The Glue of the Universe

The chapter argues that there are two kinds of pluralism about causation that need to be recognized to prevent people talking past each other. The first is between broadly explanatory accounts—in which the focus is on determining which pasts of the causal nexus are explanatorily relevant—accounts where causation is whatever it is which gives structure to that nexus. The second pluralism is within those accounts of what gives structure to the nexus. The chapter is largely concerned with the second pluralism, and argues that there is a conditional structure to that pluralism, in which there is a range of things which, if found to be actual, could count as causation in this sense, ranked in a lexical order, where whatever is most highly ranked and actually found in the world is what causation is and necessarily so.