Counterfactual Theories of Causation
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Counterfactual theories hold that the meaning of causal statements can be given by counterfactual conditionals: if event c had not occurred, event e would not have occurred. Such analyses became prominent after David Lewis's theory, aided by possible-worlds semantics for counterfactuals. Decades of detailed discussion, however, have cast doubt on any simple version, chiefly because of preemption and overdetermination.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Run the but-for test: judge causation by asking what would happen if the cause were absent. - Diagnose overdetermination: spot preemption and backup causes that make simple but-for tests fail. - Handle probabilistic cases: relax the but-for requirement and ask whether probability is raised.
Anchor fast decisions
The counterfactual analysis reads c causing e as a pattern of dependence: in the closest possible world where c does not occur, e does not occur. Its strength is tying causation to but-for reasoning and borrowing from possible-worlds semantics. Its difficulty is that with preemption or overdetermination e occurs even without c, so the simple analysis misses cases, while in probabilistic causation the but-for relation is too strict.
MINIMUM ACTION
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/verified
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