The goal of this paper is to argue that there is indeterminacy in causation. I present three types of cases in which it is indeterminate whether an event c caused another event e: (1) cases of absence causation recently discussed by Bernstein and by Swanson, (2) cases leading to Sorites paradoxes for causation, and (3) cases where c and e occur in certain indeterministic causal structures and it is therefore indeterminate whether there is a causal relation between them. These cases, I argue, provide strong evidence that indeterminacy is an important general feature of the causal relation and that philosophical theorizing about causation should take this observation into account.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Vera Hoffmann-Kolss (2024) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: