Remko van der Pluijm 307114

Focus on / your intuitions

Towards contextual pluralist theories of causation

Ever since Hume stated his regularity of causation, philosophers have tried to define
causation using single causal concepts, often with mixed successes. One by one, each of these
theories have been attacked using counter-examples. Where a lot of these theories have been
adapted to be able to refute these counter-examples, a number of philosophers suggest there
will always be new versions of these counter-examples (Reiss, 2009a). Therefore, they argue,
causal pluralism is the way to go: we should abandon the ideal of a monist theory of
causation, which will not do justice towards the various forms of causation which we
intuitively acknowledge.
However, this is just the beginning of the discussion. As Reiss (Reiss, 2009), Godfrey-Smith
(Godfrey-Smith, 2007) and Hitchcock (Hitchcock, 2003) argue, causal pluralism is in itself
quite 'plural', as the part of the causal relation on which to argue for pluralism can be diverse
e.g. one can be plural regarding the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a cause, one
can be plural as to the epistemic method to use or one can have an ontic pluralist conception.
As other philosophers already have given typologies of various forms of pluralism (Godfrey-
Smith, forthcoming) (Hitchcock, 2007), I won't completely repeat this process. Instead, I want
to take the typology by Godfrey-Smith and argue for both the concept-pluralist account of
causation, which can be attributed to, among others, Cristopher Hitchcock (Hitchcock, 2003),
and the family resemblance theory, which can be attributed to Nancy Cartwright (Cartwright,
2004). I think this is compatible as the first focusses on our concepts, while the second
focusses on our causal language. Interestingly, these two theories both have problems with
opposing intuitions, whether it is between two components with the first theory or whether a
verb is causal in the second theory. Therefore, I will argue, we should incorporate a contextual
component into these theories.

This essay will consist of four parts. The first part will discuss Godfrey-Smith's typology and
the three type of pluralist theories following from it. A causal relation can aim itself at our use
of the concepts, it can aim itself on the structure of the world and it can aim itself at our use of
a causal language.
The second part will argue for a theory of causation which satisfies intuitions. I will follow
Hitchcock here in his 2003 paper, that a pluralist theory of causation should do justice and
 Remko van der Pluijm Focus on / your intuitions

should be able to explain our different intuitions regarding causation.

The third part will look at any caveats for the conceptual pluralist theory. I will argue that this form
of pluralism will have difficulties to determine which component it should use in 'shady domains',
i.e. domains in which our intuitions themselves aren't certain. Next, I will give a quick evaluation
based on the information in the theories and on the defined requirements and caveats and argue for
pluralism on the level of conception.
In the fourth part I will argue for a contextual notion to play part in our theories of causation, which
is both qualifying for the main requirement of the second part and can circumvent the problems
noted in the third part. To formulate the problem and the solution more precisely: we do not have
any argument to favour one particular theory over another when these theories yield opposite
results, unless we introduce contextual elements to determine for which causal concept we are
searching and thereby the causal component to use. Also, the introduction of the contextual notion
should enable us to determine whether in a given situation whether one or more and which causal
components are required for causation.

Before addressing the issues raised above, I would like to introduce some terminology. Any pluralist
theory of causation will in a lot of cases exist of multiple monist causal theories. An example could
be something as defended by Russo and Williamson (Russo & Williamson, 2007)1 in the health
sciences, where C is a cause of E iff there is a positive correlation between C and E and there is a
causal mechanism at work. If this theory is regarded as pluralistic (as noted in footnote 1, Russo and
Williamson argue against this), I will call both the probabilistic account and the causal mechanism
account causal components of the pluralistic theory.

Nature of a causal relation

Before we take a look at any demand we could ask of a theory of causation, it is necessary to
analyse on which aspect of the causal relation which is seen as inherently plural. This idea is
borrowed from Godfrey-Smith in his forthcoming paper, who discusses several archetypal variants
of pluralist theories of causation. According to Godfrey-Smith, we can distinguish three types of
causal theories2.
In the first type of theory we find that the aspect we should look at as plural is our concept.

