Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:50:54.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Principle of the Common Cause Faces the Bernstein Paradox

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jos Uffink
Jos Uffink*
Affiliation:
University of Utrecht
*
†Institute for History and Foundations of Mathematics and Science, University of Utrecht, P.O. Box 80.000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands; e-mail: uffink@phys.uu.nl.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I consider the problem of extending Reichenbach's principle of the common cause to more than two events, vis-à-vis an example posed by Bernstein. It is argued that the only reasonable extension of Reichenbach's principle stands in conflict with a recent proposal due to Horwich. I also discuss prospects of the principle of the common cause in the light of these and other difficulties known in the literature and argue that a more viable version of the principle is the one provided by Penrose and Percival (1962).

Type
Causation and Laws of Nature
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S512 - S525
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arntzenius, Frank (1990), “Physics and Common Causes”, Synthese 82: 77–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arntzenius, Frank. (1993), “The Common Cause Principle”, in Hull, David, Forbes, Micky, and Okrulik, Kathleen (eds.) PSA 1992, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 227–237.Google Scholar
Butterfield, Jeremy (1989), “A Space-Time Approach to the Bell Inequality”, in Cushing, James T. and McMullan, Ernan (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 114–144.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy D. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy D. (1988), “How to Tell a Common Cause: Generalizations of the Conjunctive Fork Criterion” in Fetzer, James H. (ed.), Probability and Causality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 211–228.Google Scholar
Earman, John (1995), Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hofer-Szabó, Gábor, Rédei, Miklós, and Szabó, László E. (1998), “On Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle and Reichenbach's Notion of Common Cause”, Los Alamos preprint archive http://xxx.lanl.gov.abs/quant-ph/9805066.Google Scholar
Horwich, Paul (1987), Asymmetries in Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kolmogorov, Andrei N. (1933), Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penrose, Oliver and Percival, Ian C., (1962), “The Direction of Time”, Proceedings of the Physical Society 79: 605–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Huw (1996), Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans (1956). The Direction of Time. Berkeley: University of California Press (reissued 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott (1984), “Common Cause Explanation”, Philosophy of Science 51: 212–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott. (1988), ‘The Principle of the Common Cause‘, in Fetzer, James H. (ed.), Probability and Causality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 211–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torretti, Roberto (1987), “Do Conjunctive Forks Always Point to Common Causes?”, British Journal for Philosophy of Science 38: 384–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar