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Critical Notice: D. H. Mellor, The Facts of Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Phil Dowe
Phil Dowe*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Tasmania
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Extract

The Facts of Causation claims to be a “complete account of causation and its implications.” Mellor's concern is with singular causation; that is, where causes and effects are singular (he takes general causation to be a generalization concerning singular causation (pp. 6–7)). Singular causes and effects come in two sorts. Firstly, there are facts. Facts are actual states of affairs, and states of affairs correlate with whatever can be expressed in a sentence (so facts correlate with whatever can be expressed in a true sentence) (8–9). For example, that Don falls and that Don dies are facts, if actual. In general terms, the causation of one fact, E, by another, C, fits under the designation ‘E, because C’.

Type
Review Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 162 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Tasmania, GPO 252–41, Hobart 7001, Australia.

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