Making Things Happen

Abstract This book develops a manipulationist theory of causation and explanation: causal and explanatory relationships are relationships that are potentially exploitable for purposes of manipulation and control. The resulting theory is a species of counterfactual theory that (I claim) avoids the difficulties and counterexamples that have infected alternative accounts of causation and explanation, from the Deductive-Nomological model onwards. One of the key concepts in this theory is the notion of an intervention, which is an idealization of the notion of an experimental manipulation that is stripped of its anthropocentric elements. This notion is used to provide a characterization of causal relationships that…