Neha Gupta (Linacre College): 'Grounding, More or Less'
Abstract: We commonly speak of an outcome being due more to one cause than another, as when we ask whether a personality trait is influenced more by genetics or environment or whether a famine was caused primarily by drought or by policy failure. At the same time, there has been a surge of interest in the notion of metaphysical generation, and in particular the relation of grounding. Grounding is often regarded as analogous to causation. Yet there is almost no discussion of whether grounding might also admit of degrees. I aim to plug this gap by exploring the potential for a gradable notion of generative contribution. In this talk, I focus on one account of causal contribution, according to which a cause’s contribution to an effect is determined by the difference it makes to the objective probability of that effect’s occurrence. I argue that this account exports smoothly to metaphysical generation.
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Ockham Society Convenors: Jack Tristani, Yuxin Tang and Meredith Ross-James | Ockham Society Webpage
