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| 10365 | We might use 'facta' to refer to the truth-makers for facts |
| Full Idea: Mellor offers a distinction between 'facts' and 'facta' (the latter being the truth-makers for facts). | |||
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1 | |||
| A reaction: The idea is that 'facta' can do the work in causation, because 'facts' are not part of the world. This seems a very helpful terminology, which should be encouraged, since 'fact' is plainly ambiguous in current usage. |
| 4785 | Causal statements relate facts (which are whatever true propositions express) |
| Full Idea: Mellor argues that causal statements relate facts, where facts may be seen as whatever true propositions express. | |||
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.6 | |||
| A reaction: Choose between 'facts', 'objects', 'conserved quantities, 'events' (the usual one) or 'processes'. I rather like processes (Salmon) as they are a better prospect as the building blocks of an ontology. |
| 8408 | Probabilistic causation says C is a cause of E if it increases the chances of E occurring |
| Full Idea: The basic idea of probabilistic causation is that a sufficient condition of C's being a cause of E is that C and E are actual, individual events, and the objective chance of E's occurring is greater given the occurrence of C than it would be without C. | |||
| From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience 5.3 | |||
| A reaction: Mellor has to include objective 'chances' in his ontology to support his theory. As it stands this looks like a weak theory, since the event might not occur despite C happening, and some less likely event might turn out to be the actual cause. |