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Causation as explanation

Noûs 9 (1):3-16 (1975)

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  1. Mechanistic Explanation in Psychology.Mark Povich - forthcoming - In Hank Stam & Huib Looren De Jong (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Theoretical Psychology. (Eds.) Hank Stam and Huib Looren de Jong. Sage.
    Philosophers of psychology debate, among other things, which psychological models, if any, are (or provide) mechanistic explanations. This should seem a little strange given that there is rough consensus on the following two claims: 1) a mechanism is an organized collection of entities and activities that produces, underlies, or maintains a phenomenon, and 2) a mechanistic explanation describes, represents, or provides information about the mechanism producing, underlying, or maintaining the phenomenon to be explained (i.e. the explanandum phenomenon) (Bechtel and Abrahamsen (...)
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  • The Causal Explanatory Functions of Medical Diagnoses.Hane Htut Maung - 2017 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (1):41-59.
    Diagnoses in medicine are often taken to serve as explanations of patients’ symptoms and signs. This article examines how they do so. I begin by arguing that although some instances of diagnostic explanation can be formulated as covering law arguments, they are explanatory neither in virtue of their argumentative structures nor in virtue of general regularities between diagnoses and clinical presentations. I then consider the theory that medical diagnoses explain symptoms and signs by identifying their actual causes in particular cases. (...)
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  • Advancing the Counterfactual Analysis of Causation.Ethan R. Colton - 2003 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    What does it mean to say that one event is a cause of another? The simplest counterfactual analyses identify causation with one of two counterfactual-dependence relations: if event c had not occurred, then event e would not have occurred; if c had not occurred, e's probability would have been lower. These analyses enjoy some success. For the first: the dart-throw caused the balloon-pop, because if the throw had not occurred, the pop would not have occurred. For the second: suppose two (...)
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  • Kymmenen haastetta kausaalisen selittämisen teorialle.Petri Ylikoski - 2002 - Ajatus 59:155-177.
    Väitöskirjassani Understanding Interests and Causal Explanation (2001) hahmottelin teoriaa yksittäisten tapahtumien kausaalisesta selittämisestä. Tässä kirjoituksessa tarkastelen niitä haasteita tai vaatimuksia, joihin teoriani yritti vastata. Alustavien huomioiden jälkeen esittelen ensiksi erityisesti selittämisen teoriaan liittyviä haasteita ja sen jälkeen yleisempiä filosofisia vaatimuksia hyväksyttävälle selittämisen teorialle.
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  • Scientific w-Explanation as Ampliative, Specialized Embedding: A Neo-Hempelian Account.José Díez - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S8):1413-1443.
    The goal of this paper is to present and defend an empiricist, neo-Hempelian account of scientific explanation as ampliative, specialized embedding. The proposal aims to preserve what I take to be the core of Hempel’s empiricist account, by weakening it in some respects and strengthening it in others, introducing two new conditions that solve most of Hempel’s problems without abandoning his empiricist strictures. According to this proposal, to explain a phenomenon is to make it expectable by introducing new conceptual/ontological machinery (...)
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  • Przyczyna i Wyjaśnianie: Studium Z Filozofii i Metodologii Nauk.Paweł Kawalec - 2006 - Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
    Przedmowa Problematyka związana z zależnościami przyczynowymi, ich modelowaniem i odkrywa¬niem, po długiej nieobecności w filozofii i metodologii nauk, budzi współcześnie duże zainteresowanie. Wiąże się to przede wszystkim z dynamicznym rozwojem, zwłaszcza od lat 1990., technik obli¬czeniowych. Wypracowane w tym czasie sieci bayesowskie uznaje się za matematyczny język przyczynowości. Pozwalają one na daleko idącą auto¬matyzację wnioskowań, co jest także zachętą do podjęcia prób algorytmiza¬cji odkrywania przyczyn. Na potrzeby badań naukowych, które pozwalają na przeprowadzenie eksperymentu z randomizacją, standardowe metody ustalania zależności przyczynowych (...)
