What Does It Take to Make a Difference? A Reply to Andreas and Günther
Andreas and Günther have recently proposed a difference-making definition of actual causation. In this paper I show that there exist conclusive counterexamples to their definition, by which I mean examples that are unacceptable to everyone, including Andreas and Günther. Concretely, I show that their definition allows c to cause e even when c is not a causal ancestor of e. I then proceed to identify their non-standard definition of causal models as the source of the problem, and argue that there is no viable strategy open to them to fixing it. I conclude that their definition of causation is damaged beyond repair.
Authors
- Sander Beckers (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9202-0644)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Journal of Philosophy
- Published
- 2025-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil202512249
- Primary Topic
- Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00