Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation

Christoph Hoerl is Associate Professor (Reader) in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Between 2004 and 2008, he was co-director (with Teresa McCormack and Johannes Roessler) of the interdisciplinary AHRC Research Project 'Causal Understanding: Empirical and Theoretical Foundations for a New Approach'. With Teresa McCormack and Stephen Butterfill, he is co-editor of Tool Use and Causal Understanding (OUP, forthcoming).Teresa McCormack is Professor of Developmental Psychology at the School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast. She was co-director of the AHRC-funded project on Causal Understanding based at the University of Warwick. Her research primarily addresses issues concerning children's temporal and causal cognition. She has published two co-edited interdisciplinary books: Time and Memory: Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychology (OUP, 2001), with C. Hoerl, and Joint Attention and Communication (OUP, 2005), with N. Eilan, C. Hoerl, and J. Roessler. A further volume entitled Tool Use and Causal Cognition, co-edited with C. Hoerl and S. Butterfill is forthcoming with OUP.Sarah Beck studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Oxford and gained her PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Birmingham, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. Her research is concerned with children's and adults' thinking about time and knowledge, with particular interest in the cognitive processes involved in the development of counterfactual thinking.

• 1. Introduction: Understanding Counterfactuals and Causation ; 2. Psychological Studies of Causal and Counterfactual Reasoning ; 3. The Relationship between Children's Causal and Counterfactual Judgments ; 4. Perceptual Causality, Counterfactuals, and Special Causal Concepts ; 5. Counterfactual and Other Forms of Conditional Reasoning: Children Lost in the Nearest Possible World ; 6. Multiple Developments in Counterfactual Thinking ; 7. Domain-Specific Causal Knowledge and Children's Reasoning about Possibility ; 8. Mental Simulation and the Nexus of Causal and Counterfactual Explanation ; 9. Counterfactual Availability and Causal Judgement ; 10. The Role of Counterfactual Dependence in Causal Judgements ; 11. Counterfactual and Causal Thoughts about Exceptional Events ; 12. Causation First: Why Causation is Prior to Counterfactuals ; 13. Suppositions, Conditionals, and Causal Claims

an excellent addition to the field ... This is certainly an interesting volume and makes a major contribution to counterfactual accounts of causation. The analysis of empirical studies in the psychological literature provides an evidence-based approach for philosophers who are interested in counterfactual accounts of causation. Moreover, the conceptual problems are illuminated by these empirical studies and suggest more nuanced conceptual questions about the role of counterfactual reasoning in causal thought. This interdisciplinary volume is a must read for advanced students of causation in both philosophy and psychology as well as most obviously for academics in both fields.