An Interventionist Approach to Causal Selection: The Optimal Control Hypothesis

What is the function of causal selection? Do normative considerations affect it, and if so, why? Some answers have been proposed to these questions, but all of them struggle to explain the range of available evidence. In this paper, I propose an account that is consistent with an interventionist analysis of causality and identifies the broader purpose of causal relations in controlling and manipulating reality. I will show that the Optimal Control Hypothesis accounts better than some alternatives for the pattern of causal judgments observed in conjunctive and disjunctive scenarios with two binary causal factors, and can also explain more complex scenarios with more than two variables, which have been rarely considered so far.