The Society for Philosophy of Causation was founded in Kyoto on June 26th 2023 by the silent agreement of people present in one of the rooms of the Seifuso Villa. A century earlier, the Japanese prime minister held there talks with the queen of Belgium. Only history will tell which event has been more consequential.
SPOC’s mission is to promote research in causation. Some of the society’s activities include:
The society is for philosophers, psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists working on causation. There are no fees. To be included in the mailing list and the discord channel, and otherwise count officially as a member, please send an email to spoc@causation.science titled membership. If it’s not immediately clear that you work on causation (e.g., from your personal website, publication record), please describe your interests briefly in the email. This is to filter out bots and spies.
Annually, SPOC organizes a conference. The first one was in Kyoto. The second one was in Göttingen. The third one was in Paris. In 2026, SPOC is helping in organizing one in Pittsburgh.
In 2026, SPOC is helping organize a conference To Be or Not to Be Included in a Causal Model at the Center for Philosophy of Science, February 28 and March 1.
Keynote speakers: Samantha Kleinberg (Stevens Institute of Technology) and Lily Hu (Yale University).
The guiding question of this conference is: what can and cannot be represented by a variable in a causal model?
The first host of problems arises in the philosophy of social sciences. What sorts of causal variables make sense when we talk about causation in social contexts; how do we handle variables that are socially constructed (e.g., race, gender); what do we do with causal relationships that are contextual, as social causal claims often are? These questions are theoretically interesting, but, more importantly, they must be considered if we want our theories to inform policy making.
The second host of problems arises when we investigate discovering causal relations from data. What’s available in the data, what would be useful for a particular discipline, and what would yield models that are amenable to interventions?
The third host of problems arises in formal work on causal modeling. What causal models are formally valid, and what do these constraints mean for causal theories? Interestingly, similar questions also arise in cognitive science: what variables are psychologically plausible and therefore can be exploited in cognitive representations?
Submission Instructions: Please prepare an anonymized abstract for a 20-minute talk addressing one of the questions asked above or a related issue. Abstracts of no more than 1000 words should be emailed as a PDF to causalmodelingconference@causation.science Please include your contact information in the body of the email.
Deadline for Submissions: November 1st, 2025
Organizing Committee: Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon University), Caitlin Mace (University of Pittsburgh), Justin Shin (University of Pittsburgh), Zina Ward (Florida State University), Jim Woodward (University of Pittsburgh), Tom Wysocki (Universität Göttingen)
Location: Center for Philosophy of Science (CL 1117, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260)
The third annual conference of the Society for Philosophy of Causation took place at Maison Suger, 16 Rue Suger, 75006 Paris, France, from July 15 to 18, 2025.
Quintidi, 27 Messidor | |
1400-1500 | Christopher Hitchcock California Institute of Technology |
Double Effect and Intervention | |
1500-1600 | Marina D’Amico Universität Mailand |
An Interventionist Approach to Causal Selection: The Optimal Control Hypothesis | |
1600-1700 | Gauvain Bourgne Sorbonne Universität |
Formalizing Overdetermination with Labeled Transition Systems | |
1700-1800 | Brad Weslake NYU Shanghai |
A Puzzle About High-Level Causation | |
Sextidi, 28 Messidor | |
930-1030 | Michael Waldmann Universität Göttingen |
Understanding Causal Devices: How Capacity Representations Guide Mechanism Knowledge | |
1030-1130 | Tomasz Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
The Relevance Theory of Dispositions | |
1130-1230 | David Kinney Washington University in St. Louis |
Towards a Formal Semantics for Generic Causal Claims | |
1230-1330 | Esteban Céspedes Catholic University of the Maule |
A Case Against Causal Structuralism Based on Strong Emergence | |
At 16, we will meet at the Notre Dame. No reservation needed: the line is long but moves very quickly, I was assured. Download the free app for audioguide. Then, people who want can come with me and see L’Hôtel de Ville. As this should be all quick, this might be the day to go and see the Eiffel Tower if you have not. (I don’t think I will go though.) | |
Septidi, 29 Messidor | |
930-1030 | Samuel Lee Universität Hamburg |
The Ground Confound | |
1030-1130 | Thomas Blanchard Université Bordeaux Montaigne |
Causal Constraints | |
1130-1230 | Brian Ortmann Universität Hamburg |
An Overlooked Necessary Condition For Causation | |
1230-1330 | Christopher Gregory Weaver University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
On Feynman Diagrams and Causal Models | |
Musée d'Orsay at 18:00. Book your ticket in advance. Please choose “late opening rate on Thursdays” for 12 Euro. Hurry. Slots are running out, as both Christophers have pointed out. | |
Octidi, 30 Messidor | |
930-1030 | Jon Iwry Harvard Law School |
Toward a Legal-Philosophical Theory of Actual Causation in the AI Age | |
1030-1130 | Aydin Mohseni Carnegie Mellon Universität and Daniel Herrmann Universität Groningen |
A Bayesian Reduction of Causation | |
1130-1230 | Simone Salzano LMU München & Universität Urbino |
Emergence, Causation, and Free Will: A Case Against Libertarianism | |
1230-1330 | Can Konuk Jean-Nicode |
Learning from Causal Explanations | |
At 16, we will head out to le Petit Palais (a free, awesome museum) and walk there through the gardens of the Louvre. Here’s the app for public transport in Paris. You can then use your phone to get on the metro. | |
Here are some pictures from the conference.
