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Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World

Princeton University Press (1984)

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  1. Causal webs in epidemiology.Federica Russo - unknown
    The notion of ‘causal web’ emerged in the epidemiological literature in the early Sixties and had to wait until the Nineties for a thorough critical appraisal. Famously, Nancy Krieger argued that such a notion isn’t helpful unless we specify what kind of spiders create the webs. This means, according to Krieger, (i) that the role of the spiders is to provide an explanation of the yarns of the web and (ii) that the sought spiders have to be biological and social. (...)
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  • Three conceptions of explaining how possibly—and one reductive account.Johannes Persson - 2011 - In Henk W. de Regt (ed.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. Springer. pp. 275--286.
    Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second variety offers (...)
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  • (1 other version)Chasing shadows: Natural selection and adaptation.D. M. Walsh - 2000 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 31 (1):135-53.
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  • Putnam’s account of apriority and scientific change: its historical and contemporary interest.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2010 - Synthese 176 (3):429-445.
    In the 1960s and 1970s, Hilary Putnam articulated a notion of relativized apriority that was motivated to address the problem of scientific change. This paper examines Putnam’s account in its historical context and in relation to contemporary views. I begin by locating Putnam’s analysis in the historical context of Quine’s rejection of apriority, presenting Putnam as a sympathetic commentator on Quine. Subsequently, I explicate Putnam’s positive account of apriority, focusing on his analysis of the history of physics and geometry. In (...)
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  • Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science.Howard Sankey - 2008 - Ashgate.
    Scientific realism is the position that the aim of science is to advance on truth and increase knowledge about observable and unobservable aspects of the mind-independent world which we inhabit. This book articulates and defends that position. In presenting a clear formulation and addressing the major arguments for scientific realism Sankey appeals to philosophers beyond the community of, typically Anglo-American, analytic philosophers of science to appreciate and understand the doctrine. The book emphasizes the epistemological aspects of scientific realism and contains (...)
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  • Causes need not be physically connected to their effects: The case for negative causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2004 - In Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of science. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 197--216.
    Negative causation occurs when an absence serves as cause, effect, or causal intermediary. Negative causation is genuine causation, or so I shall argue. It involves no physical connection between cause and effect. Thus causes need not be physically connected to their effects.
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  • (1 other version)The key role of causal explanation in the climate change issue.Francesca Pongiglione - 2012 - Theoria 27 (2):175-188.
    The basis for adoption of pro-environment behaviour is the understanding of causal passages within climate dynamics. The understanding of the causes of climate change is necessary in order _to be able_ to take mitigation actions. Conversely, the understanding of the consequences of climate change is essential in _motivating_ action. The case of ozone depletion confirms this view: the understanding of its causal dynamics played a determining role in people’s behavioural response.
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  • (1 other version)Contemporary debates in philosophy of science.Christopher Hitchcock (ed.) - 2004 - Malden, MA: Blackwell.
    Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...
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  • Reasons, causes, and action explanation.Mark Risjord - 2005 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (3):294-306.
    To explain an intentional action one must exhibit the agent’s reasons. Donald Davidson famously argued that the only clear way to understand action explanation is to hold that reasons are causes. Davidson’s discussion conflated two issues: whether reasons are causes and whether reasons causally explain intentional action. Contemporary work on explanation and normativity help disentangle these issues and ground an argument that intentional action explanations cannot be a species of causal explanation. Interestingly, this conclusion is consistent with Davidson’s conclusion that (...)
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  • The bell curve case for heredity.Max Hocutt & Michael Levin - 1999 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29 (3):389-415.
    City College of New York The hereditarian theory of race differences in IQ was briefly revived with the appearance of The Bell Curve but then quickly dismissed. The authors attempt a defense of it here, with an eye to conceptual and logical issues of special interests to philosophers, such as alleged infirmities in the heritability concept. At the same time, some relevant post-Bell Curve empirical data are introduced.
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  • Causality and causal modelling in the social sciences.Federica Russo - 2009 - Springer, Dordrecht.
    The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a ‘relic of a bygone’ nor ‘another fetish of modern science’; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant (...)
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  • The Rationale of Variation in Methodological and Evidential Pluralism.Federica Russo - 2006 - Philosophica 77 (1).
