This article considers interventionist arguments for downward causation and non-fundamental level causal explanation from the point of view of inferring causation from experiments. Several authors have utilised the interventionist theory of causal explanation to argue that the causal exclusion argument is moot and that higher-level as well as downward causation is real. I show that this argument can be made when levels are understood as levels of grain, leaving us with a choice between causal explanations pitched at different levels. Causal (...) proportionality has been suggested as a principle for choosing the correct level of description for causal explanations, but this suggestion has serious problems. I offer an alternative principle, based on the idea that explanations should track actual difference-makers. I then consider claims about systems causally influencing their own parts. Such claims risk conceptual confusion for the same reason as the exclusion argument, by conflating causal and constitutive dependencies. The distinction between causation and constitution is used to give criteria for the correct use of the idea of downward causation. (shrink)

Roughly speaking, intellectualists contend that practical knowledge is always a matter of having the right kind of propositional knowledge. This article argues that intellectualism faces a serious explanatory challenge when practical knowledge crucially relies on ecological information, i.e. when know-how is scaffolded. More precisely, intellectualists struggle to provide a satisfactory explanation of seeming know-how contrasts in structurally similar cases of scaffolded ability manifestation. In contrast, even if anti-intellectualism is similarly challenged, at least some varieties of anti-intellectualism seemingly hold resources to (...) account for the relevant contrasts. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The paper discusses the evolving concept of causationin epidemiology and its potential interaction with logic and scientific philosophy. Causes arecontingent but the necessity which binds them totheir effects relies on contrary-to-fact conditionals,i.e. conditional statements whose antecedent is false.Chance instead of determinism plays a growing role inscience and, although rarely acknowledged yet, inepidemiology: causes are multiple and chancy; a priorevent causes a subsequent event if the probabilitydistribution of the subsequent event changesconditionally upon the probability of the prior event.There are no known (...) sufficient causes in epidemiology.We merely observe tendencies toward sufficiency ortendencies toward necessity: cohort studies evaluatethe first tendencies, and case-control studies thelatter.In applied sciences, such as medicine andepidemiology, causes are intrinsically connected withgoals and effective strategies: they are recipewhich have a potential harmful or sucessful use; theyare contrastive since they make a differencebetween circumstances in which they are present andthose in which they are absent: causes do notexplain Event E but event E rather thaneven F. Causation is intrinsically linked with thenotion of ``what is pathological''.Any definition of causation will inevitably collapseinto the use made of epidemiologic methods. Theprogressive methodological sophistication of the lastforty years is in perfect alignment with a gradualimplicit overhaul of our concept of causation. (shrink)

Alan Garfinkel (1981) and Bas van Fraassen (1980), among others, have proposed a contrastive theory of explanation, according to which the proper form of an explanatory why-question is not simply "Why P?" but "Why P rather than Q?". Dennis Temple (1988) has argued in this journal that the contrastive explanandum "P rather than Q" is equivalent to the conjunction, "P and not-Q". I show that the contrast is not equivalent to the conjunction, nor to other plausible noncontrastive candidates. I then (...) consider David Lewis's (1986) proposal for the way contrasts determine an explanatory cause, which does not require recasting the contrastive explanandum. Lewis's proposal is found to be unacceptable, but it suggests an improvement that shows contrastive explanations to employ a mechanism of "causal triangulation", similar to Mill's method of difference. (shrink)

This paper provides an inferentialist account of model-based understanding by combining a counterfactual account of explanation and an inferentialist account of representation with a view of modeling as extended cognition. This account makes it understandable how the manipulation of surrogate systems like models can provide genuinely new empirical understanding about the world. Similarly, the account provides an answer to the question how models, that always incorporate assumptions that are literally untrue of the model target, can still provide factive explanations. Finally, (...) the paper shows how the contrastive counterfactual theory of explanation can provide tools for assessing the explanatory power of models. (shrink)

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies (...) this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice. (shrink)