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  • Two Styles of Reasoning in Scientific Practices: Experimental and Mathematical Traditions.Mieke Boon - 2011 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (3):255 - 278.
    This article outlines a philosophy of science in practice that focuses on the engineering sciences. A methodological issue is that these practices seem to be divided by two different styles of scientific reasoning, namely, causal-mechanistic and mathematical reasoning. These styles are philosophically characterized by what Kuhn called ?disciplinary matrices?. Due to distinct metaphysical background pictures and/or distinct ideas of what counts as intelligible, they entail distinct ideas of the character of phenomena and what counts as a scientific explanation. It is (...)
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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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  • 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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  • On the alleged extensionality of "causal explanatory contexts".Cindy Stern - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 45 (4):614-625.
    In a recent paper, Michael Levin argues that both statements reporting causal relations and causal explanatory statements are extensional. We show that his argument for the extensionality of causal explanatory statements fails to establish that conclusion. His claim that certain 'because' statements are elliptical for statements of what he terms the 'causal explanatory' form is unsubstantiated. The argument for the referential transparency of the allegedly explanatory form, regardless of whether it is a distinct explanatory form, fails because of scope problems. (...)
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  • Does hiv or poverty cause aids? Biomedical and epidemiological perspectives.Albert Mosley - 2004 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 25 (5-6):399-421.
    This paper contrasts biomedical and epidemiological approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and uses Collingwoods principle of the relativity of causes to show how different approaches focus on different causal factors reflecting different interests. By distinguishing between the etiology of a disease and an epidemic, the paper argues that, from an epidemiological perspective, poverty is an important causal factor in the African AIDS epidemic and that emphasizing this should not be considered incompatible with recognizing the causal necessity of (...)
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  • Phenomenological Laws and Mechanistic Explanations.Gabriel Siegel & Carl F. Craver - 2024 - Philosophy of Science 91 (1):132-150.
    In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...)
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  • How do networks explain? A neo-hempelian approach to network explanations of the ecology of the microbiome.José Díez & Javier Suárez - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (3):1-26.
    Despite the importance of network analysis in biological practice, dominant models of scientific explanation do not account satisfactorily for how this family of explanations gain their explanatory power in every specific application. This insufficiency is particularly salient in the study of the ecology of the microbiome. Drawing on Coyte et al. (2015) study of the ecology of the microbiome, Deulofeu et al. (2021) argue that these explanations are neither mechanistic, nor purely mathematical, yet they are substantially empirical. Building on their (...)
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  • The causal assumptions of quasi-experimental practice.Thomas D. Cook & Donald T. Campbell - 1986 - Synthese 68 (1):141 - 180.
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  • Explanation, causality, and counterfactuals.Evan K. Jobe - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (3):357-389.
    The aim of this paper is to develop an adequate version of the D-N theory of explanation for particular events and to show how the resulting D-N model can be used as a tool in articulating a regularity theory of causation and an analysis of the truth conditions for counterfactual conditionals. Starting with a basic model that is largely the product of other workers in this field, two new restrictions are formulated in order to construct a version of D-N explanation (...)
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  • Mathematical platonism and the causal relevance of abstracta.Barbara Gail Montero - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-18.
    Many mathematicians are platonists: they believe that the axioms of mathematics are true because they express the structure of a nonspatiotemporal, mind independent, realm. But platonism is plagued by a philosophical worry: it is unclear how we could have knowledge of an abstract, realm, unclear how nonspatiotemporal objects could causally affect our spatiotemporal cognitive faculties. Here I aim to make room in our metaphysical picture of the world for the causal relevance of abstracta.
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  • An explanatory idealist theory of grounding.David Mark Kovacs - 2022 - Noûs 56 (3):530-553.
