Causal Asymmetries

'Any serious student of causality - economist or philosopher - will find careful study of Hausman's a valuable tool for clarifying his or her own thinking about causality.' Journal of Economic Methodology

• List of figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction: causation and its asymmetries; 1. Metaphysical pictures and wishes; 1*. Transfer theories; 2. Is causation a relation among events?; 3. Causation, regularities and time: Hume's theory; 4. Causation and independence; 4*. Causation, independence and causal connection; 5. Agency theory; 5*. Causal generalizations and agency; 6. The counterfactual theory; 6*. Independence and counterfactual dependence; 7. Counterfactuals, agency and independence; 7*. Agency, counterfactuals and independence; 8. Causation, explanation and laws; 8*. Causation, explanation and independent alterability; 9. Probabilistic causation; 10. Causation and conditional probabilities; 10*. Causal graphs and conditional probabilistic dependencies; 11. Intervention, robustness and probabilistic dependence; 11*. Interventions and conditional probabilities; 12. Operationalizing and revising the independence theory; 12*. Probability distributions and causation; 13. Complications and conclusions; Appendix A: alphabetical list of propositions; Appendix B: list of theorems; References; Index.