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Clinical trials and other forms of evaluation of medical treatment are held to give an objective assessment of the ‘clinical effectiveness’ of the medical treatments under evaluation. This kind of evaluation is central to the evidence-based medicine movement, as it provides a basis for the rational selection of treatment. The ethical status of randomised clinical trials is widely agreed to depend crucially upon the state of equipoise regarding which of two (or more) treatments is more (or most) effective in a (...) |
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Common sense supposes thoughts can cause bodily movements and thereby bring about changes in where the agent is or how his surroundings are. Many philosophers suppose that any such outcome is realized in a complex state of affairs involving only microparticles; that previous microphysical developments were sufficient to cause that state of affairs; hence that, barring overdetermination, causation by the mental is excluded. This paper argues that the microphysical swarm that realizes the outcome is an accident (Aristotle) or a coincidence (...) |
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Sarah Patterson; III*—The Anomalism of Psychology, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 37–52, https://doi.org/10.109. |
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Davidson's anomalous monism, his argument for the identity between mental and physical event tokens, has been frequently attacked, usually demanding a higher degree of physicalist commitment. My objection runs in the opposite direction: the identities inferred by Davidson from mental causation, the nomological character of causality and the anomaly of the mental are philosophically problematic and, more dramatically, incompatible with his famous argument against the third dogma of empiricism, the separation of content from conceptual scheme. Given the anomaly of the (...) |
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It seems generally agreed that a theory of sensory episodes that mentions sensory objects and a sensing relation — the ‘act-object’ theory — is unacceptable and should be replaced by some other account. A chief competitor is the Adverbial Theory, and one of its chief advocates is Wilfrid Sellars. While it is clear that there are serious difficulties for the act-object theory not facing the adverbial theory, I will argue that the latter has difficulties of its own. |
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Presentism usually holds that only present entities exist. In contrast to presentism, eternalism holds that past, present, and future entities all exist. According to some philosophers, presentism is intuitively incompatible with time travel. In this paper, I defend the compatibility between presentism and time travel by arguing for a plausible account of causation in the presentist framework. To achieve my goal, I respond to an objection to presentist time travel that is based on the nonexistence of the past: the Causation (...) |
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The essay discusses Donald Davidson’s concept of anomalous monism in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. It develops in four stages. Section 1 is devoted to a critical presentation of the argument for anomalous monism. Section 2 succinctly examines those Husserlian notions that best provide the ground for a discussion parallel to Davidson’s. In Sect. 3, the aporetic status of “mental causation” is analyzed by providing a genetic-phenomenological account of efficient causation. Section 4 draws some general conclusions concerning the kind of (...) |
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Explanation is usually taken to be a relation between certain entities. The aim of this paper is to discuss what entities are suitable as explanatory relata of singular causal explanations, i.e., explanations concerning singular causality relating particular events or other appropriate entities. I outline three different positions. The purely causal approach stipulates that the same entities that are related in the singular causal relation are also linked by the explanatory relation. This position, however, has a problem to distinguish between causation (...) |
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Essence and causation are fundamental in metaphysics, but little is said about their relations. Some essential properties are of course causal, as it is essential to footprints to have been caused by feet. But I am interested less in causation's role in essence than the reverse: the bearing a thing's essence has on its causal powers. That essencemight make a causal contribution is hinted already by the counterfactual element in causation; and the hint is confirmed by the explanation essence offers (...) |
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Issues concerning scientific explanation have been a focus of philosophical attention from Pre- Socratic times through the modern period. However, recent discussion really begins with the development of the Deductive-Nomological (DN) model. This model has had many advocates (including Popper 1935, 1959, Braithwaite 1953, Gardiner, 1959, Nagel 1961) but unquestionably the most detailed and influential statement is due to Carl Hempel (Hempel 1942, 1965, and Hempel & Oppenheim 1948). These papers and the reaction to them have structured subsequent discussion concerning (...) |
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This paper discusses some procedures developed in recent work in machine learning for inferring causal direction from observational data. The role of independence and invariance assumptions is emphasized. Several familiar examples including Hempel’s flagpole problem are explored in the light of these ideas. The framework is then applied to problems having to do with explanatory direction in non-causal explanation. |
