Abstract

‘Singular Causes First’ rejects Hume's thesis that singular causal facts are reducible to generic ones, adopting a reverse position, taking singular causes as basic. Using idealized examples, Cartwright shows that strategies to establish causal claims without using singular causal facts as inputs all fail, including probabilistic theories of causality. Not only is singular causal input necessary if probabilities are to imply causal connections, the resulting causal output is also at base singular.