Abstract
We put forward a counterfactual analysis of deterministic causation (the Potentially Complete Ancestor analysis) which, we argue, deals with cases of preemptive causation better than Lewis’s Quasi-Dependence approach. The basic idea is that, if c is a cause of e, then, perhaps in the absence of a candidate competitor cause of e, e might be a descendent c. e is a descendent of c if and only if there is a chain of counterfactual dependence beginning with c and ending with e involving only actual events. Candidate effects cannot be descendents of pre-empted causes because there will always be an event missing in the pre-empted chain.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 219-225 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Analysis |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Publication status | Published - 1996 |