Physical causation /

Physical causation /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Dowe, Phil.
Imprint:	Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Description:	ix, 224 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	Cambridge studies in probability, induction, and decision theory Cambridge studies in probability, induction, and decision theory.
Subject:	Causality (Physics) Causality (Physics)
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8557952

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	0521780497 9780521780490
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-219) and index.
Summary:	"Physical Causation discusses in a systematic way an original, positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes that Phil Down has been developing over the last ten years." "Dowe offers a account of causation based firmly in contemporary science. The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the world line of an object that possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities. Further, things that are properly called cause and effect are appropriately connected by a set of causal processes and interactions. The distinction between cause and effect is explained in terms of a new version of the fork theory: the direction of a certain kind of ordered pattern of events in the world. This particular version has the virtue that it allows for the possibility of backwards causation, and therefore of time travel."--Jacket.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements
1. Horses for courses: causation and the task of philosophy
2. Hume's legacy: regularity, counterfactual and probabilistic theories of causation
3. Transference theories of causation
4. Process theories of causation
5. The conserved quantity theory
6. Prevention and omission
7. Connecting causes and effects
8. The direction of causation and backwards-in-time causation
References
Index