Causation, Explanation, and the Metaphysics of Aspect

In Causation, Explanation, and the Metaphysics of Aspect, Bradford Skow examines important philosophical questions about causation and explanation. For instance, the social sciences are often said to produce structural explanations, explanations that invoke aspects of the structure of society. This volume looks at how structural explanations work, and the question of what the varieties of structural explanation might be. As another example, it is natural to say that striking a match causes the match to light, while the oxygen in the room does not but instead is a background condition to the lighting. Skow questions of whether there is any deep difference between causes and background conditions, and if so, what the difference is. In short, he finds the key to these considerations in a surprising place: in the difference, important in linguistics, between stative and non-stative verbs.