PHI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Passive Smoking, Four Causes, Common Cold

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Sardar Hosseini

Document Summary

Chapter 6-causal analysis (reasoning about cause and effect) The world around us is a really messy web of causes and effects. We seem compelled to try to understand it. Answers to questions like these, involve making causal claims. A causal claim is an assertion about the cause of something. A causal argument justifies, or supports, such a claim. We have various reasons for being interested in causes and effects: Assigning responsibility: if someone was the cause of something good or bad, then he or she bears the responsibility for it. Control: if we understand cause-effect connections and can control the causes, we can also control the effects. Prediction: if we know how things work, we can frequently tell in advance what is going to happen. David hume formulated the basic analysis of causal relationship. (cid:862)a (cid:272)auses b(cid:863), if the followi(cid:374)g (cid:272)o(cid:374)ditio(cid:374)s (cid:373)et. 3) if a and b are constantly conjoined (constant conjunction)