Causation: The Basics explores questions about what causes are, and how we come to know them, describe them, and put them to use. The book begins with an introduction to the history of philosophical thinking about causation, followed by a series of chapters introducing important contemporary accounts of causation. It concludes with chapters on causation and agency, causal discovery, and causal explanation. Key questions explored in the book include: What distinguishes correlation from causation? How are the causes of singular events related to more general patterns of cause and effect? How are commonsense, scientific, and legal conceptions of causation related? Can certain occurrences be singled out as the main or principle causes of some effect? Is there a place in the world’s causal structure for human agency and free will? While introducing the major philosophical debates about the nature of causation, Causation: The Basics emphasizes the uses and challenges of causal reasoning as it occurs in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and other areas of human life. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book provides readers with a clear and concise introduction to both theoretical and practical questions about causation.

Causation: The Basics explores questions about what causes are, and how we come to know them, describe them, and put them to use. The book begins with an introduction the history of philosophical thinking about causation, followed by a series of chapters introducing important contemporary accounts of causation. It concludes with chapters on causation and agency, causal discovery and causal explanation. Key questions explored in the book include: - What distinguishes correlation from causation? - How are the causes of singular events related to more general patterns of cause and effect? - How are commonsense, scientific and legal conceptions of causation related? - Can certain occurrences be singled out as the main or principle causes of some effect? - Is there a place in the world's causal structure for human agency and free will? While introducing the major philosophical debates about the nature of causation, Causation the Basics emphasizes the uses and challenges of causal reasoning as it occurs in the sciences, engineering, medicine and other areas of human life. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book provides readers with a clear and concise introduction to both theoretical and practical questions about causation.

Conditional probability and expectation -- Potential outcomes and the fundamental problem of causal inference -- Effect-measure modification and causal interaction -- Causal directed acyclic graphs -- Adjusting for confounding : backdoor method via standardization -- Adjusting for confounding : difference-in-differences estimators -- Adjusting for confounding : front-door method -- Adjusting for confounding : instrumental variables -- Adjusting for confounding : propensity-score methods -- Gaining efficiency with precision variables -- Mediation.

This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.

In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Peter Ulric Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. In this BIT, Tse examines the role of physical/informational criteria in the neuronal model of mental causation and free will.

Blend of chemical and physical theory behind soldering technology with practical applications in the electronics manufacturing industry.