Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Abstract

[Introduction] One event, e, counterfactually depends upon another event, c, just in
\ncase e would not have occurred had c not occurred. Beginning with the
\nseminal paper of David Lewis in 1973, there has been a lively philosophical
\ntradition of trying to analyze token causation in terms of counterfactual
\ndependence. The simplest possible counterfactual theory of token
\ncausation—henceforth the simple theory—would identify token causation
\nwith counterfactual dependence: c is a token cause of e just in case e
\ncounterfactually depends upon c. This simple account is threatened by
\ncounterexamples on both sides. Some authors, but by no means all, take
\ncases of prevention and omission to show that there can be counterfactual
\ndependence without token causation. Cases of preemption have
\nbeen widely taken to show that there can be token causation without counterfactual dependence; many authors (but not Lewis himself) also
\nconsider cases of overdetermination to be counterexamples to the necessity
\nof counterfactual dependence for token causation. There have been
\nmany attempts to deal with the problems of preemption and overdetermination, none entirely satisfactory. We will examine the shortcomings
\nof some of these theories in sections 11–13.