1 Russo and Williamson actually defend that their theory is a monistic theory of causation and their theory is only
evidentially pluralist. Still, the example serves well for this purpose. I will elaborate on Russo and Williamson's
point in the third part of my article.
2 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, pp2-3.

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Basically, a philosopher endorsing such a view will argue that we need different sets of criteria for
different kinds of causation. This does not mean that the philosopher in question would have to
ascribe multiple ontic causal relations. He can still maintain that, although we need multiple
concepts for our understanding, the truth value while using each of these theories is equal. This
position has been defended most strongly by Ned Hall, when he differentiates between production-
based criteria and difference-making criteria3.

Christopher Hitchcock in his 2003 paper also endorses this position. According to him, we can
analyse two different stages within causation. First, the theory decides on a priviledged class of
entity4, whether this is a 'genuine process' in Salmons theory (Salmon, 1980), a 'conserved
quantity' in Dowe's theory (Dowe, 1992) or a genuine causal event in the case of Hume (Hume,
1739). Second, the causal relation is analyzed in terms of the basic units described above. 5
According to Hitchcock, where there will be almost no different evaluations in stage 1, there will be
a large number of differences in stage 2. So, according to Hitchcock, we do have multiple concepts
of causality, which are also able to explain our different intuitions, but these all have the same ontic
basis. This fact is emphasised by Hitchcock himself, when discusses a counter-example about a
Captain and Assistant wanting to kill Victim6. When Captain sees Victim, he yells 'Fire'. Assistant
fires a shot, but Victim, hearing the shouting of Captain, ducks away and remains unharmed. The
question here is of course: did Captain cause Victim to remain unharmed? According to Hitchcock
there will be no disagreement in stage 1. Each theory will see Captain as a potential cause and
Victim as a potential effect as identified by the theories: all the counterfactuals are true, there is a
mark transmission, we have no spurious correlations and so on. However, the evaluation, as stated
in phase 2, is a whole different matter. Hitchcock himself notes that people tend to have not very
strong intuitions about whether Captain caused Victim to survive. He does note, however, that, in
the case that extra information is added, e.g. regarding the intentions of Victim, our intuitions seem
to become stronger towards one side. Here, causation gets a moral component 7. Note that this form
of causal pluralism is a pluralism regarding phenomena such as causal omissions and negative
causation.

3 Ibid, p5. Godfrey-Smith refers to Ned Hall's 2004 Two Concepts of Causation in J. Collins, E. Hall and L.Paul,
(eds) Causation and Counterfactuals, MIT Press.
4 Hitchcock, 2003, p5.
5 Hitchcock, 2003, p7.
6 Hitchcock, 2003, p10.
7 I will discuss the need for a specific description in the third part.

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Godfrey-Smith argues against a simple version of this kind of pluralism defended by Hall 8. He
doubts this form of pluralism is, the internal problems mentioned in unpublished work by Hall
aside, a representative theory of causation, as we should expect these multiple concepts reflected in
our causal language. This claim is quite harsh indeed, as we should expect some ambiguity in our
language use when we have two or more different concepts. As Godfrey-Smith puts it, we would
expect that, when I would be talking about causality, we could expect that this plurality is reflected
in our language, such as we do when we are talking about other ambiguous concepts. To take a
simple example, when we are talking about hot food, someone could ask me Do you mean that
you find this curry hot as in warm or hot as in sharp? 9 It is hard to imagine a situation in which we
would say Do you mean cause as in constant conjunction or cause as in a mechanism?
Still, I am not sure that this critique is valid. A suggestion might be that we do indeed use plural
concepts, but we use cause while being unaware of the double meaning we ascribe to a causal
relationship. After all, as shown by the Captain-Victim example by Hitchcock, we tend to have
ambiguous intuitions. I will discus this point more in detail in the third part, but my main point will
be that as we explicate more variables, our intuitions will become stronger towards one kind. This
argues in favour of this pluralist concept.

