ABSTRACT
The attempt to “analyze” causation seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand seem so widely divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one and the same concept.
One function of a theory of concepts is to guide the practice of conceptual analysis since our approach to this task depends on our view of conceptual content. We have seen, for example, that in the empiricist tradition only auxiliary concepts are subject to analysis, which consists of resolving these concepts into their basic constituents. C. I. Lewis offers an holistic view in which all concepts are subject to analysis, which consists of mapping out relations between concepts. Philosophers in either of these camps may adopt a necessary-and-sufficient-conditions view of concepts, and analyses will yield a statement of those conditions. Conceptual analyses guided by TC will not result in compact formulas, but in extended accounts whose details depend on the type of concept in question. Some concepts have specifiable necessary-and-sufficient conditions along one or more dimensions, and these conditions will be included in an analysis; for many formal concepts such a statement will constitute the entire analysis. For most concepts, however, the analysis will be open-ended.1
