Transitivity and proportionality in causation

Neil Mcdonnell

pp. 1211-1229

in: Joseph Ulatowski, Cory Wright (eds), Minimalism about truth, Synthese 195 (3), 2018.

Abstract

It is widely assumed that causation is transitive, but putative counterexamples abound. These examples come in three varieties: switching cases, short circuit cases, and what I will call mismatch cases. In this paper I focus on the mismatch variety, which is widely taken to be the easiest to resolve. I will first introduce the cases and the existing strategy for dealing with them, then present a new counterexample which is immune to that strategy. In response to this new counterexample I will introduce a novel solution, one drawing on Yablo’s proportionality principle for causation. There is a catch, however. Either proportionality is a strong constraint—it constrains which causal claims are true—and the solution works, or it is not and causation is not transitive after all. I will argue that the first horn has unacceptable consequences and should be rejected, but that the second horn may be less costly than it initially appears.