In this paper we present a new proposal for defining actual causation, i.e., the problem of deciding if one event caused another. We do so within the popular counterfactual tradition initiated by Lewis, which is characterised by attributing a fundamental role to counterfactual dependence. Unlike the currently prominent definitions, our approach proceeds from the ground up: we start from basic p...

The main claim of this paper is that causation, as commonly understood in the philosophical and psychological literature, is not fully expressed in natural language predicates. It neither matches the syntactic structure they project nor their lexical semantics. What a predicate can do is emulate causation by other means, albeit imperfectly. As a point of departure, we should provide a definitio...