Causal Tendency: A Review

Suppose that some event F occurs and later an event E either occurs or does not.2 I am going to talk about the extent to which F tends to cause E, or the contribution from F to the tendency for E to occur, or the tendency of F to cause E, denoted by Q(E:F). For example, F might be the event that the captain of a firing squad shouts “Fire” and E might be that the victim’s life is Ended (F for Fire, E for Ended). The negation of E is denoted by Ē, which in this example means that the victim does not drop dead. The question arises whether Q(E:F) can be sensibly defined in terms of physical probability = material probability.3 I believe there is a good definition which, to state it roughly, is the weight of evidence against F if E does not occur (Good 1961, 1980e). If the victim does not drop dead it is strong evidence that the captain did not shout “Fire”. In other words the captain’s order to fire had a great deal to do with the potential death of the victim.

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