ABSTRACT
In a recent issue of The Journal of Philosophy, 1 Professor Arthur Pap calls attention to the fact that critics of the regularity theory of causation have more than once pointed out that two events may be 'constantly conjoined' without being causally connected, but have mostly been silent as to an alternative analysis of the concept of causation. He then mentions as an exception the analysis of it offered in Chapters 8 and 9 of my book, Nature, Mind, and Death. But he goes on to say that that analysis seems to him completely untenable, for reasons he then proceeds to set forth. 2
If those reasons indeed invalidate it and no valid other analysis of the concept is in sight, then, in view of the ubiquity and importance to us of the Causality relation, there can hardly be a more pressing task in the whole field of philosophy than that of formulating an adequate analysis of that relation. And to do so ought not really to be very difficult, for the notion of Causality is used many times every day by each of us, whether explicitly or implicitly. All such verbs as 'to break', 'to bend', 'to heat', 'to kill', 'to twist', 'to melt', 'to prevent', 'to steer', 'to remind', 'to irritate', etc., are verbs of causation. Moreover in the majority of cases, we seem to have little or no difficulty in identifying concrete instances of the causal relationships those verbs designate as between events of the kinds respectively concerned. Hence we must have an adequate working notion of Causality, and it should be possible to analyse it.
