Christopher Hitchcock

Christopher Hitchcock is the J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He holds a B.A. from Princeton University (1986) and M.A. (Philosophy & Mathematics) and Ph.D. (1993) from the University of Pittsburgh. He has served as Associate Professor (1998–2002), Professor (2002–2014), and Koepfli Professor (2014–present). From 2018–2022, he was Executive Officer of Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

Hitchcock's research focuses on causation, explanation, formal epistemology, and philosophy of science with interdisciplinary connections to computer science, law, linguistics, and biology. His work addresses causal concepts in scientific methodologies, legal reasoning, and everyday contexts. Key themes include probabilistic causation, causal modeling, counterfactual reasoning, and causal pluralism.

He has been recognized with multiple awards: Philosophers' Annual 'Top 10 Papers' (1995, 2001, 2003), and the Philosophy of Science Association's Best Paper Prize (1998). Hitchcock currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Causal Inference, Nominating Editor for Philosophers' Annual, and on editorial boards of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Philosophical Gourmet Report.

His teaching spans courses on free will, philosophy of space/time, and probability/epistemology. Notable contributions include developing frameworks for understanding causal processes, interventions, and the interplay between causal and epistemic concepts.