Causal Overdetermination and Contextualism

This work explains how different theories of causation confront causal overdetermination. Chapters clarify the problem of overdetermination and explore its fundamental aspects. It is argued that a theory of causation can account for our intuitions in overdetermination cases only by accepting that the adequacy of our claims about causation depends on the context in which they are evaluated.The author proposes arguments for causal contextualism and provides insight which is valuable for resolution of the problem. These chapters enable readers to quickly absorb different perspectives on overdetermination and important theories of causation, therefore it is a work that will have a broad appeal.

Autorentext
Esteban Céspedes works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Valparaíso Complex Systems Institute, Chile, on a research project concerning causality and emergent properties. He obtained his PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Inhalt

The Counterfactual Account of Causation.- 2. The Ranking-Theoretic Account of Causation.- 3. The Probabilistic Account of Causation.- 4. Causal Processes.- 5. Explanatory Exclusion and the Context of Explanation.- 6. Conclusions and Final Remarks.