    How is grounding related to metaphysical explanation? The standard view is that the former somehow “backs”, “undergirds” or “underlies” the latter. This view fits into a general picture of explanation, according to which explanations in general hold in virtue of a certain elite group of “explanatory relations” or “determinative relations” that back them. This paper turns the standard view on its head: grounding doesn't “back” metaphysical explanation but is in an important sense downstream from it. I call this view “grounding (...)
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  • Explaining as Mediated Action.Alexsandro Pereira de Pereira, Paulo Lima Junior & Renato Felix Rodrigues - 2016 - Science & Education 25 (3-4):343-362.
    Explaining is one of the most important everyday practices in science education. In this article, we examine how scientific explanations could serve as cultural tools for members of a group of pre-service physics teachers. Specifically, we aim at their use of explanations about forces of inertia in non-inertial frames of reference. A basic assumption of our study is that explanatory tools (e.g., typical explanations learned) shape the ways we think and speak about the world. Drawing on the theory of mediated (...)
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  • Understanding Interests and Causal Explanation.Petri Ylikoski - 2001 - Dissertation, University of Helsinki
    This work consists of two parts. Part I will be a contribution to a philo- sophical discussion of the nature of causal explanation. It will present my contrastive counterfactual theory of causal explanation and show how it can be used to deal with a number of problems facing theories of causal explanation. Part II is a contribution to a discussion of the na- ture of interest explanation in social studies of science. The aim is to help to resolve some controversies (...)
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  • "Because" without "Cause": The Uses and Limits of Non-Causal Explanation.Jonathan Birch - 2008 - Dissertation, University of Cambridge
    In this BA dissertation, I deploy examples of non-causal explanations of physical phenomena as evidence against the view that causal models of explanation can fully account for explanatory practices in science. I begin by discussing the problems faced by Hempel’s models and the causal models built to replace them. I then offer three everyday examples of non-causal explanation, citing sticks, pilots and apples. I suggest a general form for such explanations, under which they can be phrased as inductive-statistical arguments incorporating (...)
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  • Causation in medicine: The disease entity model.Caroline Whitbeck - 1977 - Philosophy of Science 44 (4):619-637.
    This paper examines the way in which causal relations are understood in the dominant model in contemporary medicine. It argues that the causal relation is not definable in terms of the condition relation, but that in general for conditions of an occurrence to be among its causes they must answer instrumental interests in a certain way, and there are further criteria for distinguishing 'the' cause of a disease (i.e., its etiological agent) from other causal factors, which are based upon instrumental (...)
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  • What causes effects?Philip L. Peterson - 1981 - Philosophical Studies 39 (2):107 - 139.
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  • In Search of Explanations: from Why-questions to Shakespearean Questions.Matti Sintonen - 1993 - Philosophica 51 (1):55-81.
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  • Why Questions, and Why Just Why-Questions?Matti Sintonen - 1999 - Synthese 120 (1):125-135.
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  • Causation: Relation or Connective?Paul Needham - 1988 - Dialectica 42 (3):201-220.
    Davidson's account of singular causal statements as expressing relations between events together with his views on event identity lead to inferences involving causal statements which many of his critics find counterintuitive. These are sometimes said to be avoided on Kim's view of events, in terms of which this line of criticism is often formulated. It is argued that neither Davidson nor Kim offer a satisfactory account of events — an essential prerequisit for the relational theory — and an account of (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Nature of Explanation. Peter Achinstein. [REVIEW]James H. Fetzer - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (3):516-519.
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  • (8 other versions)JSE 30:4 Editorial.Stephen Braude - 2016 - Journal of Scientific Exploration 30 (4).
    Probably, most JSE readers already have at least a rough idea of what the term “synchronicity” means. The concept of synchronicity—it hardly deserves its familiar classification as a theory—is usually credited to Carl Jung (Jung 1973), although Jung really didn’t do much actually to clarify the notion. I’ll say something shortly about the problems with Jung’s approach, but what he had in mind—again, very roughly speaking—is this. We’ve all experienced coincidences in our lives: surprising combinations of events that appear to (...)
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