Causal Relata and Causal Structure
What sorts of things stand in the causal relation, events, facts, or features? And how is the causal relation structured in cases of overdetermination, preemption, and absence? This topic addresses the architecture of causation.
Definition
Causal relata are the entities that figure as causes and effects; causal structure concerns how these relata are connected in complex cases.
Scope
Covers candidates for the causal relata such as events, facts, and tropes; the adicity of causation; and structural problems including overdetermination, late and early preemption, and causation by and of absences.
Core questions
- Are causes and effects events, facts, or something else?
- Is causation a binary or a contrastive relation?
- How should overdetermination and preemption be analyzed?
- Can absences be causes or effects?
Key concepts
- Event
- Fact
- Adicity
- Overdetermination
- Preemption
- Causation by absence
- Contrastive causation
Key theories
- Events as causal relata
- Davidson argues that singular causation relates events, with causal statements reporting an extensional relation between particular events however they are described.
- Facts and conditions as relata
- Mackie and others treat causes as facts or conditions, fitting the analysis of causation in terms of INUS conditions and sufficient conditions rather than concrete events.
- Overdetermination and preemption
- Cases where two sufficient causes bring about an effect, or where one cause preempts another, test theories of causation; Schaffer analyzes how such structures bear on counterfactual and other accounts.
History
Davidson's 1967 defense of events as causal relata framed the debate over the adicity and relata of causation. Counterexamples involving overdetermination and preemption, much discussed by Lewis and Schaffer, drove refinements of counterfactual and other theories and raised the question of whether causation is binary or contrastive.
Debates
- What are the relata of causation?
- Some hold that causation relates concrete events, others that it relates facts, features, or aspects; the choice affects how fine-grained causal claims are and how puzzles of selection and absence are handled.
Key figures
- Donald Davidson
- J. L. Mackie
- Jonathan Schaffer
- David Lewis
- Jaegwon Kim
Related topics
Seminal works
- davidson1967
- schaffer2003
Frequently asked questions
- What is causal preemption?
- Preemption occurs when a backup cause would have produced an effect but the actual cause got there first, so the effect does not counterfactually depend on the actual cause. Such cases are a major challenge for counterfactual theories of causation.