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different kinds of causal relations. Whether to regard causal relations among vari
ables as yet another variety of causation is also controversial. This essay maintains
that causal relations obtain among tokens and that type causal claims are general
izations concerning causal relations among these tokens.
0. INTRODUCTION
Figure 1.
Although there is a distinction between type- and token-causal claims, it does not
- - or
follow that there are two kinds of causation type and token that in addition to
tionships. In my view, a claim such as "X is causally relevant to Y" is a claim to the
effect that changing the value of X instantiated in particular, spatiotemporally lo
cated individuals will change the value of Y located in particular individuals. (2003,
p. 40)
grip on one piece of the truth, but no one has assembled the pieces. In
lung cancer almost completely open. This is a claim about the logical
independence of propositions concerning type and token causation,
not an epistemic claim. Eells maintains that smoking can be a cause
of lung cancer without ever causing any individual to get lung cancer:
Consistent with human physiology being just as it actually is (so that the Surgeon
General's claim is still true), is the possibility that everybody's causal field happens
(improbably enough) to be such that, if they were to become smokers, they would,
just before the time lung disease had a chance to develop, die from some other cause
that, given the causal field, is deterministically token causally related to smoking.
(1991, p. 11)
Eells then offers the following arguments against the claim that
type-causal claims are generalizations concerning token causation.
One can summarize and extend Eells's case for the existence of a
distinct type-causal relation as follows. If a is a token cause of b, then
(a) a occurs, (b) b occurs, and there is in fact a causal connection
(c)
between z's (of some kind) occurring and 's (of some kind) occur
ring. Given this characterization of token causation, type causation is
not sufficient for token causation, because a type A may be a cause of
a type B even though (a) no token a of kind A occurs, (b) no token b
of kind B occurs, or (c) tokens of kind A that do occur are never
ship is.
In contrast to Eells, in Causal Asymmetries I argued that type-level
causal claims are generalizations concerning causal relations among
tokens (1998, ch. 5*). In particular, I defended the following thesis:
CG (Counter/actual generalization view) A is a cause of B in cir
cumstances K if and only if inK each (token) event of kind A that
might occur would cause some (token) event of kind B (1998, p.
87).2
type-causal relations.
CG purports to provide truth conditions only for deterministic
causation. It offers only a necessary and sufficient condition for the
actly what the Surgeon General is claiming is a long story for another
occasion (Hausman 2005), but on any plausible interpretation, the
nately, it doesn't. Claims about actual causation need only pick out the
actual cause
and effect, not those properties or types in virtue of which
actual and possible tokens are causally related. Type-level claims, in
contrast, need to specify which properties are causally relevant.
What can be said on behalf of CG and against the view that token
and type causation are independent of one another? Here are three
arguments:
First, if there are type-causal relations, then it seems that their
relata should be types or properties. But what philosophers take to be
the possibility that there are truth conditions for token causation in
terms of type-causal relations.
CG says that A is a cause of B in circumstances K if and only if in
K each event of kind A that might occur would cause some event of
kind B. Suppose that (i) an event a of kind A does occur, (ii) A is a
cause of B
in circumstances K and (iii) the circumstances are of kind
K. Given these premises CG implies that there is some event b of kind
B such that a causes b. This apparently provides a sufficient condition
for token causation in terms of type causation plus the occurrence of
a token of the cause type in the right circumstances. Conversely if a
occurs and causes b, then according to NR, there is some property A
that a instantiates that bears a nomic relationship in the circum
stances to some property B that b instantiates. Taking some short
cuts, one might then offer the following truth condition for token
causation:
LI says that a is a token cause of b if and only if a and b occur and a's are
token causes of Z/s in these circumstances. This is not trivial, because it
makes the substantive claim that token-causal relations are always
instances of causal generalizations. But the only type-causal causal
claims CG and LI countenance are generalizations concerning token
causation. Type and token-causal claims are both concerned with to
ken causation. Type causal claims are generalizations about actual or
CRITIQUE
ties, with variables the determinables of which their values are the
determinants (Hausman 1998, p. 87; Hoover 2001, p. 71; Woodward
2003, pp. 40-^11). One can express the fact that a particular gas
sample g is odorless and has a temperature of 20 C, by saying that
the value of the qualitative variable "odor" that g takes is "odorless"
= variables
and that Tg 20 C. Claims about causal relations among
and among values of variables are claims about causal relations
among types or properties. If the counterfactual generalization view
is correct, statements concerning causal relations among variables are
we shall take it for granted that causes are local and question instead Hausman's
claim that variables or properties are not local. This appears to rest entirely on a
particular at a specific time, and which thus have only one actual
-
value "concrete variables." Concrete variables may be qualitative as
well as quantitative.
