Causation: can a regularity theory account for singular causal statements without appeal to necessary connection?

J. L. Mackie, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

A singular cause is an INUS condition: an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. The short circuit caused the fire because it is a non-redundant element of one of several complexes each sufficient for fire, none of them necessary.1 This accounts for what we say without postulating a necessary connection between events, which is the thing Hume was right to say we never observe.23

Sources

  1. So by our modified formula, A, B, and C would each equally count as causing the fire. But someone who says that, for example, the faulty insulation, B, caused the fire, may be thinking of A and C as 'the circumstances', may be presupposing them rather than saying that there are circumstances in relation to which B was necessary.
    The Cement of the Universe, A Study of Causation, p. 57
  2. Now suppose that there is a finite set of assemblages of conditions that produce J°, say ABC, DGH, and JKL. It may well be that P occurs only when at least one of these conjunctions has occurred soon before in the right region. If so, all P are preceded by (ABC or DGH or JKL}. (There is, of course, no logical necessity that this should be so.
    The Cement of the Universe, A Study of Causation, p. 81
  3. Mill says that 'The cause... philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions positive and negative', 7 in other words suc*h a conjunction as ABC; but if we go as far as this there is no good reason why we should not go further and equate the cause, philosophically speaking rather with the complete disjunction of conjunctions, such as (ABC or DGff or JKL].
    The Cement of the Universe, A Study of Causation, pp. 83–84

Where the argument is made

  • The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (1974), especially chs. 3 on the INUS condition, and the treatment of causal priority, counterfactuals and causal necessity
  • Hume's Moral Theory (1980) and Problems from Locke (1976) for the historical background

How the argument was received

A standard position in the literature and the standard foil for counterfactual and productive accounts of causation.