Lewis' Account of Causal Asymmetry

Lewis' Account of Causal Asymmetry PDF Author: Kerry Mulvania
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description

Lewis' Account of Causal Asymmetry

Lewis' Account of Causal Asymmetry PDF Author: Kerry Mulvania
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description


Causal Asymmetries

Causal Asymmetries PDF Author: Daniel M. Hausman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521622891
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This book, by one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science writing today, offers the most comprehensive account available of causal asymmetries. Causation is asymmetrical in many different ways. Causes precede effects; explanations cite causes not effects. Agents use causes to manipulate their effects; they don't use effects to manipulate their causes. Effects of a common cause are correlated; causes of a common effect are not. This book explains why a relationship that is asymmetrical in one of these regards is asymmetrical in the others. Hausman discovers surprising hidden connections between theories of causation and traces them all to an asymmetry of independence. This is a major book for philosophers of science that will also prove insightful to economists and statisticians.

The Temporal Asymmetry of Causation

The Temporal Asymmetry of Causation PDF Author: Alison Fernandes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108906621
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Causes always seem to come prior to their effects. What might explain this asymmetry? Causation's temporal asymmetry isn't straightforwardly due to a temporal asymmetry in the laws of nature—the laws are, by and large, temporally symmetric. Nor does the asymmetry appear due to an asymmetry in time itself. This Element examines recent empirical attempts to explain the temporal asymmetry of causation: statistical mechanical accounts, agency accounts and fork asymmetry accounts. None of these accounts are complete yet and a full explanation of the temporal asymmetry of causation will likely require contributions from all three programs.

Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality

Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality PDF Author: Huw Price
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199278180
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing from modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality "a relic of a bygone age". In this important collection 13 leading scholars revisit Russell's revolutionary conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought.

Causal Asymmetry & the Explanatory Constraint

Causal Asymmetry & the Explanatory Constraint PDF Author: Zhiheng Tang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907962417
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Causation is an asymmetric relation - if C causes E, then E does not cause C. In this book it is argued that: 1) Two major theories of causation - the regularity theory and the counterfactual theory - cannot adequately account for causal asymmetry; 2) Causal asymmetry consists in the explanatory asymmetry between cause and effect; 3) Generally, the notion of causation is dependent on the notion of explanation; in other words, explanation sets a conceptual constraint on causation. In reaching these conclusions, issues about simultaneous causation, backwards causation and absence causation are discussed.

Inconsistency, Asymmetry, and Non-Locality

Inconsistency, Asymmetry, and Non-Locality PDF Author: Mathias Frisch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198038429
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics.

Causal Asymmetry

Causal Asymmetry PDF Author: Douglas Ehring
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description


Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics

Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics PDF Author: Douglas Kutach
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019993620X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945-2015

The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945-2015 PDF Author: Kelly Becker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107173033
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 902

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Book Description
This landmark achievement in philosophical scholarship brings together leading experts from the diverse traditions of Western philosophy in a common quest to illuminate and explain the most important philosophical developments since the Second World War. Focusing particularly (but not exclusively) on those insights and movements that most profoundly shaped the English-speaking philosophical world, this volume bridges the traditional divide between 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy while also reaching beyond it. The result is an authoritative guide to the most important advances and transformations that shaped philosophy during this tumultuous and fascinating period of history, developments that continue to shape the field today. It will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary philosophy of all levels and will prove indispensable for any serious philosophical collection.

Chance and Temporal Asymmetry

Chance and Temporal Asymmetry PDF Author: Alastair Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019967342X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This volume presents twelve original essays on the metaphysics of science, with particular focus on the physics of chance and time. Experts in the field subject familiar approaches to searching critiques, and make bold new proposals in a number of key areas. Together, they set the agenda for future work on the subject.