Woodward, James (2008) Psychologial Studies of Causal and Counterfactual Reasoning. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Counterfactual theories of causation of the sort presented in Mackie, 1974, and Lewis, 1973 are a familiar part of the philosophical landscape. Such theories are typically advanced primarily as accounts of the metaphysics of causation. But they also raise empirical psychological issues concerning the processes and representations that underlie human causal reasoning. For example, do human subjects internally represent causal claims in terms of counterfactual judgments and when they engage in causal reasoning, does this involves reasoning about counterfactual claims? This paper explores several such issues from a broadly interventionist perspective.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Woodward, James
Keywords:	causation, counterfactuals, causal selection
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Psychology General Issues > Causation
Depositing User:	Jim Woodward
Date Deposited:	13 Aug 2008
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:16
Item ID:	4157
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Psychology General Issues > Causation
Date:	February 2008
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/4157

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