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Causality and Determinism: Tension, or Outright Conflict?

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:
CreatorsEmailORCID
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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