The second type of theory is given by Brian Skyrms when he suggests to talk about an 'amiable
jumble'. One could compare the 'amiable jumble' with a toolbox with a number of measuring tools,
each of them loosely calibrated. One person will choose to use a set square or triangle, the other will
use a tape measure or a ruler. Sometimes one will combine these with a piece of rope to measure a
round object, others will do this by measuring the radius and using a mathematical formula. So, one
will use a combination of requirements, loosely combined to determine whether a certain event is a
form of causation. A number of these tools are spatio-temporal connections, satisfying certain
counterfactuals, being an instance of a regularity and so on10.
There are a number of important observations to be done here. First, instead of talking about a
causal concept and the relation between the causal concept and the structure in the world, this type
of theory mainly focusses on our ordinary talk and its relation and our conclusions towards our
concepts. It suggests something like When I talk about causation, I actually talk about the
following set of criteria, such that some of them together is enough. 11 It does not claim anything

8 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, p6.

9 Ibid idem.
10 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, p7.
11 Ibid idem.

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about the world itself, as one can have either one of the following two claims. Either the combined
set of criteria always corresponds to the same type of structure in the world which we call causation,
or the reason we use a combined set of criteria is because there exist multiple causal structures in
the world.
Second, it is clear that Skyrms does not state any normative rule to determine whether any situation
has a causal relation. It has to satisfy any norm a normal user of the word cause would use and this
norm can be quite different for anybody in any given situation. Again, Skyrms is not 'telling us'
what he thinks causation should be or is in the real world; instead, he is describing how we use the
word causation and admits it is a heap of loosely defined criteria in which we cannot really specify
when our definition is enough.
Third, Godfrey-Smith suggests this amiable jumble can be seen as a 'cluster concept'. Based on
similar theories (by Healy in 1994 and Longworth in a forthcoming paper), he suggests these
theories claim that causation, as a cluster concept, is guided by a set of criteria such that (I) none
of the criteria are individually necessary, (II) the entire set is clearly sufficient, (III) at least one of
the criteria must be met, and (IV) some proper subsets are sufficient, though many of these subsets
generate marginal or contested applications.12 Again, we are confronted with a situation in which
'some proper subset' is sufficient. Where this does seem quite 'true to life' in a non-scientific
situation, I cannot imagine a form of science in which such a criterion would be sufficient. Of
course, this is dependent on how we interpret the word 'proper' and whether we could ascribe to this
'proper' a quality such as 'being accepted as a norm by the scientific community'. But such an
ascription would make the whole definition useless, as it would then read some subsets are
sufficient, being those which are claimed as sufficient by the scientific community.

The third type of theory Godfrey-Smith mentions is based on the linguistic analysis as first
articulated by G.E.M. Anscombe13. Her analysis is no longer using abstract terms to describe the
necessary and sufficient conditions of causation. For Anscombe, saying that C causes E is nothing
more than using a 'group concept' instead of a concept part of this group. Anscombe thought that a
cause is not primary, but instead can be fully reduced to the conjunction of verbs such as 'hitting',
'pushing', 'burning' and 'typing'. So, instead of saying that typing can be reduced to my finger
causing a letter on the screen, instead, my finger causing a letter on the screen can be reduced to me

12 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, p7.

13 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, pp 9-10.

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typing. Godfrey-Smith calls this version 'causal minimalism'14.

He suggests to treat causality as a 'family resemblance' concept, in which all types of causality, e.g.
pushing, have something in common with another, but not necessarily with each of them 15. A
paradigm example from the computer science of a family resemblance is a relational database. All
the tables in a database can be linked to each other, but not based on the same characteristics. Take a
look at picture 1 on the next page. Here, we see some of the relations between an number of object,
being a student, some of the student personae, the study and the dean. There are a number of
characteristics which is shared by more than one of the objects, but there is no characteristic which
is present in all the objects.

