How do causes depend on us? The many faces of perspectivalism

Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the dis1 tinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from 2 interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions 3 about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce 4 his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interven5 tionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways 6 in which a class of concepts can be said to depend on facts about their users Three 7 importantly different forms of dependence will emerge from the discussion: (1) Prag8 matic dependence on us: truth conditions for x-beliefs can be given by a function f0 of 9 more fundamental physical structures making no explicit reference to human agents. 10 But there are any other number of functions (f2...fn) ontologically on a par with x 11 and what explains the distinguish role f plays in our practical and epistemic lives are 12 facts about us. (2) Implicit relativization: truth conditions for x-beliefs are relative to 13 agent or context. The context supplies the value of a hidden parameter (’hidden’ in 14 the sense that it is not explicitly represented in the surface syntax) that determines 15 the truth of x-beliefs. (3) Indexicals: like implicit relativization except that the sur16 face syntax contains a term whose semantic value is context-dependent I suggest that 17 Price’s insights are best understood in the first way. This will draw a crucial disanalogy 18 with his central examples of perspectival concepts, but it will refine the thesis in a way 19 that is more faithful to what his arguments show. The refined thesis will also support 20 generalization to other concepts, and clarify the foundations of the quite distinctive 21 research program that Price has been developing for a number of years. 1 22 B Jenann Ismael [email protected] 1 University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA