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STRUCTURAL EQUATIONS AND BEYOND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2013

FRANZ HUBER
FRANZ HUBER*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
*
*DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO JACKMAN HUMANITIES BUILDING 170 ST. GEORGE ST.TORONTO CANADA, ON M5R 2M8 E-mail: franz.huber@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

Recent accounts of actual causation are stated in terms of extended causal models. These extended causal models contain two elements representing two seemingly distinct modalities. The first element are structural equations which represent the “(causal) laws” or mechanisms of the model, just as ordinary causal models do. The second element are ranking functions which represent normality or typicality. The aim of this paper is to show that these two modalities can be unified. I do so by formulating two constraints under which extended causal models with their two modalities can be subsumed under so called “counterfactual models” which contain just one modality. These two constraints will be formally precise versions of Lewis’ (1979) familiar “system of weights or priorities” governing overall similarity between possible worlds.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Symbolic Logic , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 709 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 2013 

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