I have been very interested in causation lately. I am especially interested in whether it can be defined at all, or it must be taken as a brute fact. I would love to read some texts on causation, and see what philosophers have said about it, about possible definitions of it, how it relates to physics, etc. I want to see some references.
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1A good start would be the IEP article and then follow up the references.– BumbleCommented Mar 28 at 15:20
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Causation is taken as fact before Hume, Hume considered it as unjustifiable, Kant considered it as a category of understanding, modern physicalism can take it as given based on observed laws– Nikos M.Commented Mar 28 at 15:21
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1Causation in Physics and The Metaphysics of Causation (and many more).– Mauro ALLEGRANZACommented Mar 28 at 15:25
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Judea Pearl's Causality is where I'd start. You may be able to find a PDF of it with a filetype:PDF search. It takes a rigorous statistical approach to modeling causality, addressing practical applications of such models as well as the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings.– causative ♦Commented Mar 28 at 15:49
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1 Answer
Causality and Scientific Explanation (1972) vol.
by the historian and philosopher of science and Galileo expert William A. Wallace, O.P. are magisterial.
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1Answers should not throw references at us. They should give relevant excerpts in plain text as quotes and explain why they are relevant.– Philip Klöcking ♦Commented Mar 28 at 18:02
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@PhilipKlöcking Isn't that what [reference-request]-tagged questions are looking for?– GeremiaCommented Mar 28 at 18:13
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You should give references, yes. But they should be given in a manner that refers to the question text and include relevant quotes in order to explain their relevance. The fact that links should be contextualised remains true regardless of the type of question.– Philip Klöcking ♦Commented Mar 30 at 12:03