Causes As Difference-Makers
Causes As Difference-Makers
复制标题
事业作为改变者
DOI：
10.1007/s11098-004-5217-y
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发表时间：
2005
影响因子：
1.3
通讯作者：
Carolina Sartorio
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Carolina Sartorio
我们认为原因是造成差异的东西，它所造成的差异一定是与没有它的情况下所发生的差异。1把这种认为原因是”差异制造者”的观念称为”差异制造观念”。差异制造的想法激发了刘易斯的反事实理论，试图根据事件之间的反事实依赖关系来分析原因的概念。[2]然而，正如我们将看到的，刘易斯的反事实理论最终歪曲了差异制造的观点：它把那些不是差异制造者的东西算作原因。然后，我们应该寻找一种替代的方式来阐明差异制造的想法。这就是我在这篇论文中所做的。我提出了一个新的建议，原因是差异制造者，我认为，新的建议成功地捕捉差异制造的想法。
We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. 1Call this idea, according to which a cause is a" differencemaker," the difference-making idea. The difference-making idea famously motivated Lewis's counterfactual theory, an attempt to analyze the concept of cause in terms of the relation of counterfactual dependence between events. 2 However, as we will see, Lewis's counterfactual theory ends up misrepresenting the difference-making idea: it counts as causes things that aren't difference-makers. We should then look for an alternative way of spelling out the differencemaking idea. This is what I do in this paper. I make a new proposal on how causes are difference-makers, and I argue that the new proposal succeeds in capturing the difference-making idea.