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Causality: Production and Propagation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Wesley C. Salmon
Wesley C. Salmon*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

A standard picture of causality has been around at least since the time of Hume. The general idea is that we have two (or more) distinct events which bear some sort of cause-effect relation to one another. There has, of course, been considerable controversy regarding the nature of both the relation and the relata. It has sometimes been maintained, for instance, that facts or propositions (rather than events) are the sorts of entities which can constitute the relata. It has long been disputed whether individual events or only classes of events can sustain cause-effect relations. The relation itself has sometimes been taken to be that of sufficient condition, sometimes necessary condition, or perhaps a combination of the two. Some authors have even proposed that certain sorts of statistical relations constitute causal relations.

Type
Part I. Probability and Causality
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 49 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-7809146.

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