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    There is no causal dependence between Suzy's throw and th... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation cannot explain the judgement that Suzy's throw caused the shattering of the bottle.

    There is no causal dependence between Suzy's throw and the shattering of the bottle, because even if Suzy had not thrown her rock, the bottle would have shattered due to Billy's throw.

    Causation
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    Causation

    Key Terms

    causal dependence(Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation)
    A counterfactual relation in which an effect depends on a cause such that, had the cause not occurred, the effect would not have occurred.
    counterfactual(Modal logic and epistemology)
    A conditional statement concerning what would be the case if some antecedent condition were true, evaluated across possible worlds; contraposition does not hold in general for counterfactuals.

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    Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation cannot explain the judgement that Suz...Suzy's rock in mid-trajectory depends on Suzy's initial throw, but the shatterin...There is no chain of stepwise counterfactual dependences running from Suzy's thr...

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    Billy's throw has some degree of influence on the bottle's shattering ...92%Suzy's rock in mid-trajectory depends on Suzy's initial throw, but the...90%Suzy's throw caused the bottle to shatter, not Billy's throw89%Billy's throw is a preempted potential cause, not an actual cause of t...88%

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    Lewis’s theory cannot explain the judgement that Suzy’s throw caused the shattering of the bottle. For there is no causal dependence between Suzy’s throw and the shattering, since even if Suzy had not thrown her rock, the bottle would have shattered due to Billy’s throw. Nor is there a chain of stepwise dependences running cause to effect, because there is no event intermediate between Suzy’s throw and the shattering that links them up into a chain of dependences. Take, for instance, Suzy’s rock

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