Causal Factuals

Abstract

Many people think that counterfactuals offer a key to understanding causation. For a causal claim seems to many to involve, in part, a claim about the way things would have been without the “cause”. What is nice about counterfactuals is that they seem to provide a way to capture what is so tempting about using Mill’s methods (and Hume’s General Rules) as an analysis (instead of a test) of causation. The idea is this: hold everything the same, take out the “cause” event, and “see” if the “effect” event occurs.