[Philosophical theories of causation for epidemiology]

What is a causal nexus? How do we get to know one? In the last decades a proliferation of philosophical theories, mainly put forward as opposing each other and as possible alternatives, has been trying to answer such questions. In the last few years the need has been emerging to refer any analysis of the concept of cause to the context in which it is adopted. The pursuit of a single definition has been thus substituted by the elaboration of various forms of causal pluralism, aimed at accounting for the actual use of the notion of cause especially within some of the so-called <>, such as economy, law, medicine. We shall here outline the main contemporary approaches (probabilistic, mechanistic, counterfactual and manipulative) and some of the intersections they can have with reflections on causation taking place in epidemiology.