The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs

[Introduction] We live in exciting times. By 'we' I mean philosophers studying nature of causation. The past decade or so has a flurry of philosophical activity aimed at cracking nut, and, surprisingly, real progress has been made. Two are especially worthy of note. First, there has been a of interest in the counterfactual theory of causation, given best-known formulation by David Lewis. Second, there has been philosophical interest in the techniques of causal modeling and employed within fields such as econometrics, , and artificial intelligence. These two developments been largely independent and addressed to different sorts of . Work in the counterfactual tradition has been primarily with issues involving "token" or "singular" causation, while in the second tradition has tended to focus on issues concerning "type-level" or "general" causation.