This article considers the popular thesis that a more proportional relationship between a cause and its effect yields a more abstract causal explanation of that effect, which in turn produces a deeper explanation. This thesis is taken to have important implications for choosing the optimal granularity of explanation for a given explanandum. In this article, I argue that this thesis is not generally true of probabilistic causal relationships. In light of this finding, I propose a pragmatic, interest-relative measure of explanatory (...) depth. This measure uses a decision-theoretic model of information pricing to determine the optimal granularity of explanation for a given explanandum, agent, and decision problem. (shrink)

Jonathan Kvanvig has argued that “objectual” understanding, i.e. the understanding we have of a large body of information, cannot be reduced to explanatory concepts. In this paper, I show that Kvanvig fails to establish this point, and then propose a framework for reducing objectual understanding to explanatory understanding.

There are a vast number of ways of explaining human behavior in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation. One family of accounts seeks to explain behavior using terms such as norms, customs, tradition, convention , and culture . Despite the ubiquity of these terms, it is not fully clear how these concepts really explain behavior, how they are related, how they differ, and what they contrast with. In this article, I hope to answer such questions. Key Words: norm • (...) custom • convention • explanation. (shrink)

Because they contain idealizations, scientific models are often considered to be misrepresentations of their target systems. An important question is therefore how models can explain the behaviours of these systems. Most of the answers to this question are representationalist in nature. Proponents of this view are generally committed to the claim that models are explanatory if they represent their target systems to some degree of accuracy; in other words, they try to determine the conditions under which idealizations can be made (...) without jeopardizing the representational function of models. In this article, we first outline several forms of this representationalist view. We then argue that this view, in each of these forms, omits an important role of idealizations: that of facilitating the identification of the explanatory components within a model. Via examination of a case study from contemporary astrophysics, we show that one way in which idealizations can do this is by creating a comparison case that s... (shrink)

This paper advances the view that some explanations in cognitive science are extra-mathematical explanations. Demonstrating the plausibility of this interpretation centers around certain efficient coding cases which ineliminably enlist information theoretic laws, facts and theorems to identify in-principle, mathematical constraints on neuronal information processing capacities. The explanatory structure in these cases is shown to parallel other putative instances of mathematical explanation. The upshot for cognitive mathematical explanations is thus two-fold: first, the view capably rebuts standard mechanistic objections to non-mechanistic explanation; (...) second, this view serves to importantly widen the possibility space for non-mechanistic forms of explanation in cognitive science. (shrink)

Recent work on social injustice has focused on implicit bias as an important factor in explaining persistent injustice in spite of achievements on civil rights. In this paper, I argue that because of its individualism, implicit bias explanation, taken alone, is inadequate to explain ongoing injustice; and, more importantly, it fails to call attention to what is morally at stake. An adequate account of how implicit bias functions must situate it within a broader theory of social structures and structural injustice; (...) changing structures is often a precondition for changing patterns of thought and action and is certainly required for durable change. (shrink)

The terms ‘structural injustice’ and ‘systemic injustice’ are commonly used, but their meanings are elusive. In this paper, I sketch an ontology of social systems that embeds accounts of social structures, relations, and practices. On this view, structures may be intrinsically problematic, or they may be problematic only insofar as they interact with other structures in the system to produce injustice. Because social practices that constitute structures set the backdrop for agency and identity, socially fluent agents reproduce the systems, often (...) unknowingly and unintentionally. The account aims to capture how agents both depend on and enact structures, and do so in ways that, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, ‘land on the body’. (shrink)

In response to commentaries by Esa Díaz León, Jennifer Saul, and Ra- chel Sterken, I develop more fully my views on the role of structure in social and metaphysical explanation. Although I believe that social agency, quite generally, occurs within practices and structures, the relevance of structure depends on the sort of questions we are asking and what interventions we are considering. The emphasis on questions is also relevant in considering metaphysical and meta-metaphysical is- sues about realism with respect to (...) gender and race. I aim to demon- strate that tools we develop in the context of critical social theory can change the questions we ask, what forms of explanation are called for, and how we do philosophy. (shrink)

