Dear all, A reminder that Dr Robert Northcott (Birkbeck) will be talking at Serious Metaphysics tomorrow, at 12pm in the Philosophy Faculty Board Room. The talk is on 'Pre-emption and Causation' (abstract below) and it will last one hour: 30 minutes for presentation, followed by another 30 for discussion. We'll go for an informal lunch afterwards - everyone is welcome.
Best, Emily ______________________ 'Pre-emption and Causation' Pre-emption cases are the most famous difficulty for the counterfactual theory of causation. Responses have included various refinements of the counterfactual theory, simple rejection of that theory, or recourse to pluralism. I'll propose a different response, namely defending a very simple version of the counterfactual theory via an explicit appeal to psychology. To this end, I present new pre-emption cases in which our causal judgment has been empirically shown to be the reverse of that in standard cases. I explain why this situation tells against every current theory. I then argue that such judgment-reversals do indirectly offer one way out - but it is a way out available to the counterfactual theory alone. If this analysis is correct, the true theoretical implications of pre-emption cases are then quite the opposite of what is usually thought - for they end up telling in <favour> of the counterfactual theory of causation, not against it. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are now archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
