ABSTRACT
When it comes to causation, we should think less of necessity and more of dispositionality. Others have already suggested that it should be possible to get a theory of causation from an ontology of real dispositions or powers (Harré and Madden 1975, Bhaskar 1975, Cartwright 1989, Ellis 2001, Molnar 2003: chap. 12, Martin 2007: chap. 5). Such a project is far from complete but even here we fi nd that the key point of a dispositional theory of causation has been lacking. One of the key attractions of a dispositional theory of causation should be the claim that causes dispose towards their effects. This offers us something stronger than Humeanism, in which everything is loose and separate. Unlike many opponents of the old Hume, however, we do not want dispositionality to be reduced to necessity either for that too would be to overlook what is most important about dispositionalism. Causes do not necessitate their effects: they produce them but in an irreducibly dispositional way.
