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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Causation is the ancestral of counterfactual dependence

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Preemption cases (Schaffer's 'trumping': two wizards cast spells, only the senior wizard's spell takes effect) show causation without any counterfactual dependence between cause and effect.
      ?

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    • 2.Since the junior wizard's spell would have produced the same effect, no stepwise chain of counterfactual dependence connects the senior wizard's spell to the outcome.
      ?

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    • 3.If the ancestral relation requires each link to be a genuine counterfactual dependency, preemption systematically generates counterexamples that cannot be resolved by lengthening the causal chain.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Symmetric overdetermination cases (e.g., two simultaneous fires each sufficient to burn a house) produce genuine causes with no counterfactual dependence in either causal chain.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.If neither fire's absence would have prevented the house from burning, the ancestral-of-dependence relation fails to identify either fire as a cause, contradicting causal intuition.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Event B is counterfactually dependent on event A if and only if the counterfactual 'Had A not occurred, B would not have occurred' is true
      ?

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    • 2.Event C causes event E if and only if there is a chain C, D1, …, Dn, E such that each member in the chain (except C) is counterfactually dependent on the event before it
      ?

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