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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on May 16, 2005
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005 56(2):221-253; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi115
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Articles

A Theory of Causation: Causae Causantes (Originating Causes) as Inus Conditions in Branching Space-Times

Nuel Belnap

University of Pittsburgh, belnap{at}pitt.edu

Branching space-times (BST) theory, as developed elsewhere, permits a sound and rigorously definable notion of ‘originating cause’ or causa causans—a type of transition event—of an outcome event. Mackie has famously suggested that causes form a family of ‘inus’ conditions, where an inus condition is ‘an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition’. In this essay the needed concepts of BST theory are developed in detail, and it is then proved that the causae causantes of a given outcome event have exactly the structure of a set of Mackie inus conditions. The proof requires the assumption that there is no EPR-like ‘funny business’. This seems enough to constitute a theory of ‘causation’ in at least one of its many senses.

  1. Introduction
  2. The cement of the universe
  3. Preliminaries
    3.1 First definitions and postulates
    3.2 Ontology: propositions
    3.3 Ontology: initial events
    3.4 Ontology: outcome events
    3.5 Ontology: transition events
    3.6 Propositional language applied to events

  4. Causae causantes
    4.1 Causae causantes are basic primary transition events
    4.2 Causae causantes of an outcome chain
    4.3 No funny business

  5. Causae causantes and inns and inus conditions
    5.1 Inns conditions of outcome chains: not quite
    5.2 Inns conditions of outcome chains
    5.3 Inns conditions of scattered outcome events
    5.4 Inus conditions for disjunctive outcome events
    5.5 Inns and inus conditions of transition events

  6. Counterfactual conditionals
  7. Appendix: Tense and modal connectives in BST


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