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The Oxford Handbook of Causation
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The Oxford Handbook of Causation

Edited by Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock, Peter Menzies

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Causation provides an overview of topics related to causation, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge, and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. In addition, causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. The articles, which are all written by leading experts in the field of causation, provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims.

Keywords: ancient Greeks, logical empiricists, philosophy, metaphysics, laws of nature, probability, action, free will, epistemology, statistical data, perception, knowledge, explanation, the mind, ethics, acts, omissions, moral value, consequences

Bibliographic Information

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Print Publication Date:
Nov 2009
ISBN:
9780199279739
Published to Oxford Handbooks Online:
Jan 2010
DOI:
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199279739.001.0001

Editors

Helen Beebee, editor
Helen Beebee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. Her publications include ‘Seeing Causing’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (2003); ‘Causing and Nothingness’ in J. Collins, E. J. Hall, and L. A. Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals (MIT, 2004); and Hume on Causation (Routledge, 2006).

Christopher Hitchcock, editor
Christopher Hitchcock is Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. He has published numerous papers in the Philosophy of Science, especially on the topic of causation, in journals such as Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Review, Noûs, Philosophy of Science, and British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

Peter Menzies, editor
Peter Menzies is Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has written numerous aricles on causation, including most recently 'Causation in Context' in H. Price and R. Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited (Oxford University Press, 2007) and 'Causal Models, Token Causation, and Processes' in Philosophy of Science 71 (2004).


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