Helen Beebee

University of Leeds · School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science (PRHS)

The chapter explores whether, or to what extent, recent work in experimental philosophy puts pressure on the idea that the concept of causation is ‘egalitarian’. Causal selection – where experimental subjects tend to rate the causal strength of (for example) a norm-violator more strongly than a non-norm-violator – is a well established phenomenon,...

This volume is a collection of essays on new perspectives on the philosophy of David Lewis. The main topics under discussion come from major areas of analytic philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, language, and ethics. Specifically, the chapters discuss the metaphysics and epistemology of modality, the status of grounding, the...

This volume is a collection of essays on new perspectives on the philosophy of David Lewis. The main topics under discussion come from major areas of analytic philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, language, and ethics. Specifically, the chapters discuss the metaphysics and epistemology of modality, the status of grounding, the...

John Martin Fischer argues that a version of the Consequence Argument that invokes a principle he calls the ‘Principle of the Fixity of the Past and Laws’ (PFPL) is immune to the broadly Lewisian response that the compatibilist can make to the ‘conditional’ version of the argument. In his contribution to this volume, he argues—in part by appealing...

In an outline of a paper found amongst his philosophical papers and correspondence after his untimely death in 2001—“Nihil Obstat: An Analysis of Ability,” reproduced in this volume—David Lewis sketched a new compatibilist account of abilities, according to which someone is able to A if and only if there is no obstacle to their A-ing, where an obst...

For the past twenty years the lack of diversity in professional philosophy has come under increasing scrutiny. Reports that demonstrate the lack of women’s and BAME representation in the field, alongside high-profile sexual harassment scandals involving prominent philosophers and articles in mainstream news outlets that have drawn attention to the...

Louise Antony draws a now well-known distinction between two explanatory models for researching and addressing the issue of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy – the ‘Different Voices’ (DV) and ‘Perfect Storm’ (PS) models – and argues that, in view of PS’s considerably higher social value, DV should be abandoned. We argue that Antony misunder...

Revisionist approaches to the ethics of war seem to imply that civilians on the unjust side of a conflict can be legitimate targets of defensive attack. In response, some authors have argued that although civilians do often causally contribute to unjustified global threats – by voting for war, writing propaganda articles, or manufacturing munitions...

I define 'philosophical scepticism' as the view that philosophers do not and cannot know many of the substantive philosophical claims that they make or implicitly assume. I argue for philosophical scepticism via the 'methodology challenge' and the 'disagreement challenge'. I claim that the right response to philosophical scepticism is to abandon th...

Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by an international team of experts. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the life and work of Peter Menzies, who made a difference in the lives of students, colleagues, and friends. Topics co...

This chapter traces Hume’s search for the impression-source of the idea of necessary connection through Book 1 of the Treatise. It then sketches and evaluates the main interpretative positions concerning Hume’s account of causation. These positions characterize Hume either as a regularity theorist who thinks that causation is merely a matter of tem...

The questions 'what makes it the case that one event causes another?' and 'what makes it the case that something is a law of nature?' are highly controversial ones for which, among contemporary philosophers, there is no answer that can claim orthodoxy. This article sketches some of the most influential theories of causation and lawhood.

Modality is standardly thought to come in two varieties: de dicto and de re. De re modality concerns the attribution of modal features to things or individuals, and enshrines a commitment to Aristotelian essentialism. This chapter considers how David Lewis's conception of de re modality fits into his overall metaphysics. The hypothesis is that the...

This chapter explores the prospects for broadly projectivist accounts of causation. It argues that a Hume-style account, based on the projection of our inferential practices, is inferior to a Ramsey-style account that is based on the projection of degrees of belief from the perspective of the deliberating agent, since the latter but not the former...

This chapter explores the prospects for broadly projectivist accounts of causation. It argues that a Hume-style account, based on the projection of our inferential practices, is inferior to a Ramsey-style account that is based on the projection of degrees of belief from the perspective of the deliberating agent, since the latter but not the former...

This is an overview of the principles that underpin philosophy of science and how they may provide a framework for the diagnostic process. Although philosophy dates back to antiquity, it is only more recently that philosophers have begun to enunciate the scientific method. Since Aristotle formulated deduction, other modes of reasoning including ind...

‘Natural kind essentialism’—here defined as the view that (i) the existence of natural kinds is a mind- and theory-independent matter, (ii) their essences are intrinsic, and (iii) they have a hierarchical structure—is commonly thought to be justified by appeal to Kripke–Putnam semantics, according to which propositions like ‘water is H20’ are neces...

In §1.4, I introduced The Consequence Argument, so-called because it trades on the fact that if determinism is true, our acts are consequences of the laws of nature plus facts about the past – that is, the laws plus the past entail that we perform them. As I said in §1.4, a very rough summary of the argument goes like this: The laws of nature and f...

Are we morally responsible for what we do? Ordinarily, we take it for granted that we are. You might feel guilty about forgetting your mother’s birthday, or declining a friend’s party invitation when you knew they really wanted you to go. If your mother forgets your birthday, or your friend declines your invitation, you might resent them for it, an...

There is psychological evidence that ‘typical’ characteristics can acquire normative status: what is atypical can come to be seen as deviant. I consider two main areas where this idea is relevant to the case of philosophy: first, the professional philosophy seminar or conference talk, where an adversarial, and sometimes downright hostile, atmospher...

