Sufficient Causes and the Intrinsicness of Causation

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The aim of this research project is to provide an analysis of the philosophically important distinction between sufficient and non-sufficient causes. In some cases, events are sufficient causes of other events, for instance, in overdetermination scenarios where a single effect has several sufficient causes. If a bottle is simultaneously hit by two rocks, each of which alone would be sufficient for breaking it, then the bottle's shattering is overdetermined by two sufficient causes. In other cases, events are causes of other events without being sufficient causes. If two people push a cupboard which is so heavy that they can only move it together, then the cupboard's moving has two causes, none of which is, by itself, a sufficient cause. Even though the distinction between sufficient and non-sufficient causes is relevant to a number of philosophical debates, it has received hardly any attention so far. This research project aims to close this gap by developing the first systematic analysis of sufficient causation. The general idea underlying the proposed approach is that if an event is a sufficient cause of a certain effect, then the causal relation holding between them is intrinsic, because the occurrence of the effect does not depend on the presence of additional causes.