more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Lewis gives an account of causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals (roughly, an event c causes an event e iff if c had not happened then e would not have happened either).
Clarification
'Counterfactuals' are statements beginning "If.." - events that might have happened, but didn't
Gist of Idea
An event causes another just if the second event would not have happened without the first
Source
report of David Lewis (works [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation Intro
Book Ref
Psillos,Stathis: 'Causation and Explanation' [Acumen 2002], p.5
A Reaction
This feels wrong to me. It is a version of Humean constant conjunction, but counterfactuals are too much a feature of our minds, and not sufficiently a feature of the world, to do this job. Tricky.
| 15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |
| 4781 | Many counterfactual truths do not imply causation ('if yesterday wasn't Monday, it isn't Tuesday') [Kim, by Psillos] |
| 4795 | Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis] |
| 4398 | An event causes another just if the second event would not have happened without the first [Lewis, by Psillos] |
| 3977 | Laws are true generalisations which support counterfactuals and are confirmed by instances [Fodor] |
| 4208 | 'If he wasn't born he wouldn't have died' doesn't mean birth causes death, so causation isn't counterfactual [Lowe] |
| 4788 | Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory as it avoids mention of counterfactuals [Dowe, by Psillos] |
| 4780 | In some counterfactuals, the counterfactual event happens later than its consequent [Psillos] |
| 4791 | Counterfactual theories say causes make a difference - if c hadn't occurred, then e wouldn't occur [Psillos] |
| 9489 | Essentialism can't use conditionals to explain regularities, because of possible interventions [Bird] |