Graded Causation and Defaults

Abstract

Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has shown that judgments of actual causation are often influenced by consideration of defaults, typicality, and normality. A number of philosophers and computer scientists have also suggested that an appeal to such factors can help deal with problems facing existing accounts of actual causation. This article develops a flexible formal framework for incorporating defaults, typicality, and normality into an account of actual causation. The resulting account takes actual causation to be both graded and comparative. We then show how our account would handle a number of standard cases. 1 Introduction 2 Causal Models 3 The HP Definition of Actual Causation 4 The Problem of Isomorphism 5 Defaults, Typicality, and Normality 6 Extended Causal Models 7 Examples 7.1 Omissions 7.2 Knobe effects 7.3 Causes versus background conditions 7.4 Bogus prevention 7.5 Causal chains 7.6 Legal doctrines of intervening causes 7.7 Pre-emption and short circuits 8 Conclusion