ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a history that traces different approaches to understanding causation back to their sources. It links the activity approach back to Elizabeth Anscombe, the counterfactual difference-making approach back to David Lewis, the causal process approach back to Wesley Salmon, and the mechanical causation approach back to Stuart Glennan, and most philosophers will recognize the influence of these figures on these approaches. The chapter shows is how the differences in those responses and desiderata shaped the subsequent approaches to understanding causation that entered the new mechanical philosophy. It draws on this history to disentangle some of the debates that are now playing out in the philosophy of mechanisms literature concerning the metaphysics of causation. By tracing the various approaches back to their roles in Anscombe, Lewis, Salmon, and Glennan's original responses to Hume, the chapter diagnoses how such criticisms often overlook the different desiderata that shaped those approaches from their very beginning and so hold the approaches to standards.
