 Various replies have been made to these counterexamples. L.A. Paul (2004) offers a response to the second example that involves conceiving of the relata of causation as event aspects: she argues that there is mismatch between the event aspect that is the effect of the first causal link (the flame’s being a purple colour) and the event aspect that is the cause of the second causal link (the flame’s touching the flammable material). Thus, while it’s true that the purple flame did not cause the ignition, there is no failure of transitivity after all. Maslen (2004) solves the problem by appealing to a contrastivist account of causation (see §4 below): the contrast situation at the effect-end of the first causal statement does not match up with the contrast situation at the cause-end of the second causal statement. Thus, the first causal statement should be interpreted as saying that Jones’s putting potassium salts in the fire rather not doing so caused the flame to turn purple rather than yellow; but the second causal statement should be interpreted as saying that the purple fire’s occurring rather than not occurring caused the flammable material to ignite rather not to ignite. Where there is a mismatch of this kind, we do not have a genuine counterexample to transitivity. 