How Melogno prevented Hall from interfering with the use of Lewis's theory: Double prevention under debate

GIRI, LEANDRO; MIGUEL, HERNÁN

Estudios de Filosofía

Universidad de Antioquia

Lugar: Colombia; Año: 2025

0121-3628

In this paper we discuss Ned Hall´s critique of David Lewis´s counterfactual theory of causation, in particular for its alleged inability to account for cases of double prevention. To do so, we focus on Pablo Melogno´s response to Hall, where he claims that Hall´s proposed tension between the concept of dependence and the locality thesis in cases of double prevention is the effect of the omission of essential details to complete the causal chain in the examples used by Hall. Here we propose to take a further step in the defense of the counterfactual theory begun by Melogno, by reviewing the examples proposed by Hall, the modifications complexified by Melogno and the corollaries that follow from them, and proposing some relevant conceptual extensions to the ideas of the three authors.