This comprehensive introductory guide includes discussion of the major contemporary positions on compatibilism and incompatibilism, and of the central arguments that are a focus of the current debate, including the Consequence Argument, manipulation arguments, and Frankfurt's famous argument against the 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities.

Hume scholars have long disputed how we should understand his famous "two definitions" of causation. A serious problem with existing accounts is that they fit uneasily with Hume's claim in the Treatise that the two definitions correspond to causation considered separately as a "natural" and as a "philosophical" relation. This paper advances a new i...

This was the first-ever study of the state of women in philosophy in the UK.

Causation is one of the most important and enduring topics in philosophy, going as far back as Aristotle. In this lucid and enthralling account, Helen Beebee covers all the major debates and issues in the philosophy of causation, making it the ideal starting point for those approaching the subject for the first time. Beginning with an introduction...

Ever wondered about Gunk, Brains in a Vat or Frankfurt’s Nefarious Neurosurgeon? With complete explanations of these terms and more, Metaphysics: The Key Concepts is an accessible and engaging introduction to the most widely studied and challenging concepts in metaphysics. The authors clearly and lucidly define and discuss key terms and concepts,...

The articles in this volume all concern, in one way or another, Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics. There are discussions of our knowledge of causal powers, the extent to which conceivability is a guide to modality, and testimony; there are also discussions of our ideas of space and time, the role in Hume’s thought of the psychological mechanism o...

Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only a posteriori--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary a posteriori to r...

Many contemporary metaphysicians and philosophers of language commit themselves to some version or other of the truthmaker principle: the thesis that truths must be made true by something. Such truthmaker theorists have sought to justify their approach in various ways. Many have claimed that the truthmaker principle is a distillation of what is wor...

This article briefly discusses Hume's original argument concerning the absence of a sensory impression of causation. Hume's argument is important not just because of its historical significance in the debate about the observability of causation, but because it raises issues that arise within that debate in a particularly pure form. The article cons...

The Oxford Handbook of Causation provides an overview of topics related to causation, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, proba...

This article briefly discusses Hume's original argument concerning the absence of a sensory impression of causation. Hume's argument is important not just because of its historical significance in the debate about the observability of causation, but because it raises issues that arise within that debate in a particularly pure form. The article cons...

Peter Millican claims that Hume's argument for the doctrine of necessity in §VIII of the first Enquiry is a ‘torpedo into the core’ of the sceptical realist interpretation of Hume. I argue against this claim: Hume's argument in fact provides no new evidence for or against any of the standard interpretative positions.

In philosophy as in ordinary life, cause and effect are twin pillars on which much of our thought seems based. But almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell declared that modern physics leaves these pillars without foundations. Russell's revolutionary conclusion was that ‘the law of causality is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, o...

This collection brings together key contemporary texts in metaphysics and features an interactive commentary which helps readers engage the texts critically and to use them to develop their own views.

Hume is traditionally credited with inventing the ‘regularity theory’ of causation, according to which the causal relation between two events consists merely in the fact that events of the first kind are always followed by events of the second kind. Hume is also traditionally credited with two other, hugely influential positions: the view that the...

Without Abstract

One philosophical approach to causation sees counterfactual dependence as the key to the explanation of causal facts: for example, events c (the cause) and e (the effect) both occur, but had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. The counterfactual analysis of causation became a focus of philosophical debate after the 1973 publication of...

Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory d...

Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory d...

Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will, We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that...

Martin Davies argues that ‘limitation principles’ block the transfer of warrant from the premises of a certain kind of argument to its conclusion. The class of arguments in question includes Moore's argument for the existence of the external world, and a popular style of argument which starts from two premises that are warranted by first‐person aut...

Recently several thought experiments have been developed (by John Carroll amongst others) which have been alleged to refute the Ramsey-Lewis view of laws of nature. The paper aims to show that two such thought experiments fail to establish that the Ramsey-Lewis view is false, since they presuppose a conception of laws of nature that is radically at...

Rejetant la these de D. Lewis et P. Menzies qui soutiennent l'idee d'un processus causal conditionnel, l'A. montre qu'il faut prendre au serieux le fait qu'un premier evenement peut diminuer les chances d'un second, et ainsi faire obstacle a sa realisation tout en maintenant un rapport de causalite avec lui. Denoncant l'idee de la transitivite de l...

El artículo consiste en una defensa del análisis contrafáctico de la causación de David Lewis en contra de un argumento presentado por primera vez por Eduardo Flichman. El argumento de Flichman involucra una situación en la cual tienen lugar los tres sucesos siguientes: p : una presión atmosférica de 1000mb b : el funcionamiento correcto del baróme...

Definissant les degres de la croyance en termes de probabilites subjectives et la rationalite subjective en termes de maximisation de l'utilite subjective de l'agent, l'A. examine les conditions de l'exactitude objective des degres de la croyance dans le contexte de l'action prudentielle et des situations decisives, regies par le principe du cas un...

Draft: February 6, 2010 Humeans and non-Humeans commonly and reasonably agree that there may be nec-essary connections ("necessities", for short) between entities that are identical—e.g., Hes-perus and Phosphorus, water and H 2 O—or merely partly distinct—e.g., sets and their individual members, fusions and their individual parts, instances of dete...