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SUMMARY:The new riddle of causation - Alex Broadbent (Department of Histor
 y and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20080605T153000Z
DTEND:20080605T170000Z
UID:TALK11572@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lauren Kassell
DESCRIPTION:I strike a match\, and it lights. Normally I say the strike ca
 used the flame\, and normally I do not say that the presence of oxygen cau
 sed the flame\, even though I know that but for the presence of oxygen the
 re would have been no flame. This sort of selection of cause (e.g. match s
 trike) from among the conditions (e.g. presence of oxygen) for a given eff
 ect (e.g. flame) has been called an 'invidious discrimination'. There is s
 aid to be a 'prior' philosophical question of what it is to be a cause\, u
 nselectively speaking\; and it is this question which philosophers have mo
 stly tried to answer. But I argue that this prior question is a philosophi
 cal fantasy. The difference between cause and condition is fundamental to 
 our concept of causation\, and central to the uses we make of it. Accordin
 gly\, philosophical accounts of causation need to be accounts of selection
  as well. I propose and defend an analysis of causation\, employing a simp
 le but untried counterfactual\, which makes the difference between cause a
 nd condition as central to our causal concept as the difference between ca
 use and coincidence.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
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