Causation counterfactual theories

Nor is the issue that separates them whether causation analytically requires such oomph factors. Kim does not maintain that causation analytically requires transference. Nomic subsumption and counterfactual theories of causation are offered as analyses of our concept of causation, as statements of noncircular conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for causation. In contrast, transference theorists typically do not purport to be offering that kind of conceptual analysis. That causation does not analytically require such oomph factors is common ground between Kim and Loewer. 

See Schaffer (2002a) on the notion of trumping causation. The failure of Lewis s counterfactual theory to deal adequately with all kinds of preemption contributed to Lewis (2004b) rejection of the theory. 

I think, however, that we need not despair of resolving the issue, though I don t expect to resolve it here. 1 think that the issue can be adequately addressed without settling the matter of what, exactly, causation is. The leading theories of causation are nomic subsumption theories, counter-factual theories, and transference theories. " Let us set aside transference theories and also nomic subsumption theories according to which laws involve a kind oisuigeneris nomic necessity. Let us focus on only regularity and counterfactual theories - non-oomph theories - and avoid any appeal to the idea of causal work. ... 

Our concern now is how this idea fares on the counterfactual theory of causation. 

Suppose, then, that there are functional events. Functional events are not identical with their core realizers. Nor do the events overlap In the sense that they share certain events as parts. Moreover, a functional event does not imply the event that is the core realizer on the occasion in question it could be realized by some other event. Further, given that a core realizer will occupy the relevant causal role with at most nomological necessity, the core realizer will not imply the functional event. The realizer and the functional event are distinct events. Notice, however, that there is a counterfactual dependency between them. The functional event is coun-terfactually dependent on the realizing event (barring cases of realization preemption). If the realizer had not occurred, then the functional event would not have occurred. So, then, were there functional events, we would have here a counterfactual dependency between distinct events. Lewis always insisted that he wanted to allow for instantaneous causation. But, to borrow a phrase of his, surely instantaneous causation is not so very easy The relationship between a realizing event and the functional event it realizes would not be a causal relation it would be the relation of role-occupancy. Thus, functional events would yield counterexamples to the central thesis of any counterfactual theory, namely, that a counterfactual relation between distinct events suffices for causation. 

The idea that there are functional events in the role-functionalist sense does not jibe with Lewis s counterfactual theory of causation. Lewis, as we saw earlier, did not countenance functional events in that sense. The preceding discussion might well indicate reasons in addition to those that he explicitly gives when rejecting the idea that events have functional essences. I myself do not take such functional events to pose a problem for the thesis that a counterfactual dependency between distinct (in Lewis s sense) events suffices for causation. I think, rather, that a proponent of that thesis should follow Lewis in denying that there are functional events in the NRP theorist s sense. 

It is plausible that under normal conditions small diflferences in a person s brain corresponding to diflferent mental states (e.g., different intentions) lead by law to correspondingly different bodily movements. That is, that counterfactual dependencies on Lewis s construal of counterfactuals between mental events and bodily events obtains. If so, then mental events cause in the dependence sense bodily events. My proposal is not that Lewis s influence account perfectly captures our intuitive concept of causation. But I do claim that causation as influence is near enough to our folk conception of mental causation to underwrite the role of causation in folk psychology, rational deliberation, action theory, and so on. In the remainder of this chapter, I lay out a case for this claim. 

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