What is the best method for undertaking critical social theory, and what are its ontological and normative commitments? Andreas Reckwitz has developed compelling answers to these questions drawing on practice theory. As a practice theorist myself, I am very sympathetic to his approach. This paper sketches a social theory that extends the reach of practice theory to include non-human animals and allows us to discriminate between importantly different kinds of social formations. In doing so, I argue that a strongly normative (...) basis for differentiating social phenomena is compatible with the methods of social theory and critical social theorists need not shy away from first-order moral commitments. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic networks of (...) social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The notion of multi-functional kind is introduced to explain how social scientists may be able to draw inferences across historically unrelated societies or cultures. Multi-functional kinds are neither eternal nor purely historical, support non-trivial inductive generalisations, and allow to overcome scepticism about the inductive potential of multiply realised (functional) properties. Two examples, from monetary economics and anthropology, provide support for a pluralistic ontology of the social world.

Agustín Rayo’s The Construction of Logical Space offers an exciting and ambitious defense of a broadly Carnapian approach to metaphysics. This essay will focus on one of the main differences between Rayo’s and Carnap’s approaches. Carnap distinguished between analytic, a priori “meaning postulates”, and empirical claims, which were both synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. Like meaning postulates, they determine the boundaries of logical space. But Rayo is skeptical that the a priori/a posteriori or analytic/synthetic distinctions can do the work (...) Carnap wanted them to, so unlike meaning postulates, ‘just is’-statements aren’t assumed to be analytic or knowable a priori. This essay will concern the epistemology of ‘just is’-statements in Rayo’s picture. If not by a priori reflection, how can we determine which ones to accept? I’ll distinguish two competing strands in Rayo’s work. The less radical, Lewisian strand holds that the question of whether to accept a ‘just is’-statement can be addressed in a neutral, non-question-begging way, by a kind of cost-benefit analysis. The more radical, Kuhnian strand holds that there can be no ‘just is’-statement-independent, rational choice of which ‘just is’-statements to accept. I argue that Rayo faces strong internal pressure to adopt the Kuhnian picture. While it is possible for Rayo to resist these Kuhnian pressures, natural strategies for doing so leave his view more similar to Carnap’s than the above gloss suggested. (shrink)

Two apparently mutually exclusive ideas about the relation between contrastive and non-contrastive explanations can be found in the literature. According to contrastivists, all explanation is contrastive explanation and the supposed existence of non-contrastive explanations can be revealed to be an illusion. According to non-contrastivists, on the other hand, contrastive explanation can be fully analysed in terms of non-contrastive explanation, and is thus not of fundamental importance. In the current article, I discuss the main arguments in favour of and against each (...) of the two positions. This discussion leads to the idea that contrastive explanations are to be understood as parts of a bigger, more complete non-contrastive explanation; but that all actual explanations explain only a limited set of contrasts. I conclude that, once the relation between contrastive and non-contrastive explanations is understood correctly, there remains no substantial issue to divide contrastivism and non-contrastivism. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causal explanation, in the version presented by Jim Woodward, has been recently claimed capable of buttressing the widely felt—though poorly understood—hunch that high-level, relatively abstract explanations, of the sort provided by sciences like biology, psychology and economics, are in some cases explanatorily optimal. It is the aim of this paper to show that this is mistaken. Due to a lack of effective constraints on the causal variables at the heart of the interventionist causal-explanatory scheme, as presently (...) formulated it is either unable to prefer high-level explanations to low, or systematically overshoots, recommending explanations at so high of a level as to be virtually vacuous. (shrink)