Picture 1: Sample relational database

In the case of causation, one could think of several concepts by which one can destroy an object as
being a part of causation, some of which involve touching the target (e.g. hitting, cutting). However,
touching an object is also done when one pushes a target or lifts a target (which is often non-
destructive).
The main difference between Skyrms discussed above and e.g. Cartwright who defends a theory
related to this one is that Skyrms is using only abstract causal concepts for his 'amiable jumble' 16
where Cartwright and Anscombe use everyday language. Moreover, there is no need to have any
connection between the 'amiable jumble' components for Skyrms theory to work, where there need
to be at least an indirect connection due to the family resemblance concept in Cartwright and
Anscombe's theories. This is probably only a theoretical difference, however, as Skyrms would
acknowledge that any of the components in his 'amiable jumble' can be used almost endlessly
exchangeable, there sure has to be a number of characteristics of these components which make this

14 Ibid idem.
15 Ibid idem.
16 Godfrey-Smith, 2007, p11.

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transition possible.

Just for the sake of completeness, the last theory which is mentioned by Godfrey-Smith is his own,
which focusses on analysing causation as a 'disputed concept'. His theory suggests we should regard
causality as a special form of words like democracy, which are, due to their importance and
interwoven nature in our daily and especially our moral and legal practices, often disputed as
pinpointing their definition can have serious consequences for these practices. I will not analyse this
account further, as I find it ill-suited for our understanding of the world. This article gives a way to
evaluate the way pluralist theories of causation try to understand causation, but this theory doesn't
try to understand what causation is at all. At most, it tries, more or less, to analyse the consequences
of stipulating what causation is17.

Satisfying intuitions
These three theories will be evaluated on there intuitive appropriateness. Therefore, I shall first
describe what I understand as being 'intuitive appropriate' for pluralist theories of causation, which
is divided into three sub-requirements.
1. Any good theory of causation should yield intuitive results in its evaluation of any given
event18.
(a) Any good theory of causation should be able to give on the basis of the theory alone
evaluations in any domain of study or any ordinary situation.
(b) Any good theory of causation should yield the same result as our intuitions.
(c) Any good theory of causation should help us to understand our intuitions regarding
causation.

First, two remarks regarding these requirements is in order. The above list lacks any specific
empiricist intuitions such as the 'no reference to obscure metaphysical entities or hidden effects'
clause as argued for by Wesley Salmon (Salmon, 1980). This is on purpose, since this clause would
not do justice to the success of the causal mechanism account as articulated by Machamer et al
(Machamer, Darden, & Craver, 2000). Especially in the biomedical sciences, this theory has been
quite influential exactly because it is able to articulate metaphysical structures on a lower level than
the level of research. Therefore, it would in a sense be counter-intuitive to hold tight to this

17 Ibid, p13.
18 I am using the word 'event' in a common sense use here. Therefore, causal processes also fall under this notion.

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empiricist requirement while being an effective and informative theory within these fields of study.
Second, although causation is a multidisciplinary study, most of the articles are written by
philosophers. Therefore, the requirements which would e.g. be set by a computer theorist like Judea
Pearl will fundamentally differ from the ones presented here. More precisely, Judea Pearl would
probably not refer to intuitions. As Cristopher Hitchcock also notes 19, he even shuns at giving a
definition of causation, instead relying on the philosophers to work such a thing out. I would
suggest that Judea Pearl, being mainly a computer scientist (hence, not being a philosopher) would
hold a quite common sense scientific view of what causation really is.