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My focus in this essay is on those singular causal explanations which purport to explain the occurrence of some particular event by means of a claim of the following general sort The occurrence of event caused the occurrence of event.Examples include sentences like The short circuit caused the fire’ and The impact of the hammer caused the shattering of the glass,’ Many philosophers hold that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between singular causal explanations and those sentences which (...) |
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Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell (...) |
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Insoweit das Humesche Induktionsproblem die Frage der Rationalität des induktiven Vorgehens aufwirft, ist es in positiver Weise lösbar. Die Lösung basiert auf der Einsicht, daß es eine fundamentale Form der Induktion gibt, ohne welche Beobachtungen und Experimente überhaupt sinnlos würden, und ein rationales Verfahren zur Bestimmung einer induktiven Voraussetzung existiert, das eine bestimmte Fassung dieser Induktion validiert. |
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If one proposes to analyze dispositions by means of statements involving only the 'if-then' of material implication--that is, for example, to define 'x is soluble' by means of 'x is in water ⊃ x dissolves'--then one faces the problem first raised by Carnap, the match which is never put in water and which therefore turns out to be not only soluble but also both soluble and insoluble. I have elsewhere argued that if one refers to appropriate laws, then one can (...) |
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I consider a grand, yet neglected proposal put forward by Shoemaker—a functionalist theory of all properties. I argue that two possible ways of developing this proposal meet with substantial objections. However, if we are prepared to endorse an ontology of tropes, one of these functionalist analyses can be developed into an original and informative theory of properties. |
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That there is no substance causation is often treated as the default position. My aim in this paper is primarily one of burden shifting: opponents of substance causation must do more to defend their position. After outlining the thesis I wish to defend, I present a simple argument for substance causation, arguing that opponents of substance causation owe us an explanation of why this argument is unsound. I end by answering objections to the view that substances can be causes. |
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I argue that the Carroll-Chen cosmogonic model does not provide a plausible scientific explanation of the past hypothesis (the thesis that our universe began in an extremely low-entropy state). I suggest that this counts as a welcomed result for those who adopt a Mill-Ramsey-Lewis best systems account of laws and maintain that the past hypothesis is a brute fact that is a non-dynamical law. |
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The method of Conceptual Analysis makes use of natural language speaker intuitions about the meanings of expressions, and relies on an externalist assumption about meanings—namely, that they can be given in terms of referential relations and truth. This article argues that this widely used methodology in metaphysics is troubled, because the assumed externalist hypothesis about natural language meanings is beset with trenchant obstacles in explaining linguistic phenomena. It argues that the use of Conceptual Analysis in metaphysical investigation inherits the difficulties (...) |
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In this paper, I offer an explication of the notion of local explanation. In the literature, local explanations are considered as metaphysically and methodologically satisfactory: local explanations reveal the contingency of science and provide a methodologically sound historiography of science. However, the lack of explication of the notion of local explanation makes these claims difficult to assess. The explication provided in this paper connects the degree of locality of an explanans to the degree of contingency of the explanandum. Moreover, the (...) |
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It seems generally agreed that a theory of sensory episodes that mentions sensory objects and a sensing relation — the ‘act-object’ theory — is unacceptable and should be replaced by some other account. A chief competitor is the Adverbial Theory, and one of its chief advocates is Wilfrid Sellars. While it is clear that there are serious difficulties for the act-object theory not facing the adverbial theory, I will argue that the latter has difficulties of its own. |
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Con base en el análisis davidsoniano de la noción de acción, este artículo es un intento por mostrar la diferencia entre la acción causada por un agente y la acción como descrita intencionalmente. Así, por un lado, en el nivel del ser no existe una clase de acciones que sea la clase particular de acciones intencionales; pero, por otro lado, en el nivel del decir no existe una clase de acciones que no sea la clase particular de acciones intencionales: paradójicamente, (...) |
