| Sumario: | Consensus in the contemporary philosophical literature has it that conserved quantity theories of causation such as that of Dowe—according to which causation is to be analysed in terms of the exchange of conserved quantities (for example, energy)—face damning problems when confronted with contemporary physics, where the notion of conservation becomes delicate. In particular, it is often claimed that in general relativity there simply are no conservation laws for (say) total stress-energy. If this claim is correct, it is difficult to see how conserved quantity theories of causation could survive. In this article, we resist the above consensus and defend conserved quantity theories from this conclusion, at least when focusing on the apparent problems posed by general relativity. We argue that this approach to causation can continue to be defended in general relativity, once one appreciates the availability of approximate symmetries in generic general relativistic spacetimes, and the role of modelling and idealization in that theory. Given these points, conserved quantity theories of causation must stand or fall on other grounds.
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