Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, history of philosophy, and philosophy of science. Thirty-seven specially written chapters by some of the world's leading philosophers provide the most comprehensive critical guide available to issues surrounding causation.

• Introduction


• 1: Sarah Broadie: The Ancient Greeks


• 2: John Marenbon: The Medievals


• 3: Kenneth Clatterbaugh: The Early Moderns


• 4: Don Garrett: Hume


• 5: Eric Watkins: Kant


• 6: Michael Stöltzner: The Logical Empiricists


• 7: Stathis Psillos: Regularity Theories


• 8: L.A. Paul: Counterfactual Theories


• 9: Jon Williamson: Probabilistic Theories


• 10: Phil Dowe: Causal Process Theories


• 11: James Woodward: Agency and Interventionist Theories


• 12: Stephen Mumford: Causal Powers and Capacities


• 13: John Carroll: Anti-Reductionism


• 14: Christopher Hitchcock: Causal Modelling


• 15: Stuart Glennan: Mechanisms


• 16: Peter Godfrey-Smith: Causal Pluralism


• 17: Peter Menzies: Platitudes and Counterexamples


• 18: Michael Tooley: Causes, Laws and Ontology


• 19: Douglas Ehring: Causal Relata


• 20: Huw Price and Brad Weslake: The Time-Asymmetry of Causation


• 21: David Danks: The Psychology of Causal Perception and Reasoning


• 22: Helen Beebee: Causation and Observation


• 23: Clark Glymour: Causation and Statistical Inference


• 24: Cei Maslen, Terry Horgan and Helen Daly: Mental Causation


• 25: Alfred Mele: Causation, Action, and Free Will


• 26: Carolina Sartorio: Causation and Ethics


• 27: Ram Neta: Causal Theories of Knowledge and Perception


• 28: Frank Jackson: Causation and Semantic Content


• 29: Peter Lipton: Causation and Explanation


• 30: Paul Humphreys: Causation and Reduction


• 31: Marc Lange: Causation in Classical Mechanics


• 32: Lawrence Sklar: Causation in Statistical Mechanics


• 33: Richard Healey: Causation in Quantum Mechanics


• 34: Carl Hoefer: Causation in Spacetime Theories


• 35: Samir Okasha: Causation in Biology


• 36: Harold Kincaid: Causation in the Social Sciences


• 37: Jane Stapleton: Causation in the Law

Helen Beebee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham
Christopher Hitchcock is Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology
Peter Menzies is Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney