Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published April 1, 2013 | public
Journal Article

Causal foundationalism, physical causation, and difference-making

Glynn, Luke

Abstract

An influential tradition in the philosophy of causation has it that all token causal facts are, or are reducible to, facts about difference-making. Challenges to this tradition have typically focused on pre-emption cases, in which a cause apparently fails to make a difference to its effect. However, a novel challenge to the difference-making approach has recently been issued by Alyssa Ney. Ney defends causal foundationalism, which she characterizes as the thesis that facts about difference-making depend upon facts about physical causation. She takes this to imply that causation is not fundamentally a matter of difference-making. In this paper, I defend the difference-making approach against Ney's argument. I also offer some positive reasons for thinking, pace Ney, that causation is fundamentally a matter of difference-making.

Additional Information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Received: 18 May 2011; Accepted: 13 December 2011; Published online: 21 December 2011. For very helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Christopher Hitchcock, Thomas Kroedel, Dennis Lehmkuhl, Alyssa Ney, Samuel Schindler, Wolfgang Spohn, Joel Velasco, and two anonymous referees for this journal. Funding for this research was provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant SP279/15-1 and by the James S. McDonnell Foundation Causal Learning Collaborative.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023