    Causal analysis in the social sciences takes advantage of a variety of methods and of a multi-fold source of information and evidence. This pluralistic methodology and source of information raises the question of whether we should accordingly have a pluralistic metaphysics and epistemology. This paper focuses on epistemology and argues that a pluralistic methodology and evidence don’t entail a pluralistic epistemology. It will be shown that causal models employ a single rationale of testing, based on the notion of variation. Further, (...)
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  • Theoretical status of computational cognitive modeling.Ron Sun - unknown
    This article explores the view that computational models of cognition may constitute valid theories of cognition, often in the full sense of the term ‘‘theory”. In this discussion, this article examines various (existent or possible) positions on this issue and argues in favor of the view above. It also connects this issue with a number of other relevant issues, such as the general relationship between theory and data, the validation of models, and the practical benefits of computational modeling. All the (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Hans Reichenbach.Clark Glymour - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • (2 other versions)Transference, or identiry theories of causation?María José García-Encinas - 2004 - Theoria 19 (1):31-47.
    Transference theorists propose to explain causation in terms of the transference of a physical element. I argue, in two steps, that this is not possible. First, I show that available accounts of ‘transference’ ultimately convey that transference -and, consequently, causation- is the (non-relational) identity over time of the transferred element (a universal, a trope, or even an absolute substance). But, second, I try to defend, it is conceptually impossible that causation is (non-relational) identity.
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  • (1 other version)Constitutive Explanatory Relevance.Carl Craver - 2007 - Journal of Philosophical Research 32:3-20.
    In what sense are the activities and properties of components in a mechanism explanatorily relevant to the behavior of a mechanism as a whole? I articulate this problem, the problem of constitutive relevance, and I show that it must be solved if we are to understand mechanisms and mechanistic explanation. I argue against some putative solutions to the problem of constitutive relevance, and I sketch a positive account according to which relevance is analyzed in terms ofrelationships of mutual manipulability between (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rethinking mechanistic explanation.Stuart Glennan - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3):S342-353.
    Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain (...)
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  • Explanation from physics to the philosophy of religion.Philip Clayton - 1989 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 26 (2):89 - 108.
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  • Causality.Jessica M. Wilson - 2005 - In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 90--100.
    Arguably no concept is more fundamental to science than that of causality, for investigations into cases of existence, persistence, and change in the natural world are largely investigations into the causes of these phenomena. Yet the metaphysics and epistemology of causality remain unclear. For example, the ontological categories of the causal relata have been taken to be objects (Hume 1739), events (Davidson 1967), properties (Armstrong 1978), processes (Salmon 1984), variables (Hitchcock 1993), and facts (Mellor 1995). (For convenience, causes and effects (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument and the Bell Inequalities.László E. Szabó - 2007 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) published an important paper in which they claimed that the whole formalism of quantum mechanics together with what they called a “Reality Criterion” imply that quantum mechanics cannot be complete. That is, there must exist some elements of reality that are not described by quantum mechanics. They concluded that there must be a more complete description of physical reality involving some hidden variables that can characterize the state of affairs in the world in (...)
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  • Causation and manipulability.James Woodward - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Manipulablity theories of causation, according to which causes are to be regarded as handles or devices for manipulating effects, have considerable intuitive appeal and are popular among social scientists and statisticians. This article surveys several prominent versions of such theories advocated by philosophers, and the many difficulties they face. Philosophical statements of the manipulationist approach are generally reductionist in aspiration and assign a central role to human action. These contrast with recent discussions employing a broadly manipulationist framework for understanding causation, (...)
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  • The metaphysics of causation.Jonathan N. D. Schaffer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided as follows. First, there are questions about the nature of the causal relata, including (1.1) whether they are in spacetime immanence), (1.2) how fine grained they are individuation), and (1.3) how many there are adicity). Second, there are questions about the metaphysics of the causal relation, including (2.1) what is the difference between causally related and causally unrelated sequences connection), (2.2) what is the difference between sequences related as cause to (...)
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  • Causal inference in quantum mechanics: A reassessment.Mauricio Suárez - 2007 - In Federica Russo & Jon Williamson (eds.), Causality and Probability in the Sciences. College Publications. pp. 65-106.
