Non-deviant Causation

Abstract

The problem of deviant causation has long vexed causalist accounts of action. This chapter argues that an account of non-deviant causation can be developed by leveraging insights from the author’s account of control. In order to understand what happens when non-deviant causation happens, it develops the notion of a comprehensive set of circumstances. This is a set of circumstances that is derived by building a causal model that includes an agent, a plan, and the agent’s location in a particular situation. What is special about the model is that it gets the causal parameters of the particular situation right. Non-deviant causation then turns out to be the normal production of behavior that is, for the agent, normal given the plan and across the comprehensive set of circumstances. After developing this account, this chapter discusses a range of problem cases for it, examines an alternative account due to Wayne Wu, and discusses how the account fares against some complaints drawn from relevant literature.