The second annual confernece of the Society for Philosophy of Causation is taking took place at
Paulinerkirche, Papendiek 14
, 37073 Göttingen, Germany,
on July 19-21, 2024. The first one
took place in Kyoto, Japan, on June 24-26, 2023. It was widely considered a blast, and the current one is expected to be second one was too.
Donnerstag, 18. Juli | |
19 | Dinner: Zum Szültenbürger Prinzenstraße 7 |
Freitag, 19. Juli | |
11-12 | Jenn McDonald Columbia Universität |
Deriving Naturalness from Causal Structures | |
12-13 | Sander Beckers Universität Amsterdam |
Nondeterministic Causal Models | |
13-14 | Gauvain Bourgne Sorbonne Universität |
Causality and Responsibility with Non-Occurrence of Events | |
14-15 | Mittagessen |
15-16 | Michael Waldmann Universität Göttingen |
Interpolating Causal Mechanisms: The Paradox of Knowing More | |
16-17 | Caitlin Mace Pittsburgh Universität |
On Dissecting Causal Circuits | |
17-18 | Liu Yue Southwest University of Finance and Economics |
Causal Reasoning as Causal Model Attribution | |
19 | Dinner: Café Botanik Karspüle 1B |
Samstag, 20. Juli | |
10-11 | Alexander Max Bauer Universität Oldenburg |
Experimental Evidence in Favor of the Compositionality Constraint | |
11-12 | Tom Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Polymorphic Functions for a Better Semantics of Counterfactuals | |
12-13 | Reuben Stern Duke Universität |
Causal Direction in Causal Bayes Nets | |
13-14 | Mittagessen |
14-15 | Alexander Gebharter Marche Polytechnic Universität |
A causal Bayes net analysis of dispositions | |
15-16 | Gabriel Gil ICIMAF, Havana, Cuba |
Rethinking the Counterfactual Theory of Causation | |
16-17 | Reinoud Pino Universität Amsterdam |
On The Possibility of Quantum Interventionism | |
19 | Dinner: Hans im Glück Goethe-Allee 8 |
Sonntag, 21. Juli | |
10-11 | Luna De Souter Universität Bergen |
Identifiability and informativeness in regularity theory of causation | |
11-12 | Can Konuk École Normale Supérieure |
Plurals in causal judgment | |
12-13 | Julie Goncharov Universität Göttingen |
Rationalising Statements and Causation | |
13-14 | Mittagessen |
14-15 | Malcolm Forster Universität Wisconsin-Madison |
Probability, Causality, and the Dog Bite Example | |
15-16 | Simon Stephan Universität Göttingen |
Reasoning about Actual Causation in Reversible and Irreversible Causal Structures | |
16-17 | Xiuyuan An Fudan Universität |
Brain Regions as Difference-Makers and the Limits of Interventionism | |
19 | Dinner: Le Feu Weender Landstraße 23 |
Montag, 22. Juli | |
noon | Brunch: Deutsches Theater Bistro Theaterplatz 11 |
Here are some pictures from the conference.
The website for the confernece is here.
Here are some pictures from the conference.
SPOC is affiliated with the American Philosophical Association. As an affiliate, SPOC can organize sessions at APA divisional meetings. And it has. The first one was Eastern, in New York, January 2025. The second one, Central, online, in February 2025.
The second APA affiliated session was held at the Central APA, online, Feruary 2–March 1, 2025.
Here's the program:
Freitag, 21. Februar 2025 |
Shimin Zhao University of Wisconsin–Madison |
The Forgotten Problem of Statistical Inconsistency |
Marc Johansen Creighton University |
Regularities and Safeguards |
Levi Smith University of Colorado Boulder |
How Normativity Can Play a Role in a Realist Account of Causation by Omission |
Tom Wysocki Georg-August-Universität Göttingen |
A Solution to World-Counting in the Proportion Analysis of Dispositions |
The first APA affiliated session was held at the Eastern APA in New York, January 8–11 2025.
Here's the program:
Freitag, 10. Januar 2025 |
Jenn McDonald Columbia Universität |
Deriving Naturalness from Causal Structures |
Reuben Stern Duke Universität |
The Elusive Transitivity of Causal Relevance |
Dean McHugh Universität Amsterdam |
Unraveling Sartorio’s Difference-Making Principle |
Tomasz Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Polymorphic Functions for a Better Semantics of Counterfactuals |
Christopher Weaver University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
The Problem of the Arrow of Causation in Fundamental Physics |
SPOC also submits sessions to conferences. So far, we've had two at the Philosophy of Science Association.
