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Zusatztext In this fascinating and carefully constructed book, Douglas Kutach offers new solutions to two central problems in the intersection of philosophy of science and metaphysics. Informationen zum Autor Douglas Kutach is a philosopher of physics who has published on time's arrows, time travel, and more general metaphysical issues. He is the founder of Empirical Fundamentalism, a philosophical program dedicated to addressing traditional philosophical problems using a distinction between fundamental and derivative reality. Klappentext This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. Zusammenfassung This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Empirical Analysis and the Metaphysics of Causation 1.1 Empirical Analysis 1.1.1 The Distinctive Features of Empirical Analysis 1.2 Empirical Analysis of the Metaphysics of Causation 1.2.1 Effective Strategies 1.3 Empirical Analysis of the Non-metaphysical Aspects of Causation 1.4 Causation as Conceptually Tripartite 1.5 A Sketch of the Metaphysics of Causation 1.6 Fundamental and Derivative 1.6.1 The Kinetic Energy Example 1.6.2 Some Constitutive Principles of Fundamentality 1.7 Abstreduction 1.8 STRICT Standards and RELAXED Standards 1.9 Limitations on the Aspirations of Empirical Analysis 1.10 Comparison between Empirical Analysis and Orthodox Analysis 1.11 Summary I THE BOTTOM CONCEPTUAL LAYER OF CAUSATION 2 Fundamental Causation 2.1 Preliminaries 2.1.1 Events 2.1.2 Laws 2.2 Terminance 2.2.1 Causal Contribution 2.2.2 Trivial Terminance 2.3 The Space-time Arena 2.4 Classical Gravitation 2.4.1 Galilean Space-time 2.4.2 Terminants in Classical Gravitation 2.4.3 Overdetermination in Classical Gravitation 2.4.4 Instantaneous Causation 2.5 Relativistic Electromagnetism 2.5.1 Minkowski Space-time 2.5.2 Minimal Terminants in Relativistic Electromagnetism 2.5.3 Classical Unified Field Theory 2.6 Content Independence 2.7 Continuity and Shielding 2.8 Transitivity 2.9 Determinism 2.10 Stochastic Indeterminism 2.10.1 Stochastic Lattices 2.10.2 A Toy Theory of Particle Decay 2.11 Non-stochastic Indeterminism 2.11.1 Newtonian Indeterminism 2.11.2 Contribution Extended 2.12 General Relativity 2.12.1 Spatio-temporal Indeterminism 2.12.2 Closed Time-like Curves 2.13 Quantum Mechanics 2.13.1 The Quantum Arena and its Contents 2.13.2 Bohmian Mechanics 2.13.3 Spontaneous Collapse Interpretations 2.13.4 Other Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics 2.14 Summary II THE MIDDLE CONCEPTUAL LAYER OF CAUSATION 3 Counterfactuals and Difference-making 3.1 General Causation 3.2 Counterfactuals 3.3 Goodman's Account of Counterfactuals 3.4 The Nomic Conditional 3.5 Comparison to Ordinary Language Conditionals 3.6 Prob-dependence 3.7 Contrastive Events 3.8 Summary 4 Derivative Causation 4.1 Influence 4.2 Prob-influence 4.3 General Causation 4.4 Temporally Extended Events 4.5 Idiomatic Differences between Promotion and Causation 4.6 Aspect Promotion 4.7 Promotion by Omission 4.8 Contrastivity 4.9 Transitivity 4.10 Continuity 4.11 Shielding 4.12 Partial Influence 4.13 Summary 5 The Empirical Content of Promotion 5.1 The Promotion Experiment 5.2 Insensitivity Considerations 5.3 Thermodynamics and Statistical Mec...
