The Oxford Handbook of Causation (Oxford Handbooks) by Beebee Helen & Hitchcock Christopher & Menzies Peter

Author:Beebee, Helen & Hitchcock, Christopher & Menzies, Peter [Beebee, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

The approach I prefer is this: we can grant that transitivity fails in cases of these kinds (A and B) or remain neutral as to whether or not transitivity fails in these kinds of cases. However, we can argue that in short-chained cases like these the source of any possible failure of transitivity is the threat–saviour structure of those cases. In threat–saviour cases an event initiates a threat to the occurrence of an event e but also initiates a saviour event that cancels that threat (Hall 2004a: 184). But the purple fire case does not have that structure. So even if transitivity fails in all threat–saviour cases, it does not follow that we cannot appeal to a limited form of causal transitivity in presenting an argument against coarse-grained events based on the purple fire case.

If causal relata are property instances including aspects of events, then this case is not a counterexample to causal transitivity. The instantiation of the property adding salts causes the instantiation of the property being purple by the fire but not the instantiation of, say, the property having a high temperature by the fire. The latter instantiation causes the death, the former does not. (See Ehring 1997 and Paul [2000] 2004: 211. This will also work for the Kimian if Kimian events can be reasonably expanded to include the exemplification of a universal by an event (Maslen 2004: 354; see Paul [2000] 2004 for discussion).) This response works whether nor not property instances are exemplifications of universals or tropes (Ehring 1997). The fact proponent also has the option of ‘dividing up’ the middle relata and on that basis arguing that the question of transitivity does not arise in this case. Furthermore, the Kimian/Lewisian might distinguish two ‘middle’ events, one with the constitutive/essential property of being on fire which is purple and one with the constitutive/essential property of being on fire, and attempt to argue that the first is caused by adding salts, but that that same event does not cause the death, and that the second is not caused by adding salts, but that that same event does cause the death. (For the Lewisian version, see Maslen 2004: 354; Paul objects to the Kimian version of this approach in her [2000] 2004: 208.)

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