Causation

By Cartwright, Nancy

Two opposed viewpoints raise complementary problems about causation. The first is from Hume: watch the child kick the ball. You see the foot touch the ball and the ...

Causation, mental

see Mental causation.

Causation in the law

By Wright, Richard W.

Causal language is pervasive in the law, especially in those areas, such as contract law, tort law and criminal law, that deal with legal responsibility for the adverse ...

Mental causation

By Loewer, Barry

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of ...

Causation and laws in biology

By Matthen, Mohan

Physicalism appears to undermine the autonomy of ‘special sciences’ such as biology, and to leave little room for proprietary biological laws or causation. Mendel’s ‘Laws’ are so-called because ...

Causation, further themes

By Menzies, Peter

The traditional focus of philosophical interest in causation has been token causation: the kind of causation that relates particular dated events. There has been controversy in recent times ...

Causation, further themes

By Fernandes, Alison

Recent work in the philosophy of causation has explored a number of issues relating to the objectivity of causation, including the place of causation in metaphysics and science, ...

Causation, Indian theories of

By Perrett, Roy W.

Causation was acknowledged as one of the central problems in Indian philosophy. The classical Indian philosophers’ concern with the problem basically arose from two sources: first, the cosmogonic ...

Causation, in modern philosophy

By Boehm, Miren; Palatnik, Nataliya

The new science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sparked intense reflection and theorizing on the nature of causation. Philosophers attempted to account for the nature of causation ...

Biology, philosophy of

By Lewens, Tim

Biologists sometimes look perplexed when they are told of the existence of a subject called ‘The Philosophy of Biology’. What, they ask, is there to philosophise about in ...

Introduction to Philosophy

By Crane, Tim

REP can be approached at so many different levels: philosophers at any stage can lose themselves in the interconnected web of entries. ...

Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001)

G.E.M. Anscombe (1919–2001) is recognized as one of the most brilliant philosophers of the twentieth century. She is also well known as the translator and editor of Wittgenstein’s ...

Processes

By Emmet, Dorothy

A process is a course of change with a direction and internal order, where one stage leads on to the next. Processes can be physical (such as atomic ...

Time, direction of

By Uffink, Jos

You can pour a tumblerful of water into the sea, but you can never get that same tumblerful of water out again. James Clerk Maxwell gave this as ...

Time

By Sklar, Lawrence

Time is the single most pervasive component of our experience and the most fundamental concept in our physical theories. For these reasons time has received intensive attention from ...

Epistemic basing relation

By Bondy, Patrick

The epistemic basing relation is the relation that holds between beliefs and the reasons for which they are held. It is important to understand this relation if we ...

Occasionalism

By Hasker, William

Occasionalism is often thought of primarily as a rather desperate solution to the problem of mind–body interaction. Mind and body, it maintains, do not in fact causally affect ...

Action

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning ...

Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–30)

By Mellor, D.H.

Before Ramsey died at the age of 26 he did an extraordinary amount of pioneering work, in economics and mathematics as well as in logic and philosophy. His ...

Process philosophy

By Griffin, David Ray

In the broad sense, the term ‘process philosophy’ refers to all worldviews holding that process or becoming is more fundamental than unchanging being. For example, an anthology titled ...

Davidson, Donald (1917–2003)

Donald Davidson is a central figure in twentieth-century American philosophy. Of the five volumes that make up Davidson’s collected essays, the best known are the first two, ...

Explanation

By Kitcher, Philip

Philosophical reflections about explanation are common in the history of philosophy, and important proposals were made by Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Mill. But the subject came of age ...

Aquinas, Thomas (1224/6–74)

By Kretzmann, Norman; Stump, Eleonore

Aquinas lived an active, demanding academic and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still in his forties. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a ...

Galen (AD 129–c.210)

By Hankinson, R.J.

Galen was the most influential doctor of late Greco-Roman antiquity. But he was also a notable philosopher, who desired to effect a synthesis of what was best in ...

Family, ethics and the

By Ferracioli, Luara

What is the family? Why is it valuable? And how does the institution of the family bear on the requirements of both social and global justice? These questions ...