A Theory of Background Conditions

The common view about background conditions is that the difference between causes and background conditions is pragmatic, drawn in language not the world. This chapter defends an alternative view, on which the difference is metaphysical, drawn in the world not in language. This alternative says that something is a background condition to C’s causing E iff it is a state (rather than an event) that is a reason why C caused E. This theory is used to answer the question of what it is to manifest a disposition; briefly, something manifests a disposition to M in C if its having that disposition is a background condition to the Cing causing the Ming.

Structural Explanation: Garfinkelian Themes

This chapter proposes a new definition of “structural explanation.” The definition says that something is a structural explanation iff it (i) is an answer to a question of the form “why did such-and-such have a certain effect?” that (ii) cites a structural fact. On this definition structures don’t explain in the way that causes do, but instead in the way that background conditions do. This definition is not meant to compete with other definitions. Another good definition says that a structural explanation is a causal explanation that cites a structure as a cause. The new definition is needed because many examples of explanations in the social sciences that seem, intuitively, to be structural explanations meet the new definition but not the old one. The new definition is developed by examining some claims about structural explanation Alan Garfinkel makes in his book Forms of Explanation.

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This chapter introduces the theory of events and the theory of acting that the rest of the book relies on. Again, those theories use the distinction, from the study of lexical aspect, between stative and non-stative verbs. “If S, then an event occurred in virtue of the fact that S” is true when the main verb in the clause going in for “S” is non-stative, and “In Ving X did something” is true iff V is a non-stative verb. The chapter then summarizes the main claims and arguments of the four following chapters.

Agent Causation Done Right

This chapter defends the claim that the most metaphysically basic causal locutions are of the form “X caused Y to Z by Ving,” where terms for things (not events) go in for “X” and “Y.” Claims of this form are called agent-causal claims, since if X caused Y to Z by Ving, then in Ving X did something, so X was an agent. Agent-causal claims are more basic than event-causal claims, claims of the form “C caused E” where terms for events go in for “C” and “E.” Among the arguments given that agent-causal claims are more basic is the argument that if agent-causal claims are more basic then there is an explanation of why events but not states can be causes.

Dispositions: Intrinsicness and Agency

The core claim of this chapter is that dispositions must be dispositions to act. That is, in Ving something manifests a disposition only if in Ving it did something. This claim is defended and then used to evaluate the thesis that there exist extrinsic dispositions. Many alleged examples of extrinsic dispositions are shown to fail because their success is inconsistent with the core claim. Other examples are consistent with the core claim, but the connection between dispositions and action suggests a defensible fallback version of the Intrinsicness Thesis, according to which something can manifest an extrinsic disposition only by manifesting an intrinsic one.