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Ideas of Michael Tooley, by Text

[Australian, fl. 1990, University of Western Australia, and then at the University of Colorado at Boulder.]

1990 Causality: Reductionism versus Realism
2 p.179 Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws
3.2.1 p.182 Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic
2003 Causation and Supervenience
2 p.387 Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable
2 p.387 Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism
3 p.392 Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action
4.1.2 p.395 In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality
4.1.3 p.396 Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening
4.2.1.2 p.400 We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter
5.1 p.407 Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation
5.4 p.418 Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process
6.2.4 p.424 The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one