Our goal in the symposium How to do things with causation? is to present the audience with cutting-edge research on causation that spans disciplines yet uses the same, familiar language of causes, counterfactuals, variables, and causal models. The interdisciplinary nature of our symposium fits with the breadth of approaches to philosophy of science characteristic of the ESPA. The talks, while firmly in philosophy of science, overlap with computer science (Hanti’s), linguistics (Dean’s), metaphysics (Bram’s), and cognitive science (Tom’s). The speakers will bring in modeling frameworks and methods from these disciplines with the intention to enrich the toolkits of philosophers working on causation. Our hope is that the audience leaves with a good idea of what new problems are tackled in the philosophy of causation, what new approaches are used to solve old problems, and how formal and empirical methods borrowed from other disciplines can help with philosophical investigations into causation.
Hanti Lin investigates the limits of causal inference from non-experimental data. He shows that even the weakest standards of reliability fail when testing for conditional independence under minimal assumptions. This result has worrying implications for the epistemology of causal discovery, reinforcing concerns about the feasibility of learning causal structures from data alone.
Dean McHugh shows that current similarity-based frameworks fail to model the concept of causal sufficiency—that accounting for sufficiency requires a fundamental shift in how we think about modality and the nature of hypothetical reasoning. In this talk, he will propose how this shift can be achieved.
Bram Vaassen addresses a long-standing concern in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind—causal overdetermination. Pace the orthodoxy, which finds overdetermination problematic, Bram defends the view that overdetermination is both widespread and benign in many philosophical domains, from mental causation to composite objects. His argument shifts the debate from an ontological issue to a pragmatic dispute about causal attributions.
Finally, Tom Wysocki, in a talk co-authored with Louisa Reins and Michael Waldmann, proposes a new theory of dispositions that uses causal models and contextual factors to represent the strength (i.e., degree or intensity) of a disposition. This theory, supported by empirical evidence from psychology, proves superior to competing theories in metaphysics and philosophy of science.
Hanti Lin |
The Very Hardness of Testing Conditional Independence |
Dean McHugh |
The Concept of Causal Sufficiency |
Bram Vaassen |
Widespread Benign Overdetermination |
Tom Wysocki, Louisa Reins, Michael Waldmann |
A Contextualist Theory of Dispositions |
Since the early noughts, causal models have been instrumental in developing theories of causation, with increasingly complex theories handling increasingly complex cases. This progress has recently slowed down, and we aim to explore ways in which the standstill could be overcome. We agree on the problem but disagree on the solution, with each speaker challenging, suspending, or modifying a different element of the causal-models framework. Günther adapts causal models to regularity theories and work out a reductive theory of causation. McDonald dismantles the assumption that the role of causal models is to encode counterfactuals. Beckers abandons saving intuitions for a functional approach: producing a theory that satisfies the epistemic and pragmatic norms that guide causal reasoning in science and in life.
Samstag, 23. September 2025 |
Jenn McDonald Columbia Universität |
Sander Beckers University of Amsterdam |
Mario Günther Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich |
Tomasz Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
SPOC also organizes courses. We organized one on causation and counterfactuals at NAßLLI 2025.
Description: We use counterfactuals and causal claims either to explain the world or to change it: sociologists wonder how to fight poverty; historians ask why Rome fell; engineers want to ascertain what would have happened had the primary safety system in the Chernobyl power plant worked. This is why philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science have long been interested in causality. The overarching aim of this course is to present participants with the latest developments in the exciting field of causal modeling. After the course, participants will have the necessary background knowledge to conduct their own research in the philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science of causation and counterfactuals.
Instructors: Dean McHugh and Tom Wysocki.
Monday, 23 July | |
1510-1555 | Dean McHugh Universität Amsterdam |
Theories of counterfactuals in Lewis, Stalnaker, and Kratzer | |
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1555-1630 | Tom Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Deterministic causal models | |
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Tuesday, 24 July | |
1510-1630 | Tom Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Counterfactuals and causation in deterministic causal models | |
Same as above. | |
Wednesday, 25 July | |
1510-1630 | Dean McHugh Universität Amsterdam |
Difficulties with logically complex antecedents | |
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Thursday, 26 July | |
1510-1600 | Dean McHugh Universität Amsterdam |
Causal sufficiency | |
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1600-1630 | Tom Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Underdeterministic models, underdeterministic counterfactuals | |
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Tuesday, 24 July | |
1510-1630 | Tom Wysocki Universität Göttingen |
Causation and counterfactuals with polymorphic models | |
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Here are the slides:
You can subscribe to the SPOC google calendar.
The calendar contains deadlines of interest to SPOC members, such as the deadline for the SPOC confernce, SPOC affiliated sessions at the APA, the three deadlines for the APAs, online talks, deadlines for conferences related to causation, SPOC online talks, or other online talks. If you know of an event that should make its way to this calendar, please post it on the Discord channel, and I'll add it to the calendar.
To contact the society, message Tom Wysocki at spoc@causation.science.
The formal address of the society, as if this ever mattered, is currently:
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Georg-Elias-Müller-Institut für Psychologie
Goßlerstraße 14
37073 Göttingen, Deutchland.