The basic idea of counterfactual theories of causation is that the meaning of causal claims
can be explained in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form “If event c had not …

Much of the philosophical literature on causation ha on the concept of" actual" causation,
sometimes ca ken" causation. In particular, it is this notion of a sation that many …

Absences. See also Facts, negative; Void and abnormality criterion, 295 of absences, 283
as background conditions, 173–175 and biff, 284–285, 288, 448–449 cannot be causes, 25 …

Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided as follows. First, there
are questions about the nature of the causal relata, including (1.1) whether they are in …

One event, e, counterfactually depends upon another event, c, just in case e would not have
occurred had c not occurred. Beginning with the seminal paper of David Lewis in 1973 …

People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some
particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket …

Imagine that it is a law of magic that the first spell cast on a given day match the
enchantment that midnight. Suppose that at noon Merlin casts a spell (the first that day) to …

Counterfactual analyses have received a good deal of attention in recent years, resulting in
a host of counterexamples and objections to the simple analysis and its descendants. The …

Abstract On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by
a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counter-factually) depends on …

The metaphysics of causation asks questions about what it takes for claims like these to be
true—what kind of relation the claims are about, and in virtue of what these relations …