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Physical Causation
Abstract
This book, published in 2000, is a clear account of causation based firmly in contemporary science. Dowe discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes which he has been developing over the last ten years. The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the worldline of an object which possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities. Further, things that are properly called cause and effect are appropriately connected by a set of causal processes and interactions. The distinction between cause and effect is explained in terms of a version of the fork theory: the direction of a certain kind of ordered pattern of events in the world. This particular version has the virtue that it allows for the possibility of backwards causation, and therefore time travel.
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Citations
Cited by
Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation
Woodward, J. (2004) · doi:10.1093/0195155270.001.0001 · Cited by 1,302
Interpreting Causality in the Health Sciences
Russo, F., & Williamson, J. (2007) · International Studies in the Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1080/02698590701498084 · Cited by 549
Schaffer, J. (2005) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.1215/00318108-114-3-327 · Cited by 389
Sloman, S. A., & Lagnado, D. (2015) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015135 · Cited by 210
Causal Responsibility and Counterfactuals
Lagnado, D. A., Gerstenberg, T., & Zultan, R. (2013) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/cogs.12054 · Cited by 191
Metadata
- Authors
- Dowe, P.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2000-07-03
- OpenAlex
- W4246001022
- Cited by
- 584
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 25.42
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Physical Causation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/cbo9780511570650
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- Dowe, P. (2000). Physical Causation. Cambridge University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511570650
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
