Word on the street is that an exciting new Cambridge group philosophy blog is about to appear. (Rumour has it there’s a link to it hidden somewhere on this page.) If early indications are true TAR might be losing its (self-proclaimed) mantle as the go-to philosophy blog.

While on Cambridge philosophy, I’ve been meaning to recommend Carolina Sartorio’s paper Causes as Difference-Makers. In it Carolina argues for

CDM: If C caused E, then the absence of C wouldn’t have caused E.

If CDM is true it imposes, it turns out, quite a sharp constraint on theories of causation. In the paper it is noted how counterfactual dependence theories and regularity theories are inconsistent with it, for example.

I keep thinking I have counterexamples to CDM, but none of them seem entirely convincing under close reflection, so I thought I shouldn’t wait until I could refute the paper before I recommend it.

This isn’t the only thing that’s been stopping me writing up a counterexample to CDM (there’s the lack of said convincing counterexample too), but it hasn’t helped that I decided on a principle for presenting counterexamples to theories of causation. Every such counterexample must be presented in dialogue form, and the pattern set out in the counterexample must be exemplified somewhere in the dialogue. So, for example

ODYSSEUS: I think causation is counterfactual dependence.
SCYLLA: But wise Odysseus, causation is transitive and counterfactual dependence is intransitive.
CHARYBDIS: And I think powerful Odysseus is forgetting about overdetermination. If your sword fells a man who the Fates have decided must die, then you cause his death, even though had you not felled him, the Fates would have ensured he died some other way.
ODYSSEUS: You have convinced me, evil monsters of the deep. But must you be so verbose? You had me at transitivity.

I think this can be quite cheesy in some cases, but if one wanted to present four or five different counterexamples, and separated out the section where a particular counterexample was discussed from where it is exemplified, it might work well.

But I don’t think my proposed comic masterpiece will get written any time soon. So if you’re looking for first-class work on causation, I’d highly recommend reading Carolina’s paper rather than waiting for me to attempt to produce anything.