Causality - a draft of realistic theory

Abstract

In this paper we are seeking a theory that will (at least) implicitly define the concept of causation. A theory of causation must be analytically true and should offer an analysis of the concept of causation that must be true in all possible worlds (not just in the actual one). Our goal is not the theory that is just contingently true. It is proposed that causality is a relation that is observable (in Hume's sense) and is not reducible to other (observable) properties and relations, between individual events. Thus after some basic features of causality, causal relation, causal necessitation and nomic necessity are defined on the basis of the assumption of the singularist theory of causation, which does not exclude the possibility that there are laws of nature of which singular causal relations are instances. The causal explanation (why) is not reduced to the nomological explanation (how) because the existence of causal relation does not by itself guarantee the existence of the law of nature.