Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Recently, Ross and Woodward (2022) argued that the reversibility of an outcome—that is, whether the outcome can be undone—affects causal judgments. One prediction of their account is that reversibility affects causal judgments in late-preemption scenarios, where people typically judge that events that produce the outcome earlier are more causal than preempted alternative events that would have otherwise produced the outcome. Ross and Woodward’s account predicts that when the outcome is reversible, people would judge these events similarly—as in standard overdetermination cases. In three experiments, we found no evidence that reversibility affects causal judgments in late-preemption cases. We discuss how these results affect the experimental philosophy and cognitive science of causation, causal modeling, and experimental jurisprudence.
Source: Philosophical Psychology
Authors: Paul Henne, Karla Perez, Chad McCracken
Institutions: Lake Forest College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4402812675