    There has been an intense discussion, albeit largely an implicit one, concerning the inference of causal hypotheses from statistical correlations in quantum mechanics ever since John Bell’s first statement of his notorious theorem in 1966. As is well known, its focus has mainly been the so-called Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (“EPR”) thought experiment, and the ensuing observed correlations in real EPR like experiments. But although implicitly the discussion goes as far back as Bell’s work, it is only in the last two decades that (...)
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  • Epr Robustness and the Causal Markov Condition.Mauricio Suárez & Iñaki San Pedro - 2007 - Centre of Philosophy of Natural and Social Science.
    It is still a matter of controversy whether the Principle of the Common Cause can be used as a basis for sound causal inference. It is thus to be expected that its application to quantum mechanics should be a correspondingly controversial issue. Indeed the early 90’s saw a flurry of papers addressing just this issue in connection with the EPR correlations. Yet, that debate does not seem to have caught up with the most recent literature on causal inference generally, which (...)
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  • Three ways of worrying about 'causation'.David Spurrett & Don Ross - unknown
    Our point of departure is Russell’s (1913) argument for the ‘complete extrusion’ of the word ‘cause’ from the philosophical vocabulary. We argue that at least three different types of philosophical project concerning ‘cause’ should be carefully distinguished, and that failures to distinguish them lie at the root of some apparently recalcitrant problems. We call them the ‘cognitive’, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘metaphysical’.
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  • Local Primitive Causality and the Common Cause Principle in Quantum Field Theory.Miklos Redei & Stephen J. Summers - 2001 - Foundations of Physics 32 (3):335-355.
    If $\mathcal{A}$ (V) is a net of local von Neumann algebras satisfying standard axioms of algebraic relativistic quantum field theory and V 1 and V 2 are spacelike separated spacetime regions, then the system ( $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ), φ) is said to satisfy the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle iff for every pair of projections A∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), B∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ) correlated in the normal state φ there exists a projection C (...)
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  • Population genetics.Roberta L. Millstein & Robert A. Skipper - 2007 - In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Population genetics attempts to measure the influence of the causes of evolution, viz., mutation, migration, natural selection, and random genetic drift, by understanding the way those causes change the genetics of populations. But how does it accomplish this goal? After a short introduction, we begin in section (2) with a brief historical outline of the origins of population genetics. In section (3), we sketch the model theoretic structure of population genetics, providing the flavor of the ways in which population genetics (...)
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  • The explanatory potential of artificial societies.Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2009 - Synthese 169 (3):539 - 555.
    It is often claimed that artificial society simulations contribute to the explanation of social phenomena. At the hand of a particular example, this paper argues that artificial societies often cannot provide full explanations, because their models are not or cannot be validated. Despite that, many feel that such simulations somehow contribute to our understanding. This paper tries to clarify this intuition by investigating whether artificial societies provide potential explanations. It is shown that these potential explanations, if they contribute to our (...)
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  • When can statistical theories be causally closed?Balázs Gyenis & Miklós Rédei - 2002 - Foundations of Physics 34 (9):1285-1303.
    The notion of common cause closedness of a classical, Kolmogorovian probability space with respect to a causal independence relation between the random events is defined, and propositions are presented that characterize common cause closedness for specific probability spaces. It is proved in particular that no probability space with a finite number of random events can contain common causes of all the correlations it predicts; however, it is demonstrated that probability spaces even with a finite number of random events can be (...)
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  • Scientific explanation in quantum theory.Rob Clifton - unknown
    In this paper (which is, at best, a work in progress), I discuss different modes of scientific explanation identified by philosophers (Hempel, Salmon, Kitcher, Friedman, Hughes) and examine how well or badly they capture the "explanations" of phenomena that modern quantum theory provides. I tentatively conclude that quantum explanation is best seen as "structural explanation", and spell out in detail how this works in the case of explaining vacuum correlations. Problems and prospects for structural explanation in quantum theory are also (...)
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  • Non-relativistic quantum mechanics.Michael Dickson - unknown
    This essay is a discussion of the philosophical and foundational issues that arise in non-relativistic quantum theory. After introducing the formalism of the theory, I consider: characterizations of the quantum formalism, empirical content, uncertainty, the measurement problem, and non-locality. In each case, the main point is to give the reader some introductory understanding of some of the major issues and recent ideas.
