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Issues in experimental philosophy: folk theories of causation (2024/2025)

The seminar examines issues in folk theories of causation studied within experimental philosophy.

Convenors: Katarzyna Kuś, Adrian Ziółkowski

Course code: 3800-PFE24-S. Language of instruction: Polish. Course description in USOS.

The first semester and part of the second introduce experimental philosophy and examine how norms, event typicality, temporal order, omissions and double prevention affect causal judgments. The latter part of the second semester is devoted to preparing and conducting independent research projects.

BLOCK I: Normality and typicality

  1. Knobe, J., Fraser B. (2008). Causal judgment and moral judgment. Two experiments, in: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.): Moral psychology. Vol. 2. The cognitive science of morality. Intuition and diversity. Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 441-447.
  2. Roxborough C., Cumby J. (2009). Folk psychological concepts. Causation, Philosophical Psychology 22 (2), pp. 205-213.
  3. Sytsma, J., Livengood, J., & Rose, D. (2012). Two types of typicality: Rethinking the role of statistical typicality in ordinary causal attributions. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, 43(4), 814-820.

BLOCK II: Responsibility and blame

  1. Hitchcock, C., & Knobe, J. (2009). Cause and norm. The Journal of Philosophy, 106(11), 587-612.
  2. Alicke, M. D., Rose, D., & Bloom, D. (2011). Causation, norm violation, and culpable control. The Journal of Philosophy, 108(12), 670-696.
  3. Alicke, M., & Rose, D. (2010). Culpable control or moral concepts?. Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(4), 330-331.
  4. Danks, D., Rose, D., & Machery, E. (2014). Demoralizing causation. Philosophical Studies, 171, 251-277.
  5. Rogers R. et al. (2019). Causal deviance and the ascription of intent and blame, Philosophical Psychology 32 (3), pp. 404-427.

BLOCK III: Causal selection and causal reasoning

  1. Kominsky J. et al. (2015). Causal superseding. Cognition 137 (C):196-209.
  2. Icard, T., Kominsky J., Knobe J. (2017). “Normality and actual causal strength”, Cognition 161, pp. 80-93.
  3. Morris, A. et al. (2019). “Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation”, PLOS ONE 14 (8)
  4. Quillien T. (2020). “When do we think that X caused Y?”, Cognition 205, 104410.
  5. Gill M. et al. (2022). “An interaction effect of norm violations on causal judgment”, Cognition 228, 105183.

BLOCK IV: Omissions and non-actions

  1. Livengood, J., & Machery, E. (2007). The folk probably don’t think what you think they think: Experiments on causation by absence. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31(1), 107-127.
  2. Clarke, R. et al. (2015): Causation, norms, and omissions. A study of causal judgments, Philosophical Psychology 28 (2), pp. 279-293.
  3. Willemsen P., Reuter K. (2016). Is there really an omission effect?, Philosophical Psychology 29 (8), pp. 1142-1159.
  4. Henne P. et al. (2019). A counterfactual explanation for the action effect in causal judgment, Cognition 190, pp. 157-164.

BLOCK V: Temporal order, pre-emption and double prevention

  1. Lombrozo, T. (2010). Causal–explanatory pluralism: How intentions, functions, and mechanisms influence causal ascriptions. Cognitive psychology, 61(4), 303-332.
  2. Reuter K., et al. (2014). The good, the bad, and the timely. How temporal order and moral judgment influence causal selection, Frontiers in Psychology 5, 1336, 1-10.
  3. Henne P. et al. (2021). Counterfactual thinking and recency effects in causal judgment. Cognition, 212, 104708, 1-16.
  4. Henne P., O’Neill K. (2022). Double prevention, causal judgments, and counterfactuals, Cognitive Science 46 (5), e13127, 1-25.