Dear all, A reminder that today at 5:30pm our own grad student Shyane Siriwardena will be presenting her paper "On Context-Relative Accounts of Causation" (abstract below).
Best, Emily Thomas _______________________ "On Context-Relative Accounts of Causation" David Lewis propounded a counterfactual analysis of causation, the last incarnation of which appeared in his "Causation as Influence" (2000). Many have objected to the Lewisian position, and especially to the 2000 proposal, based on what Peter Menzies terms an objection from *profligate causes.* Peter Menzies, Cei Maslen, Jonathan Schaffer and others reject the influence proposal for what they see as its inability to distinguish genuine causes from *mere background conditions*, demonstrating this inadequacy by way of counterexample. Lewis anticipates this concern, providing a solution from contrastive explanation - a solution that context-relativists reject. I defend Lewis, arguing that the influence proposal in tandem with the pragmatics of explanation suffice to account for our intuitions about causes. _____________________________________________________ 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