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Assuming that events form a genuine ontological category, shall we say that a good inventory of the world ought to include “negative” events—failures, omissions, things that didn’t happen—along with positive ones? I argue that we shouldn’t. Talk of non-occurring events is like talk of non-existing objects and should not be taken at face value. We often speak as though there were such things, but deep down we want our words to be interpreted in such a way as to avoid serious (...) |
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Assuming that events form a genuine ontological category, shall we say that a good inventory of the world ought to include “negative” events—failures, omissions, things that didn’t happen—along with positive ones? I argue that we shouldn’t. Talk of non-occurring events is like talk of non-existing objects and should not be taken at face value. We often speak as though there were such things, but deep down we want our words to be interpreted in such a way as to avoid serious (...) |
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Causal eliminativists maintain that all causal talk is false. The prospects for such a view seem to be stymied by an indispensability argument, charging that any agent must distinguish between effective and ineffective strategies, and that such a distinction must commit that agent to causal notions. However, this argument has been under-explored. The contributions of this paper are twofold: first, I provide a thorough explication of the indispensability argument and the various ways it might be defended. Second, I point to (...) |
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Two arguments are offered here for postulating individual essences of concrete individuals on top of their sortal essences. One is the explanatory gap argument, the other draws on the analogy with the individual essences of events presupposed in single causal explanations. These arguments support qualitative individual essences with explanatory goals as opposed to hybrid impure relational essences accounting for origin and numerical identity. It is highlighted why origin properties as parts of impure relational essences do not yield genuine de re (...) |
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The response given to C.G. Hempel’s well-known challenge by Arthur Danto in his Analytical Philosophy of History of 1965 – that deductive-nomological and narrative explanations are logically compatible yet employ incommensurable schemata – is here investigated from a historical perspective. It is shown that the developmental trajectory that emerges from an analysis of Danto’s previous writings – including not only a forgotten paper of 1958 but also his PhD dissertation of 1952 – contains distinctive step-changes with publications of 1953 and (...) |
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Events have played a central role in a number of recent philosophical analyses. In general, there are two different sorts of arguments that might be offered in favour of an event analysis: first, it might be held that the constructions being analyzed contain certain nominals which intuitively refer to events, and further that any satisfactory analysis must respect these intuitions; second, it might be argued that quite aside from our intuitions, the concept of an event — perhaps as a purely (...) |
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Events have played a central role in a number of recent philosophical analyses. In general, there are two different sorts of arguments that might be offered in favour of an event analysis: first, it might be held that the constructions being analyzed contain certain nominals which intuitively refer to events, and further that any satisfactory analysis must respect these intuitions; second, it might be argued that quite aside from our intuitions, the concept of an event — perhaps as a purely (...) |
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What does it mean to say that mind-body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every (...) |
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What does it mean to say that mind-body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every (...) |
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We can hear silence because silence, an absence of sound, causes our hearing of it. Advocating this position, Roy Sorensen puts to use his own theory of the direct perception of absences. Sorensen’s theory, which relies on two theories of perception, certainly has its appeal. However, it also has its problematic aspects. On my reading, a weak point of his theory is that it does not provide a criterion for the identification of what exactly we hear. By elaborating this objection (...) |
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For the framework of event causation—i.e. the framework according to which causation is a relation between events—absences or omissions pose a problem. Absences, it is generally agreed, are not events; so, under the framework of event causation, they cannot be causally related. But, as a matter of fact, absences are often taken to be causes or effects. The problem of absence causation is thus how to make sense of causation that apparently involves absences as causes or effects. In an influential (...) |
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Why are causal generalizations in the higher-level sciences “inexact”? That is, why do they have apparent exceptions? This paper offers one explanation: many causal generalizations cite as their antecedent—the \(F\) in \(Fs\,\, {\textit{are}}\,\, G\) —a property that is not causally relevant to the consequent, but which is rather “entangled” with a causally relevant property. Entanglement is a relation that may exist for many reasons, and that allows of exceptions. Causal generalizations that specify entangled but causally irrelevant antecedents therefore tolerate exceptions. |
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