Oomph factor

There is another way that oomph factors have been invoked in accounts of causation, a way that is entirely independent of the idea of whether there is a sui generis kind of nomic necessity. Such factors are invoked in transference theories of causation, according to which causation involves the transfer of some preserved quantity. Kim (1998b, 2007) makes it clear that he favors a kind of transference theory of causation. Wesley Salmon (1984, 1994), whom Kim cites with approval, held a transference theory according to which causation involves the transference of some kind of conserved quantity or other, energy (or mass energy), or momentum. Kim, however, he does not commit himself to any specific transference theory." ... 

It might be thought that Loewer holds there are no oomph factors on the grounds that physics has no need of the hypothesis that there are oomph... 

For a somewhat different transference theory, see Dowe (2000). Galaaen (2006) explores the role of such oomph factors in science. 

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. 

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