Causation and the direction of time
pp. 191-203
in: Wolfgang Spohn (ed), Erkenntnis orientated, Berlin, Springer, 1991Abstract
Among Reichenbach's greatest contributions to philosophy was his causal theory of time and its direction (Reichenbach (1928), Reichenbach (1956)), and the probabilistic theory of causation that underpins it. These theories were well ahead of their time and are still by no means uncontentious. But not all the contentious features of Reichenbach's accounts of causation and probability are essential to his thesis (CT for short) that causation gives time its direction. CT is for example no less consistent with later propensity theories of probability than it is with Reichenbach's own frequency account; and nor does it entail most of the other disputed features of Reichenbach's theory of causation.