General causation

David Sapire

pp. 321-347

in: Synthese 86 (3), 1991.

Abstract

This paper outlines a general theory of efficient causation, a theory that deals in a unified way with traditional or deterministic, indeterministic, probabilistic, and other causal concepts. Theorists like Lewis, Salmon, and Suppes have attempted to broaden our causal perspective by reductively analysing causal notions in other terms. By contrast, the present theory rests in the first place on a non-reductive analysis of traditional causal concepts — into formal or structural components, on the one hand, and a physical or metaphysical component, on the other. The analyzans is then generalised. The theory also affords a more general propensity notion than is standard, one that helps solve major problems facing propensity interpretations of probability.