if e doesn't happen, f doesn't either. Given Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals plus the counterfactual account of causation, the epiphenomenon e causes f.

2. Now let's accept determinism. When the whistle in Manchester blows the workers in London go home. The London whistle and the Manchester whistle are triggered by the same button so that they blow simultaneously. Let's allow (Lewis has no objection) that it's a natural law that the Manchester whistle blows iff the button is pressed. The same goes for the London whistle. It follows that the London whistle blows iff the Manchester whistle does. Of course the workers in London don't go home because the Manchester whistle blows; they can't hear it. Occasionally the person who pushes the button forgets; then the Manchester whistle doesn't blow and the workers in London don't go home. They go home iff the Manchester whistle blows. Given this information, if I learned that the M-whistle didn't blow on a certain work day in the past, I would reasonably infer that the L-workers didn't go home that day, either.

Knowing all this, I conclude that if the Manchester whistle hadn't blown yesterday, as a matter of fact the London workers wouldn't have gone home. This counterfactual (call it C) is plainly true, I submit; if I know any counterfactual, I know C. (Note that C's truth depends on the truth of a backtracking counterfactual: If the M-whistle hadn't blown it would have been because the button wasn't pressed, so the L-whistle wouldn't have blown either.) Therefore the counterfactual account of causation entails the falsehood that the Manchester whistle's blowing is a cause of the London worker's going home.

(We might substitute another counterfactual that would be false: 'If yesterday the Manchester whistle miraculously hadn't blown even though the button was pushed and it triggered the London whistle, the workers wouldn't have gone home.' But this isn't the counterfactual Lewis needs.)

Lewis denies C. To do so he appeals to his account of counterfactuals. Now either this does or it doesn't entail that C is false. If it doesn't, then it's useless against the objection. If it does, then it's in trouble. The counterfactual is true, we can generate lots more like it; its truth is one of phenomena an account of counterfactuals should preserve. Neither way is the counterfactual account of causation preserved.

As a matter of damage control, Lewis should say that his account of counterfactuals doesn't deny C's truth. How might this go? Here are two deterministic candidates for the closest world where the Manchester whistle doesn't blow.

A: The button isn't pressed, the London whistle doesn't blow, the London workers don't go home and the entire past is different. All the laws are preserved but there is a massive alteration of the expanse of time that preceded the button's being pressed in the actual world. Big league dissimilarity. The backtracking counterfactual 'If the M-whistle hadn't blown, the button wouldn't have been pressed' is true.

B: The button is pressed, the London whistle blows, the London workers go home, the past is the same but there is a miracle: the pressing of the button doesn't cause the Manchester whistle to blow. The backtracking counterfactual 'If the M-whistle hadn't blown, the button wouldn't have been pressed' is false.

Lewis wants to say that B is closer to the actual world, because, even though there is a miracle only in B, the past in B = the past in the actual world and this trumps the miracle. The vast dissimilarity in particular facts in A makes A more dissimilar from the actual world than does the small miracle in B .

Lewis concludes that the backtracking conditional 'If the M-whistle hadn't blown, the button wouldn't have been pressed' is false, as B is closer to the actual world than A is.

I say it's true: how can I keep something like Lewis's account of counterfactuals? I submit that when we consider back-tracking conditionals like this one, we bracket the past before the time of the consequent. That is, if the button was pressed at t 10, we set aside the preceding span (t10- t0) as irrelevant to evaluating similarities between worlds. Now if we do this, A is closer to the actual world than B is, because the entirely different past in A doesn't count as a dissimilarity but the miracle in B does count as one. Obviously A is closer to the actual world IF the past before the button pushing is discounted in judging cross-world similarities.

Lewis's account of how we evaluate counterfactuals allows for a good deal of plasticity: the similarities that matter are up to us; they are determined by our concerns in particular contexts. So my claim that we bracket the past in evaluating these back-tracking counterfactuals is in keeping with the spirit of Lewis's account, anyhow–it only adds the feature that, in evaluating the relevant backtracking counterfactuals, we give a greater weight to the features and laws that obtain in a certain temporal segment of the actual world than we do to the features and laws that obtain in the whole space-time worm. There is still a relation of comparative overall similarity between worlds, I would say, that satisfies Lewis's two formal constraints, but sometimes what concerns us (and so determines whether the relation holds) are the laws and particular states of affairs that obtain in a proper temporal part of actuality. If we accept this, Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals is consistent with the truth of the backtracking counterfactual and the truth of C–even in a deterministic world. Good for his semantics of counterfactuals, less good for the counterfactual analysis of causation.

