List and Menzies on High‐Level Causation

Abstract

I raise two objections against Christian List and Peter Menzies' influential account of high-level causation. Improving upon some of Stephen Yablo's earlier work, I develop an alternative theory which evades both objections. The discussion calls into question List and Menzies' main contention, namely that the exclusion principle, applied to difference-making, is false.

Proportionality in Causation, Part I: Theories

“…Relevance is challenging to spell out 24 . The notion tied to ordinary counterfactuals seems inappropriate (Yablo, 1992a, p. 276, Weslake, 2017, p. 222, Jäger, 2021, p. 575). Suppose, for example, that had the bolt not snapped suddenly, it wouldn't have snapped at all.…”

“…holding c fixed, c* makes no difference to the chance of e.9 It may instead be defined probabilistically (à laReichenbach, 1956): c screens off c* from e iff Pr (e | c & c*) = Pr(e | c)10 This differs slightly from the formulation inYablo (1992aYablo ( , 1992b. Officially, Yablo also requires two further conditions similar to those in §2.3.1, but these seem redundant(Jäger, 2021).11 Strevens speaks in terms of difference-making causation/causal explanation rather than proportionality, and in terms of the abstraction of a causal model rather than determination. See alsoWeslake, 2010;Mackie, 1974, Putnam, 1975, Garfinkel, 1981Jackson & Pettit, 1988 are important precursors.…”

“…10 10 This differs slightly from the formulation in Yablo (1992a, 1992b). Officially, Yablo also requires two further conditions similar to those in §2.3.1, but these seem redundant (Jäger, 2021). …”

Proportionality in Causation, Part II: Applications and Challenges

“…One implementation, suggested by Yablo (2003, p. 326), is to trade off naturalness directly against proportionality 11 . Another, suggested by Jäger (2021, p. 577), is to trade off ‘bad disjunctiveness’ against proportionality, where this is defined via naturalness following Langton and Lewis (1998).…”

“…For one thing, some background conditions are usually required: the presentation of a red target would not yield pecking if the pigeon were blindfolded. As Jäger (2021, p. 583) and Vaassen (2022, p. 2827) point out, this raises a potential problem for proportionality: the conjunction of the ordinary cause with the required background condition threatens to outcompete the ordinary cause. For example, the presentation of the red target fails to screen off the conjunction of the presentation of the red target with the absence of the blindfold.…”