The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the philosophy of causation. The issues to be discussed will relate to classic contributions of the 20th century and include the following: whether or not causal concepts are dispensable in science; to which extent causal claims depend on the truth of certain statistical regularities or of some counterfactuals; whether causation can be perceived or not; what role, if any, our moral ideas, decisions and practices play in our concept of a cause; and in which sense, if any, causation is ‘objective’ or ‘selective.’ The issues dealt with do not only concern metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science, but also philosophy of law and ethics.
- Instructor: Maria Elisabeth Kronfeldner