This addition also helps Lewis deal with another serious problem. Consider the true counterfactual: 'If Nixon had pressed the button, there would have been a nuclear holocaust.' Kit Fine objects that this true counterfactual is false for Lewis. The future of the world where Nixon presses the button but a small miracle prevents the signal from going through, so there is no holocaust, is vastly more like that of the actual world than is one where there is a holocaust; so there is no holocaust at the closest world where Nixon presses the button. Lewis responds that the match between the future of the first world and the future of the actual world is imperfect–after all, Nixon's pressing the button has some consequences (his finger print is on the button, his heart is thumping, etc.), even if they don't necessarily amount to much–and concludes that, while a perfect match is worth a miracle, an imperfect match isn't. But this is ad hoc; the only reason to say it is that otherwise he's cooked. ( Lewis acknowledges that the pre-eminence of perfect match isn't intuitively obvious and writes: 'But the pre-eminence of perfect match is a feature of some relations of overall similarity, and it must be a feature of any similarity relation that will meet our present needs.' (46))

I think the counterfactual in question is true because, in evaluating it we bracket the future. What matters is what happens in the temporal segment of the world that began at the time that Nixon didn't press the button (suppose for simplicity that he had the button only at t1) and ended at the time when there wasn't a resulting holocaust (which would have happened at t2 if he'd pressed the button at t1). The world where Nixon presses the button and there is a holocaust is closer to actuality, given that the future is discounted, than is the world where he presses it and there is a miracle. The particular facts of the holocaust world diverge far more from the actual world in the span in which we're interested (bombs falling), but this is trumped by the miracle in the world without a holocaust; so the former is closer to actuality–unless we count the whole future.

Let me suggest that, in considering forward and backtracking counterfactuals, we sometimes give a greater weight to the features and laws that obtain within the relevant temporal segment of the universe, bracketing the future and the past. The comparative overall similarity holds between worlds, alright, but we don't necessarily arrive at it by comparing whole worlds from beginning to end. The features of the distant past and distant future, say, don't matter as much in determining cross-world similarity as what actually happens between the times at which the counterfactual's antecedent and its consequent would purportedly be true.

Comments welcome! Email to jstone (on the uno.edu domain).

The Aim of Studying Causation

A lot of the causation literature focusses on understanding our native concept of causation by way of developing a relatively simple set of criteria for what cases count as causation and then comparing these to a set of shared intuitions about clear-cut cases. This is what you might call good old-fashioned conceptual analysis, although you might believe that such concepts correspond to some fundamental metaphysics on which other things depend. For example the causal theory of time holds that temporal relations are constituted by causal relations. Another approach is to focus on causation as closely related to pragmatics of manipulating the world. There are undoubtedly facts about which strategies are more effective than others at allowing us to reach our goals. The strategies that are effective are the ones where we create the causes and thereby generate the effects. At the other extreme, one can ignore the pragmatics of the macroscopic world and concern oneself about fundamental physics. In the literature on general relativity, two events being separated by a causal curve indicates that there is a possible physical connection from the (temporally) first event to the second. Another approach is to examine causation using the methodology of the Canberra plan, where one analyzes the concept of causation (by identifying a bunch f platitudes about causation) and then seeks whatever in the world best satisfies the concept, calling that causation. The approach to causation I think is most illuminating is to identify whatever physical entities and structures and laws that best explain why our native concept of causation is so useful. This will involve explaining (1) why in ordinary circumstances if you want to bring about state A at time t, it does no good to wait around until after t and then act, (2) why it does not matter as a practical matter whether the physical laws are deterministic, (3) why what we think of as causal relations are non-accidental, and a number of other platitudes.

Note on Determinism and Causation

The following is an oversimplified, 0th order approximation to the history of causation, not based on rigorous historical scholarship, but might be useful for getting started.

Historically (think Hume), one of the key elements to causation (or for Hume the concept of causation) was the necessitation that went above and beyond a mere regularity, and (going beyond what Hume argued) this necessitation was a part of the mechanistic world-view, i.e. Newton's mechanics with particle collisions, i.e. the clockwork universe of 17th century. One conception was that the world was made up of particles that deterministically banged around and their collisions were paradigm examples of cause and effect.

These days, everyone accepts that the laws or causes might be (and, most think, likely are) probabilistic, and there are a lot of theories that try to accommodate chancy causation. I would say the common sense or standard view is that causation doesn't require determinism. I would guess that if there is anything like a standard view, it is that causation is (significant) probability-raising. This simple view has serious problems.

I think there is a way that we can combine the two intuitions: (1) that causation involves more than just happenstance--that it involves some kind of necessitation. (2) that causation is compatible with probabilistic physics. These can be compatible if we think that there are states of affairs (physical states) that necessitate (by way of the laws) probabilities for future events. This is the situation with ordinary quantum mechanics under some interpretations, so this basis for causation is not just a philosopher's dream.

Course Description

This course addresses the nature of causation, contrasting philosophical accounts that focus on events or processes involving the ordinary objects with a reductionist picture where causal facts are just given by fundamental physics. We will start of the course discussing how causation has been treated historically by philosophers, and run through the standard types of accounts. Then, we will discuss different ways to see how the physics bears on causation. Two important topics will be indeterminism and locality.

Classes will be held on Wednesdays from 3 PM to 5:20 PM in Wilson Hall, 109A, at least initially.