Overdetermination Underdetermined

Bernstein, Sara

doi:10.1007/s10670-015-9726-1

Cited by 41 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…From an empirical perspective, V will eventually reveal itself as a smoking-gun cause of φ , provided you start a process of examination where you gradually "remove" more and more known causes of φ . 12 11 For instance, it is common in the literature to say that overdetermination occurs when there are two or more distinct sets of causes that are both sufficient for the outcome [3]. Clearly, no member of such a set is a but-for cause, so if our theory of causality classifies these elements as causes in the first place, Definition 3.1 correctly identifies them as overdetermining causes.…”

Section: Preemption Overdetermination and The Principle Of Presumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, when we consider the NESS test or the most recent definition of HP causality more closely, we notice something strange: in the situation described above, these definitions fail to recognise the contribution made by Jane, but in a model where Julie is assumed to have exactly one alternative action, 3 In [5], formal theories of actual causation are criticised for being based on "induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples". To improve the methodology, the authors propose an approach where the aim is to find "reliable indicators" for actual causation, rather than sweeping formal definitions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Preemption and Overdetermination in Formal Theories of Causality

Dyrkolbotn

2017

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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One of the key challenges when looking for the causes of a complex event is to determine the causal status of factors that are neither individually necessary nor individually sufficient to produce that event. In order to reason about how such factors should be taken into account, we need a vocabulary to distinguish different cases. In philosophy, the concept of overdetermination and the concept of preemption serve an important purpose in this regard, although their exact meaning tends to remain elusive. In this paper, I provide theory-neutral definitions of these concepts using structural equations in the Halpern-Pearl tradition. While my definitions do not presuppose any particular causal theory, they take such a theory as a variable parameter. This enables us to specify formal constraints on theories of causality, in terms of a pre-theoretic understanding of what preemption and overdetermination actually mean. I demonstrate the usefulness of this by presenting and arguing for what I call the principle of presumption. Roughly speaking, this principle states that a possible cause can only be regarded as having been preempted if there is independent evidence to support such an inference. I conclude by showing that the principle of presumption is violated by the two main theories of causality formulated in the Halpern-Pearl tradition. The paper concludes by defining the class of empirical causal theories, characterised in terms of a fixed-point of counterfactual reasoning about difference-making. It is argued that theories of actual causality ought to be empirical.

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Section: Preemption Overdetermination and The Principle Of Presumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Preemption and Overdetermination in Formal Theories of Causality

Dyrkolbotn

2017

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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“…To illustrate, consider a rock that weighs one pound (cf. Bernstein , 19). And consider two (non‐overlapping) halves of the rock, each of which weighs 0.5 pounds.…”

Section: Against (Tiehen's Case) For (T2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…see Bennett 2003Bennett , 2008. But there are (compelling, to my mind) reasons to doubt that such strategies succeed; see Bernstein (2016), Morris (2015) and Saad (2017) for criticisms of some such strategies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Should Reductive Physicalists Reject the Causal Argument?

Saad

2017

Dialectica

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Reductive physicalists typically accept the causal argument for their view. On this score, Tiehen (2015) parts ways with his fellow reductive physicalists. Heretically, he argues that reductive physicalists should reject the causal argument. After presenting Tiehen's challenge, I defend the orthodoxy. Although not myself a reductive physicalist, I show how reductive physicalists can resist this challenge to the causal argument. I conclude with a positive suggestion about how reductive physicalists should use the causal argument.

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“…First, the caveat: while by way of motivating the nonreductive physicalist and soft determinist strategies, we present these in broadly positive terms—for example, as being promising so far as satisfying certain desiderata is concerned—the structural parallel we aim to draw here does not depend on the success of these strategies or the accounts implementing them. Indeed, given that the strategies in the cases of nonreductive physicalism and soft determinism are structurally similar, reasons to think the strategy problematic in one case might serve as reasons to think the strategy problematic in the other (for pessimistic assessments of the nonreductive physicalist strategy to come, see, e.g., Audi 2012, Morris 2013, and Bernstein 2016). What is most important for our purposes is that these two seemingly different types of accounts are in fact structurally similar, in ways that we will now try to articulate; whether these accounts are ultimately correct is (way) beyond the purview of this paper.…”

Section: Soft Determinism and Nonreductive Physicalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Will and Mental Quausation

Bernstein¹,

Wilson²

2016

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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ABSTRACT:The questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are clearly connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-à-vis other events. Nonetheless, the free will and mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining the mutual bearing of these debates. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem of mental ‘quausation’, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type can be efficacious qua the types they are—qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative—given reasons to think such events are causally irrelevant. We go on to identify parallels between hard determinism and eliminativist physicalism and between soft determinism and nonreductive physicalism, and we use these parallels to identify a new argument against hard determinism and to reveal and motivate a common strategy underlying apparently diverse soft determinist accounts.

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Overdetermination Underdetermined

Cited by 41 publications

References 21 publications

On Preemption and Overdetermination in Formal Theories of Causality

On Preemption and Overdetermination in Formal Theories of Causality

Should Reductive Physicalists Reject the Causal Argument?

Free Will and Mental Quausation

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