It will be useful to make explicit what is to be understood under these three sub-requirements, as
they can give us guidance about how to analyse the plural theories.
The first sub-requirement is the all-round applicability of a causal theory. Arguably, we are using
the word cause in a multitude of ways, even though these daily concepts may be reduced to but one
concept as is the case with monist theories. However, we do find something in everything we
mention as a causal relation enough to call each of these diverse situations a causal relation. As any
theory of causation tries to grasp that property unique of a causal relation regardless of the field of
study, we should be able to use a theory in each of these fields. Another part of this requirement is
that it is on basis of the theory alone we should be able to decide whether in a situation there is
causation. This is to disallow any theories which are uninformative about the causal relation itself,
such as C is a cause of E iff it satisfies our intuitions., which would by definition be intuitive, but
it wouldn't give us any tools to decide whether there is causation in that situation save our intuitions
itself.
The second sub-requirement is intuition as a truth value for a causal theory. As Hitchcock
formulates it, [...] theories of causation are typically tested by comparing their verdicts with those
of intuition. (Hitchcock, 2003). It is therefore that we find a lot of use of thought experiments as
counter-examples to show how a seemingly intuitive theory has some counter-intuitive results.
Moreover, without as much endorsing an anthropocentric standpoint, to determine whether a certain
event is a cause of another requires a form of interpretation of the world, which itself uses intuition.
This doesn't mean that necessary causation a characteristic is of the human mind which does not
exist in the real world. It is simply the acknowledgement that we know of cases in which we have
doubts about a causal relation and we must use interpretation of the world to determine whether the

19 Hitchcock, 2003, p4.

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event is a genuine case of causation. So, our concepts do naturally play a role, even though we
could pinpoint one relation in the world. And again, as we use our intuitions to give a verdict as to
whether C is a cause of E, we should incorporate this component in our theory of causation.
However, some may hold that it could be possible that our intuitions regarding causation are fully
mistaken. Such a view could well be one defended by Bertrand Russell, who himself is quite
sceptical of causation (Russell, 1912). Russell defends that our ordinary intuitions are profoundedly
mistaken and holds that we should remove any form of causal language from our scientific
practices. Still, we do seem to have coherent thoughts about causation when we look at a certain
field of study, as we ascribe causality under the same circumstances over and over again. Moreover,
a number of philosophers, one of which is Peter Lipton (Lipton, 2004), argues that causation is an
important characteristic of scientific explanation. One could argue against Lipton that the term
causation should be replaced by another term which is scientific. But doing so would do nothing
more than holding a theory of causation analogous to Cartwright, using only scientific vocabulary.
The 'explaining intuition' sub-requirement is the explanatory value of any theory of causation. Since
we use intuitions in daily practice to give verdicts about whether C is a cause of E, any theory of
causation explaining what causation is also explains why we were having these intuitions in the first
place. If a theory of causation isn't able to explain why we have counter-intuitive intuitions in a
certain situation, it is apparently not enough adapted to our intuitions, which means it thereby also
doesn't qualify for the conjunction of the first two components.

Defining boundaries
A number of remarks have already been given in this direction in the first two parts, but now I want
to focus on what I would call the 'setting the boundaries' problem for any pluralist theory of
causation. This idea has partly been developed by Julian Reiss (Reiss, 2009). When we look at the
monist theories of causation, each of these were presented with strong counter-examples. As Reiss
argues, this is mainly due to the universal claim of necessity and sufficiency by monist theories of
causation20. He then looks at a possible way out by looking at evidential pluralism. Evidential
pluralism is the claim that, although there is one concept of cause on the ontic level, on the
epistemic level more than one way leads to causation. This isn't to say that the observable result is
what causation in the world is, however. It is just that [...] observations can be evidence on the
basis of which we infer the existence of and facts about the unobservable theoretical entity. 2122
20 Reiss, 2009, p27.
21 Ibid idem
22 Ironically, when we look at the monist theories of causation, they seem to accept that indeed their observational

