Hoefer, Carl (2004) Causality and Determinism: Tension, or Outright Conflict? [Preprint]

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Abstract

In the philosophical tradition, the notions of determinism and causality are strongly linked: it is assumed that in a world of deterministic laws, causality may be said to reign supreme; and in any world where the causality is strong enough, determinism must hold. I will show that these alleged linkages are based on mistakes, and in fact get things almost completely wrong. In a deterministic world that is anything like ours, there is no room for genuine causation. Though there may be stable enough macro-level regularities to serve the purposes of human agents, the sense of “causality” that can be maintained is one that will at best satisfy Humeans and pragmatists, not causal fundamentalists.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Hoefer, Carl
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in spanish journal Revista de Filosofía
Keywords:	causation, causality, probabilistic causality, determinism
Subjects:	General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Causation General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
Depositing User:	Carl Hoefer
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2004
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:13
Item ID:	2071
Subjects:	General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Causation General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
Date:	November 2004
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2071

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