The Causation Recipe

Abstract

In a Recent article [9], Alexander Rosenberg attacks the “manipulative” view of causation as being unilluminating and as being beset with difficulties. As a proponent of that view [3], I have felt it necessary to take up cudgels in its defence.Rosenberg's criticisms are directed at Gasking's version of this view [5]. Gasking's recipe for causation is, “one says ‘A causes B’ in cases where one could produce an event of the A sort as a means to producing one of the B sort” (p. 485). Here it is taken for granted that we have general manipulative techniques for producing events of the A sort and that this is implicitly assumed when one speaks of A as a cause. There is one qualification to this formula for causes which arises from the necessity for individuating processes, namely, that, for A to be the cause of B, it must not always lead to B (for then the technique for producing A would also be a B-producing one), but only in special cases.

Causation and reason: R. G. Collingwood and causal analysis as the essence of social thinking

“…Buzzoni (2014, 386). Further support can be found in Freundlich (1977), Gillies (2005) and Buzzoni (2014). 28.…”

A Note on Doing

“…The central problem which the analysis proposes to solve is this: wherein lies the asymmetry of a causal relation between A and B which is over and above the mere symmetric lawful relation between them? 3 This point seems to me to be on the mark in at least two important respects: first, it shifts the debate in action accounts from that of fixing the meaning of causation to that of fixing its referent, 4 and second, it focuses the debate on the key problem of fixing the asymmetry of causal relations. 5 Nonetheless, it seems to me to be equally clear that notions of agency or action (or more simply "doing") can be of no use in this role even if the charge of circularity does not hold.…”