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However, according to Reiss, this trick won't work, since if we would encounter any case in which
two of the epistemical components would yield different results, we cannot any longer defend ontic
monism in causality23. More problematic, what would we have to say in this situation? Do these two
results 'cancel each other out'? Is one 'incorrect'? Even if these problems would not exist in real life,
we cannot, unless proven to be non-existent, take this into account into our concept of causation.
We get rid of this problem when we introduce pluralism regarding our concepts of causation.
However, another problem emerges. Remember that Reiss argued that the main problem for monist
theories of causation can be located at the universality claim. One main reason for these universal
claims to fail is because they try to satisfy a large number of intuitions, which aren't in all situations
clear. This is the same argument as in the first part which was articulated by Hitchcock. However, I
think it is legitimate to ask whether we will solve this problem by introducing pluralism. As shown
above, evidential pluralism will not solve the situation. I think the problem will not be solved by
just introducing pluralism on the level of concept. Take a look at the following picture:

Picture 2: Clouds of intuitions vs boxed

theory

Picture two is resembling our situation in the case of a monist theory of causation. We have in this
case 4 clouds of intuitions and a box representing the monist theory. There are three regions where
we can find counter-examples in this picture. The first and most obvious region is the region outside

entities are what causation in the world is. When we for example look at a simple form of the regularity account, C
is a cause of E iff a) C happens before E, b) C is spatio-temporal near to E and c) whenever C happens, E happens,
the definition of a cause is the method by which we observe observable entities.
23 Reiss, 2009, pp28-29.

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of the box. These are counter-examples which prove that the requirements by the theory are not
necessary. The second region is the region which is located between the four clouds. These are
counter-examples which show that a theory of causation isn't sufficient, since we have some
counter-examples in which we have a situation which we intuitively do not regard as causation,
although the theory does. The third region is the region where the several clouds seemingly overlap.
This is the area which represents situations in which we have multiple competing intuitions. Reiss
his argument is quite simple: as our theoretical argument will always be rigid and will comprise of a
universal claim (represented by a box), we can always formulate counter-examples in which the
theory will either be not necessary or not be sufficient. Note by the way how one of the clouds, the
white one in the lower right corner, is fully absorbed by the theory. This represents how a monist
theory always has a primary domain of study where it 'originated' from and for which it is designed
to work. For example Wesley Salmon's process theory is mainly based on physics. Finding counter-
examples against these will be harder.
Now look at the picture below:

Picture 3: Clouds of intuitions vs

pluralist boxes

Here, the pluralist theory is represented by multiple boxes. As each box specifies a specialist
component, the risk for counter-examples based on necessity or sufficiency is much lower than with
the monist theory. Each component is specialised at its own domain of study. However, we will still

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have shady areas (the areas where the clouds overlap). How do we decide whether in a given 'shady
domain' we should prefer component a to component b? And on what basis do we decide the fields
of study applicable to component a? We will have problems analogous to the ones with the
evidential pluralist accounts described above. As two theories argue differently, we have no
mechanic to decide on which theory to use.
I think that we will be unable to answer these questions satisfying. The main reason for this is
because our components are based on monist theories. Therefore, they are formulated such that they
are usable in every field. We could of course let our intuitions decide which of the components is
the right one to use given the circumstances (the component which satisfies our intuitions is the one
we use), but why then shouldn't we just stick with our good old intuitions instead of using theories
which are clearly unable to explicit our causal concept(s)?

Evaluation
Let us first begin with a recap of the requirements for a pluralist theory of causation. To quickly
summarise, it should have the following characteristics:
1. It should be intuitively and applicable on any domain, without becoming uninformative;
2. It should be able to 'define the boundaries' for each of its components, i.e. circumvent the
caveat.

Now that we have formulated our complete list of requirements, let us look at the three theories and
whether they are able to satisfy these requirements.
The pluralism about concept theory
It should be able to satisfy our intuitions, just because it is able to explain why we have
sometimes opposing intuitions. To be able to give an appropriate decision, it should be
able to circumvent the caveat, for which it can use contextual information as described
below.
It is able to explain our intuitions, as different intuitions correspond to different
conceptions and it is able to show which conception is at work in any given situation.
It should be usable in any domain, as long as the theory comprises of enough
components to satisfy our intuitions.
The amiable jumbie theory
Since the theory doesn't really state how to evaluate a given situation, it is hard to

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determine whether it will satisfy our intuitions in a situation of opposed intuitions.

