This superb book should help set the agenda for philosophical work on causation for years to come. Indeed, its impact deserves to be felt more widely: philosophers who don’t give a fig about causation will still profit a great deal by studying this book closely. It is not faultless: in particular, Woodward’s treatment in chapter 2 of his favored “interventionist” account of causation and its alternatives may leave the uninitiated reader lost. That said, these defects do nothing to undermine the main philosophical achievement of the book, which is to articulate, defend, and provide detailed illustrations of the power of a certain methodological orientation to the philosophical study of causation that Woodward calls the “functional approach.”
The word functional signals that the questions that should be of primary concern to the philosophical study of causation are questions, roughly, about the function—point, rationale, goal-serving capacity—of our concept of causation, along...