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  • (1 other version)Ulcers and bacteria I: discovery and acceptance.Paul Thagard - 1998 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 29 (1):107-136.
    In 1983, Dr. J. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall reported finding a new kind of bacteria in the stomachs of people with gastritis. Warren and Marshall were soon led to the hypothesis that peptic ulcers are generally caused, not by excess acidity or stress, but by a bacterial infection. Initially, this hypothesis was viewed as preposterous, and it is still somewhat controversial. In 1994, however, a U. S. National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel concluded that infection appears to (...)
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  • Scientific Realism.Richard Boyd - 1984 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 21 (1&2):767-791.
    (i) Scientific realism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine about the existence and nature of the unobservables of science. (ii) There are good explanationist arguments for realism, most famously that from the success of science, provided abduction is allowed. Abduction seems to be on an equal footing, at least, with other ampliative methods of inference. (iii) We have no reason to believe a doctrine of empirical equivalence that would sustain the underdetermination argument against realism. (iv) The key to defending realism from (...)
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  • Sensitive and insensitive causation.James Woodward - 2006 - Philosophical Review 115 (1):1-50.
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  • Explanatory generalizations, part I: A counterfactual account.James Woodward & Christopher Hitchcock - 2003 - Noûs 37 (1):1–24.
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  • Explanation and invariance in the special sciences.James Woodward - 2000 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (2):197-254.
    This paper describes an alternative to the common view that explanation in the special sciences involves subsumption under laws. According to this alternative, whether or not a generalization can be used to explain has to do with whether it is invariant rather than with whether it is lawful. A generalization is invariant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it would continue to hold under a relevant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it (...)
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  • The credibility of miracles.Ruth Weintraub - 1996 - Philosophical Studies 82 (3):359 - 375.
    Hume’s famous argument against the credibility of testimony about miracles invokes two premises: 1) The reliability of the witness (the extent to which he is informed and truthful) must be compared with the intrinsic probability of the miracle. 2) The initial probability of a miracle is always small enough to outweigh the improbability that the testimony is false (even when the witness is assumed to be reliable). I defend the first premise of the argument, showing that Hume’s argument can be (...)
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  • Neo-rationalism versus neo-darwinism: Integrating development and evolution. [REVIEW]Kelly C. Smith - 1992 - Biology and Philosophy 7 (4):431-451.
    An increasing number of biologists are expressing discontent with the prevailing theory of neo-Darwinism. In particular, the tendency of neo-Darwinians to adopt genetic determinism and atomistic notions of both genes and organisms is seen as grossly unfair to the body of developmental theory. One faction of dissenteers, the Process Structuralists, take their inspiration from the rational morphologists who preceded Darwin. These neo-rationalists argue that a mature biology must possess universal laws and that these generative laws should be sought within organismal (...)
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  • Darwin's concept of final cause: Neither new nor trivial. [REVIEW]T. L. Short - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (3):323-340.
    Darwin'suse of final cause accords with the Aristotelian idea of finalcauses as explanatory types – as opposed to mechanical causes, which arealways particulars. In Wright's consequence etiology, anadaptation is explained by particular events, namely, its past consequences;hence, that etiology is mechanistic at bottom. This justifies Ghiselin'scharge that such versions of teleology trivialize the subject, But a purelymechanistic explanation of an adaptation allows it to appear coincidental.Patterns of outcome, whether biological or thermodynamic, cannot be explainedbytracing causal chains, even were that possible. (...)
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  • Overdetermining causes.Jonathan Schaffer - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2):23 - 45.
    When two rocks shatter the window at once, what causes the window to shatter? Is the throwing of each individual rock a cause of the window shattering, or are the throwings only causes collectively? This question bears on the analysis of causation, and the metaphysics of macro-causation. I argue that the throwing of each individual rock is a cause of the window shattering, and generally that individual overdeterminers are causes.
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  • Explanation as unification.Gerhard Schurz - 1999 - Synthese 120 (1):95-114.
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  • Causal explanation and explanatory selection.Rebecca Schweder - 1999 - Synthese 120 (1):115-124.