Otherwise, it will satisfy our intuitions as long as we have enough components to pick
from.
It is less able to explain our intuitions, because, according to the description given by
Godfrey-Smith, it is not able to determine which of the components of the amiable
jumble is responsible for.
As described on the first point, it is susceptible to the caveat, since there really isn't any
way to deal with opposing intuitions.
The family resemblance theory
It will satisfy our intuitions as long as our causal language is intuitive. However, this
does depend on whether we can determine our causal verbs.
It is able to explain our intuitions regarding causation as it can reduce causation to these
causal verbs.
It is not susceptible to the caveat in the regular fashion, but it is in a sense susceptible
that we can have opposing intuitions as to which verbs are causal.

Both the concept-pluralist account and the family resemblance theory are able to explain our
intuitions. However, the family resemblance theory has difficulties in determining whether
something is a causal verb and is dependent on this ability. Both this weakness and the caveat can
be circumvented by introducing contexts. Both theories can be illuminating in their own way, the
concept-pluralist account on the level of concepts and the family resemblance on our relation
between causation and our ordinary talk.

Contextual information
Let us again look at the example by Hitchcock about Captain and Victim. Did Captain by yelling at
Victim cause Victim to duck and thereby to survive? This is a situation in which a lot of people have
different intuitions. What I suggest is that, by introducing contextual information, we are essentially
'zooming in' on the area of the clouds. When more details are available, people tend to have stronger
and more unified intuitions, since the amount of unknown facts, which is filled in by a person by his
own 'biased' worldview, becomes smaller.
Let me illustrate this for the concept-pluralist theory by introducing an extra fact into the Captain-
Victim case: Captain and Victim are real good friends, but Captain would lose his job and probably

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his wife when he would fail to even find Victim. In this example, no one would doubt that Captain
did indeed cause Victim to survive, because it was his intention to let him survive. Apparently, in
cases of moral responsibility, we often seem to use an agency account (such as from Menzies &
Price (Menzies & Price, 1993)).
The above shows the usefulness for a pluralist theory of causation to introduce a contextual notion
in order to prevent counter-examples such as those of Hitchcock. One way to see this is include in
the pluralist theory of causation a framework for analysing contextual features. Such a proposal has
been introduced by Julian Reiss during a conference about contrastive causation (Reiss, 2009b).
Reiss distinguishes situational features (decision points determined by the situiation itself) and
analyst's features (decision points to be made by the analyst). For the first category, my additional
information to the Captain and Victim debate would be an example. The second category is
important in e.g. law, because some forms of 'cause' are artificial, i.e. decided by law itself.
One might argue against me that we would base our theories on these contextual features, thereby
introducing a posteriori information into a concept of causation which should be a priori. However,
I would disagree, since we are only fine-tuning the concept of causation. When we again would use
our analogy with the clouds and the box, we would 'zoom in', trying to lay down the lines as
correctly down as possible, simply because this would be what our concept of causation is.

For the family resemblance theory it might be problematic to analyse verbs with plural meanings.
Therefore, since these words both have a causal and non-causal meaning, we cannot know whether
this word means we are talking about a cause. However, when we can fix the meaning of the verb as
it was meant in the context, the problem dissolves. Just as when I'm talking about 'hot as in spicy' or
about 'hot as in very warm', determinning precisely which context is at hand should be able to solve
many of these problems.

Summary
In this article, I have argued for a pluralistic theory of causation capable of satisfying our intuitions,
being applicable on all domains and still being informative. I've shown how several plural theories
are able to satisfy this requirement, but that we are confronted with opposing intuitions. Therefore,
we should focus our intuitions by providing extra context to prevent our general, biased intuitions to
take over. As current specialised literature shows, we might already be on the correct route.

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 Remko van der Pluijm Focus on / your intuitions

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