SINGULAR CAUSAL STATEMENTS AND STRICT DETERMINISTIC LAWS

Abstract

This paper argues that fundamental deterministic dynamical laws cannot be used to select from among the events falling within the backwards light cone of an event any narrower class that might be regarded as causes of the event. It applies this in a critique of Donald Davidson’s Principle of the Nomological Character of Causality and the use he makes of it in his argument for anomalous monism. In this paper I do not assume that dynamical laws incorporate a primitive notion of causality that entails an intrinsic direction of time—as Davidson does in his formulation of dynamical laws as causal laws.