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Completeness and Indeterministic Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Scott Devito
Scott Devito*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Abstract

In The Chances of Explanation, Paul Humphreys presents a metaphysical analysis of causation. In this paper, I argue that this analysis is flawed. Humphreys' model of Causality incorporates three completeness requirements. I show that these completeness requirements, when applied in the world, force us to take causally irrelevant factors to be causally relevant. On this basis, I argue that Humphreys' analysis should be rejected.

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Footnotes

†

Research on which this paper is based was supported by the University of Rochester. Grateful acknowledgement is also made to Henry E. Kyburg, Jr.

‡

Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.

References

DeVito, S. (1996), Epistemic Probabilistic Causality. Dissertation.Google Scholar
Humphreys, P. (1989), The Chances of Explanation: Causal Explanation in the Social, Medical and Physical Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, J. (1994), “Review: Paul Humphreys [1989]: The Chances of Explanation”, The Chances of Explanation 45: 353–374.Google Scholar