    It is observed that in ordinary everyday causal explanations often just one causal factor is mentioned. One causal factor carries the explanatory burden, even if there are several causal factors that are responsible for the event to be explained. This paper deals with the question of how to account for this explanatory selection. I argue for a pragmatic stance towards explanation, that we must attend to the question–answer situation as a whole and the context of the explanation. The context of (...)
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  • The determination of theory by evidence: The case for quantum discontinuity, 1900–1915.John D. Norton - 1993 - Synthese 97 (1):1 - 31.
    The thesis that observation necessarily fails to determine theory is false in the sense that observation can provide overwhelming evidence for a particular theory or even a hypothesis within the theory. The saga of quantum discontinuity illustrates the power of evidence to determine theory and shows how that power can be underestimated by inadequate caricatures of the evidential case. That quantum discontinuity can save the phenomena of black body radiation is the widely known result, but it leaves open the possibilities (...)
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  • Humphrey's paradox and the interpretation of inverse conditional propensities.Christopher S. I. Mccurdy - 1996 - Synthese 108 (1):105 - 125.
    The aim of this paper is to distinguish between, and examine, three issues surrounding Humphreys's paradox and interpretation of conditional propensities. The first issue involves the controversy over the interpretation of inverse conditional propensities — conditional propensities in which the conditioned event occurs before the conditioning event. The second issue is the consistency of the dispositional nature of the propensity interpretation and the inversion theorems of the probability calculus, where an inversion theorem is any theorem of probability that makes explicit (...)
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  • On the scope and limits of generalizations in the social sciences.Daniel Little - 1993 - Synthese 97 (2):183 - 207.
    This article disputes the common view that social science explanations depend on discovery of lawlike generalizations from which descriptions of social outcomes can be derived. It distinguishes between governing and phenomenal regularities, and argues that social regularities are phenomenal rather than governing. In place of nomological deductive arguments, the article maintains that social explanations depend on the discovery of causal mechanisms underlying various social processes. The metaphysical correlate of this argument is that there are no social kinds: types of social (...)
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  • Causal explanation and scientific realism.Christopher Hitchcock - 1992 - Erkenntnis 37 (2):151 - 178.
    It is widely believed that many of the competing accounts of scientific explanation have ramifications which are relevant to the scientific realism debate. I claim that the two issues are orthogonal. For definiteness, I consider Cartwright's argument that causal explanations secure belief in theoretical entities. In Section I, van Fraassen's anti-realism is reviewed; I argue that this anti-realism is, prima facie, consistent with a causal account of explanation. Section II reviews Cartwright's arguments. In Section III, it is argued that causal (...)
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  • Discussion: Screening-off and visibility to selection. [REVIEW]Christopher Read Hitchcock - 1997 - Biology and Philosophy 12 (4):521-529.
    Philosophers have used the probabilistic relation of ’screening-off‘ to explicate concepts in the theories of causation and explanation. Brandon has used screening-off relations in an attempt to reconstruct an argument of Mayr and Gould that natural selection acts at the level of the organism. I argue that Brandon‘s reconstruction is unsuccessful.
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  • The mechanist and the snail.Christopher Hitchcock - 1996 - Philosophical Studies 84 (1):91 - 105.
    Introduction: One of the most influential theories of scientific explanation to have emerged in the past two decades is Salmon's causal/mechanical theory (Salmon 1984). According to this account, scientific explanations describe a network of causal processes and interactions. In this paper, I will use an example from evolutionary biology to argue that the causal nexus, as characterized by Salmon, is not rich enough to account for many causal explanations in the sciences.
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  • Mechanisms and the nature of causation.Stuart S. Glennan - 1996 - Erkenntnis 44 (1):49--71.
    In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms-complex systems whose internal parts interact to produce a system's external behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when (...)
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  • Reflections on structuralism and scientific explanation.John Forge - 2002 - Synthese 130 (1):109 - 121.
    This paper is about structuralism as a form of reconstructing theories, associated with the work Sneed, Balzar and Moulines among others, and not about "structuralism" is any of its other manifold senses. The paper is a reflection in that it looks back on some earlier work of my own on the subject of structuralism and explanation, in which I argued that structuralism and my 'instance view' of explanation go well together, with structuralism providing the means to develop the idea of (...)
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