Contingence and necessity in Ockham's notion of causality. Arguments to re-examine the mainstream interpretation

Abstract

In this paper we provide a summary of what, we believe, has been thedominant trend in the interpretation of Ockham’s doctrine of causality from thepast three or four decades up to the present. We intend to develop three strategiesto criticise this interpretation, each one belonging to a different level: ontologyand language in the first place, physics in the second one and epistemologyin the third one. The result of our exploration is a less optimistic view of Ockham’sdoctrine of causality than the dominant.