The Difference Between Cause and Condition
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Commonly we distinguish the strike of a match, as a cause of the match lighting, from the presence of oxygen, as a mere condition. In this paper I propose an account of this phenomenon, which I call causal selection. I suggest some reasons for taking causal selection seriously, and indicate some shortcomings of the popular contrastive approach. Chief among these is the lack of an account of contrast choice. I propose that contrast choice is often just the counterfactual scenario in which the effect does not occur: I suggest that if c causes e, then if e hadn't occurred, c wouldn't have occurred. I argue that this is a necessary condition on causation which causes meet but mere conditions fail.
Author: Alex Broadbent
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2093461685