Niklas Luhmann verwendet in seiner soziologischen Systemtheorie offenbar etwas, das er den Büchern des englischen Mathematikers George Spencer Brown entnimmt. Dessen Formenkalkül ist für Luhmann, wie Günther Schulte treffend bemerkt, “Mädchen für alles, mit dem er nicht nur in der Lage ist Teezukochen, sondern auch Auto oder Straßenbahn zu fahren”. Der erste Blick in Spencer Browns Laws of Form vermittelt einen anderen Eindruck: nichts scheinen sie mit soziologischer Systemtheorie zu tun zu haben. Der vorliegende Text bearbeitet hieran anknüpfend eine recht (...) bescheidene Frage, die sich gleichwohl jedem Luhmann-Leser schon einmal gestellt haben dürfte: Was wollen die Laws of Form und was will Luhmann mit ihnen? Als Antwort ergibt sich, nach Zurückverfolgung der relevanten Fußnoten, eine gute und eine schlechte Nachricht. Die schlechte Nachricht ist, daß die Lektüre der Laws of Form offenbar niemandem wirklich weiterhelfen kann, auch Luhmann selbst nicht. Die gute ist folglich, daß dem Luhmann-Leser die Notwendigkeit erspart bleibt, einen so dunklen, weil sparsamen Kalkül zu verstehen. Das meiste nämlich, was Luhmann den Laws of Form angeblich entnimmt, steht auf den zweiten Blick nicht darin. Er wird es also ohnehin durch andere Texte begründen müssen. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to determine the optimal level of granularity for the variables used in probabilistic causal models. These causal models are useful for generating explanations in a number of scientific contexts. In Chapter 1, I argue that there is rarely a unique level of granularity at which a given phenomenon can be causally explained, thereby rejecting various causal exclusion arguments. In Chapter 2, I consider several recent proposals for measuring the explanatory power of causal explanations, and show that these (...) measures fail to track the comparative depth of explanations given at different levels of granularity. In Chapter 3, I offer a pragmatic account of how to partition the measure space of a causal variable so as to optimally explain its effect. My account uses the decision-theoretic notion of value of information, and indexes the relative depth of an explanation to a particular agent faced with a particular decision problem. Chapter 4 applies this same decisiontheoretic framework to answer the epistemic question of how to discover constitutive relationships in nature. In Chapter 5, I describe the formal details of the relationship between random variables that are meant to be coarse-grained and fine-grained representations of the same type of phenomenon. I use this formal framework to rebut a popular argument for the view that special science probabilities can be objective chances. Chapter 6 discusses challenges related to the causal interpretation of Bayes nets that use imprecise rather than precise probabilities. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers routinely talk about phenomena, and the ways in which they relate to explanation, theory and practice in science. However, there are very few definitions of the term, which is often used synonymously with "data'', "model'' and in older literature, "hypothesis''. In this paper I will attempt to clarify how phenomena are recognized, categorized and the role they play in scientific epistemology. I conclude that phenomena are not necessarily theory-based commitments, but that they are what explanations are called (...) to account for, which are not presently explained. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have by and large neglected technology. In this book, I have tried to do something about this lacuna by analyzing a few aspects of technical artifacts from a philosophical angle. The project was part of the research program "The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts" based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Technical artifacts are both plain physical objects and objects that have been purposefully made for a purpose; which is to say they have a physical (...) structure and a technical function. As a result, they belong equally in a purely physical conceptualisation of the world "in which human intentions and goals seem to have no place" and in an intentional conceptualisation, which is used to describe and understand people and their mental lives. My main goal was to find out how these two philosophically very different aspects of artifacts are related to one another. To achieve this goal, I looked at two contexts in which these aspects are regularly brought together in a systematic fashion. First, the context of design; design can be characterized as a transition from a desired function or goal to a physical structure. In particular, I have studied and analyzed the role of functional decomposition in design processes. The second context is the explanation of how artifacts are able to fulfill their technical function in virtue of their specific physical structure. The result of this part of the project is a general account of such explanations. (shrink)