causability

Another disanalogy between necessity and non-causability is that if p is necessary, p is possible, but if p is not causable, there is no category parallel to the possible that applies to p. The realm of standard modality is divided into the possible and the impossible.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

If the necessity of the past is the non-causability of the past, it seems a bit odd to pick out the class of propositions about the past as having an allegedly distinct kind of necessity since some of the future has that same kind of necessity.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

There is a temporal asymmetry in causability because everything causable is in the future.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

But if the necessity of the past is distinct from the lack of causability, and is a type of necessity the past has just because it is past, the future must lack that particular kind of necessity.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

If there is a distinct kind of necessity that the past has qua past, and which is not an implicit reference to the lack of causability of the past, then it is temporally asymmetrical.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

If the root intuition behind the necessity of the past is something like the non-causability of the past, there is another inconsistency.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

There is an inconsistency between the alleged non-causability of the past, the transfer of non-causability principle, and the supposition that a proposition about the past entails a proposition about the future.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

But these three categories show that the logical categories of causability and non-causability do not correspond to the standard modal categories of the necessary, possible, and impossible.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

The foreknowledge/free will incompatibilist must therefore find a principle in place of (5b) that is true and that permits the inference to the non-causability of the future.

Foreknowledge and Free Will Zagzebski, Linda 2008

Similarly, neoclassical psychologists tend to limit their attention to individual behavior; and, to the extent that they seek causability at all, they look for it within the individual.

THE MORAL DIMENSION Amitai Etzioni 1988