Temporal Asymmetries in Philosophy and Psychology
Book
Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack and Alison Fernandes (eds.) 2022. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Interdisciplinary edited collection on our different attitudes towards the past and future.
Humans' attitudes towards an event often vary depending on whether the event has already happened or has yet to take place. The dread felt at the thought of a forthcoming exam turns into relief once it is over. Recent research in psychology also shows that people value past events less than future ones, such as offering less pay for work already carried out than for the same work to be carried out in the future. This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists with a shared interest in such psychological past/future asymmetries. It asks questions such as: What different kinds of psychological past/future asymmetries are there, and how are they related? Under what conditions do humans exhibit them? To what extent do they reflect features of time itself, or particular beliefs people have about time? Are they rational, or at least rationally permissible, or should we aspire to being temporally neutral? What exactly does temporal neutrality consist of?
Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack and Alison Fernandes (eds.) 2022. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Interdisciplinary edited collection on our different attitudes towards the past and future.
Humans' attitudes towards an event often vary depending on whether the event has already happened or has yet to take place. The dread felt at the thought of a forthcoming exam turns into relief once it is over. Recent research in psychology also shows that people value past events less than future ones, such as offering less pay for work already carried out than for the same work to be carried out in the future. This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists with a shared interest in such psychological past/future asymmetries. It asks questions such as: What different kinds of psychological past/future asymmetries are there, and how are they related? Under what conditions do humans exhibit them? To what extent do they reflect features of time itself, or particular beliefs people have about time? Are they rational, or at least rationally permissible, or should we aspire to being temporally neutral? What exactly does temporal neutrality consist of?
Causation: Further Themes
2018. Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Online Article
Recent work in the philosophy of causation has explored a number of issues relating to the objectivity of causation, including the place of causation in metaphysics and science, its temporal asymmetry, and whether causation is context-sensitive.
Online Article
Recent work in the philosophy of causation has explored a number of issues relating to the objectivity of causation, including the place of causation in metaphysics and science, its temporal asymmetry, and whether causation is context-sensitive.
A Deliberative Account of Causation: How the Evidence of Deliberating Agents Accounts for Causation and its Temporal Direction
PhD Dissertation, Columbia University (2016)
I develop and defend a deliberative account of causation: causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we need when we decide on one thing in order to achieve another. For example, Tamsin’s taking her umbrella is a cause of her staying dry if and only if her deciding to take her umbrella for the sake of staying dry is grounds for thinking she’ll stay dry. I defend the account in the form of a biconditional that relates causal relations to evidential relations and constrains metaphysical accounts of causation, including reductive accounts. Surely we need science to investigate causal structure. But we can’t justify any particular account independently of its relevance for us. Drawing on philosophy of action and decision theory, I develop an epistemic model of deliberation that explains our freedom in deliberation in terms of ordinary beliefs. I then develop this model into a deliberative account of causation: causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we need in deliberation. This account explains why causal relations should matter to us, why we deliberate on the future and not the past, and even why causes come prior in time to their effects.
Full dissertation abstract.
Full dissertation abstract.