Causation regularity theory

Andrew Melynk (2003, p. 150) has offered a regularity theory of causation that he maintains allows for functional events to count as causes by virtue of functional event types figuring the antecedents of regularities that are causal laws. The account is as follows ... 

Before asking why they won t be undercutting, let us first note that Melnyk requires that causation-grounding regularities be contingent, which, of course, is standard for regularity theories. Recall, however, that functional event types have manifestations. Their manifestations are the effect types (perhaps conditional effect types) of their core realizers, effect types to which the functional event types are linked by definition. There will, then, be conditional necessitation relations that functional event types bear to their manifestations. When fully ticketed to accommodate all the relevant contingencies of an actual situation, there will be a metaphysically... 

The main idea that I am challenging is that a regularity theory should try to accommodate functional events as causes. Thus, I myself would not object to Melnyk s account of causation on the grounds that it renders functional events epiphenomena. I would recommend not countenancing functional events — events with constitutive functional properties. Even if quantification is a property-forming operation, there seems to me no good reason to think that it is an event-forming one. 

About 23% of regular users of hallucinogens report experiencing flashbacks. These have been classified as perceptual (visual effects), somatic (numbness), or emotional (reexperience of a disturbing emotion). Many theories about their causation remain unproved. Usually they fade with time, and no specific treatment is needed (49). 

One, however, could choose to reject a substantive theory of causes and hold what is known as a regularity account of causes. On this type of view, A causes B just means that events of type A are regularly followed by events of type B. One who held this view would reject the notion of singular causation and hold that causation ultimately reduces to regularity (Psillos 2002 138). 

It seems to me that one of the most (if not the most) important things we need from a theory of mind is a good account of mental causation. If we think that the science of psychology, whose job it is to predict and explain human behavior, is a legitimate science, then we need it to be the case that mental properties are causal, fri addition, a great part of our survival as social creatures in this world depends on our ordinary assessment of one another s mental states and our assumption that those mental states are causally responsible for behavior. We regularly make predictions about what others are going to do and offer explanations of why others have behaved as they have based on our belief that mental states cause behaviors. If we want to retain the independently plausible idea that predictions and explanations of behavior in terms of mental states work because mental states are causal, then we need to account for how it is that mental states can be causal. 

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. ... 

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