COUNTERFACTUALS AND EVENT CAUSATION

David Hume once asserted that every cause is a conditio sine qua non of its effects; every cause, according to Hume, is such that if it had not occurred, its effects would not have occurred either. This claim is notoriously problematic, yet one has the feeling that Hume was on the right track. Causality has something to do with counterfactuals, even if Hume has not stated the relationship correctly. My aim in this essay is to rehabilitate and clarify the connection between counterfactuals and event causation. Causal language appears to countenance many sorts of causal relations, including causal relations that obtain among entities other than events. © 1992, Australasian Journal of Philosophy. All rights reserved.