Boolean Difference-Making: A Modern Regularity Theory of Causation

Abstract

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the well-known problems of Hume's and Mill's classical regularity theoretic proposals is a principle of non-redundancy: only redundancy-free Boolean dependency structures track causation. The first part of this paper argues that the recent regularity theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded two important types of redundancies: componential and structural redundancies. The second part then develops a new variant of a regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making.

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