Causal claims concerning relations among concrete variables are
- -
not token-causal claims, because variables even concrete variables
are properties, not particulars. Just as counterfactual dependence
involves a family of conditionals, so causal relations among concrete
variables (unlike causal relations among tokens) involve a family of
relations amongpossible their
values.5 Since concrete variables
specify a spatio-temporal location, they are not ruled out as candi
dates for causal relata. Hoover takes variables to be causal relata, and
he maintains that laws are abstractions from type-causal relations
among variables, while causal relations among tokens are "exempli
fications" of causal relations among variables (2001, pp. 88-89).
Though concrete variables point to definite locations in space and
time, taking them to be causal relata is subject to the objections Imade
to Eell's time-indexed properties. Consider a structural equation such
as (O) I= V/R or the causal graph in Figure 1 above with arrows from
V and R are concrete
to /. If the variables in the sense defined above,
they refer to properties of a particular circuit at a particular time. As in
the discussion of Eells'time-indexed properties, Hoover could in this
-
way win the metaphysical battle the relata are indeed variables, not
-
tokens but he would, I believe, lose the war, since these are just
fancy-dress token relations. As we shall see below, these are not the sort
of type relations that Hoover is in fact concerned with.
On this view, the two examples of the cylinders of gas can each be thought of as
concrete causal structures, where ... there is enough localization and
defining
instantiation of variables that we are able to say that it is this cylinder and not some
other one. Given that the causal structure is concrete in this sense, it nevertheless
embodies type-level causal relations in its dispositions. So in the case of cylinder (b)
in our previous example, in the manner it is actually configured, increasing the
temperature would increase the pressure, whether or not the temperature were
"system",6 but they are not located in time. Instead they have
values at times, which can change over time. The temperature of
the gas in a particular cylinder is a system-specific variable, but not
a concrete variable, since it may have different values at different
times.
To tackle this issue and the task of reformulating CG, I shall focus
upon Hitchcock's (2001) and Woodward's (2003) formulation of the
PHHW view of actual causation. Consider the following example: A
boulder falls and bounces toward a hiker, who ducks and goes on
(1) Y=X,
Equation (1) says that the hiker ducks if and only if the boulder falls.
Equation (2) says that the hiker survives if and only if the boulder
does not fall or the hiker ducks. The causal graph associated with this
case is shown in Figure 2.
The causal graph and the structural equations concern a particular
system. In the terminology of the last section, the variables are sys
Figure 2.
-
in which the value of Fis constrained to be zero that is, in which the
hiker does not duck - Z= 1 if and only ifX= 0 - that is, a boulder
falling would cause the hiker to die. In the actual story, the hiker does
duck, and the hiker survives regardless of whether the boulder
falls,
and so the boulder falling is not an actual cause of the hiker sur
(a) states that the cause and effect occur. Given the value of X stated
by (c), (b) then expresses both a functional and a causal relationship
between the values of Y and Z. So it seems that among the truth
conditions for an actual causal relation between Y and Z lies the
ducking causes survival from (a) to (c) above, while in other cases one
6. CONCLUSIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This essay and the sections of Causal Asymmetry from which it draws
could not have written without many detailed and helpful criticisms
and suggestions from Ellery Eells. Elliott Sober was also a tre
mendous help with the essay, commenting on multiple drafts. Thanks
also to Luc Bovens, Juan Comesawa, Kevin Hoover, Steven Leeds,
Anya Plutnski, Carolina Sartoria, Wolfgang Spohn, and James
Woodward for their comments on earlier drafts. The arguments in
section 4 reply both on published work by Halpern and Pearl,
Hitchcock, and Woodward and on conversations with Hitchcock and
Woodward.
NOTES
1
Many philosophers maintain that there are token-causal relations among facts in
addition to token causal relations among events (see for example Bennett 1988).
Some, such as Mellor (1995) maintain that the relata of causal relations are always
facts. In this essay I shall assume that the relata of token-causal relations are
events. For arguments in defense of this assumption, see for example Hausman
system. Consider for example a simple system consisting of a spring attached to the
indirect, of Z. To give truth conditions for claims about indirect causation among
variables is more complex, and there is no pressing reason to do so, since knowledge
of direct causation suffices to determine the structural equations and causal graph.
Nevertheless, here is a suggestion:
REFERENCES
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Good, I. J.: 1961, 'A Causal Calculus, I-IF, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 11, 305-18, 12, 43-51.
Hall, N.: 2004, 'Two Concepts of Causation,' in J. Collins, N. Hall and L. Paul
Mackie, J. L.: 1980, The Cement of the Universe, Oxford Press, Oxford.
University
Mellor, D. H.: 1995, The Facts of Causation, Routledge, London.
Pearl, J.: 2000, Causation: Models, Reasoning and Inference, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Salmon, W.: 1984, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure the World,
of
Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Sober, E.: 1985, 'Two Concepts of Cause', in P. Asquith and P. Kitcher (eds.),
PSA 1984, Vol. 2, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, pp. 405
424.
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin-Madison
5185 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park Street
Madison, WI 53706
U.S.A.
E-mail: dhausman@wisc.edu