Overview
This week we'll continue to see how the notion of invariance can be used to understand difficult cases regarding causal judgments. We'll focus on two cases: absence as the cause and double prevention as the cause. Woodward aims to show that the invariance account (under interventionism framework) gives satisfactory solutions to these puzzles.
In your discussions, please address the following two questions:
Can absence be considered a cause of something? Such as your failure to water the plant causes the plant to die? What is your intuition here? How does Woodward solve this problem?
What is a case of double prevention? Give an example, and if you can conceive an example of your own, it will be the best. Then consider the question: can the preventing factor be a cause of the actual outcome? Why or why not? Explain carefully.