Causation: Pluralistic, Redulpicative and Transitive

John Haldane (University of St. Andrews)

Causation: Pluralistic, Redulpicative and Transitive.
In several areas of analytic philosophy, particularly in metaphysics, it appears that empiricist orthodoxies have given way to a wide diversity of views motivated by attempts to account for explanatory and speculative practices rather than being constrained by antecedent theories of the nature of perception. At the same time, however, there are continuing influences of views of reality connected to those theories. I will discuss this issue preparatory to outlining an approach to the philosophy of causation that one might term ‘liberal pluralism’. This links causation and explanation and in recognizing the diversity of kinds of explanation posits a diversity of causal relata and causal relations. I will then consider the question of the logical form of causal statements suggesting that this favours a departure from extensionalism. The same analysis is relevant to the issue of the transitivity of causation and in considering that will lead to some discussion of different kinds of causal sequences.