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Would-Cause Semantics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Phil Dowe
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Abstract

This article raises two difficulties that certain approaches to causation have with would-cause counterfactuals. First, there is a problem with David Lewis's semantics of counterfactuals when we ‘suppose in’ some positive event of a certain kind. And, second, there is a problem with embedded counterfactuals. I show that causal-modeling approaches do not have these problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 2009 , pp. 701 - 711
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Stephen Barker and Jonathan Schaffer for comments on some of this material.

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