Cause and Chance

Phil Dowe, Paul Noordhof0415300983, 9780415300988

Cause and Chance is a collection of specially written papers by world-class metaphysicians. Its focus is the problems facing the “reductionist” approach to causation: the attempt to cover all types of causation, deterministic and indeterministic, with one basic theory.

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Table of contents :
Book Cover……Page 1
Title……Page 4
Contents……Page 5
Contributors……Page 8
Introduction……Page 10
Counterfactuals and the benefit of hindsight……Page 21
Chance-lowering causes……Page 37
Chance-changing causal processes……Page 48
Counterfactual theories, preemption and persistence……Page 67
Probability and causation……Page 86
Analysing chancy causation without appeal to chance-raising……Page 129
Routes, processes and chance-lowering causes……Page 147
Indeterministic causation and varieties of chance-raising……Page 161
Probabilistic cause, edge conditions, late preemption and discrete cases……Page 172
Prospects for a counterfactual theory of causation……Page 197
Bibliography……Page 212
Index……Page 218