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  1. Etiological Explanations: Illness Causation Theory.Olaf Dammann - 2020 - Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press.
    Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...)
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  • Chasing shadows: natural selection and adaptation.D. M. Walsh - 2000 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1):135-153.
  • Tasks in cognitive science: mechanistic and nonmechanistic perspectives.Samuel D. Taylor - forthcoming - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-27.
    A tension exists between those who do—e.g. Meyer (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71:959–985, 2020 ) and Chemero ( 2011 )—and those who do not—e.g. Kaplan and Craver (Philosophy of Science 78:601–627, 2011 ) Piccinini and Craver (Synthese 183:283–311, 2011 )—afford nonmechanistic explanations a role in cognitive science. Here, I argue that one’s perspective on this matter will cohere with one’s interpretation of the tasks of cognitive science; that is, of the actions for which cognitive scientists are (...)
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  • Inderterminacy in Causation.Eric Swanson - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (268):606-624.
    I argue that there are some causal relata for which it is indeterminate whether one caused the other. Positing indeterminacy in causation helps us defend contested principles in the logic of causation and makes possible new ways of thinking about the theoretical impact of symmetric causal overdetermination. I close by discussing amendments of current theories of causation that would help explain causal indeterminacy.
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  • Indeterminacy in Causation.Eric Swanson - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (268):606-624.
    I argue that there are some causal relata for which it is indeterminate whether one caused the other. Positing indeterminacy in causation helps us defend contested principles in the logic of causation and makes possible new ways of thinking about the theoretical impact of symmetric causal overdetermination. I close by discussing amendments of current theories of causation that would help explain causal indeterminacy.
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  • From probabilistic topologies to Feynman diagrams: Hans Reichenbach on time, genidentity, and quantum physics.Michael Stöltzner - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-26.
    Hans Reichenbach’s posthumous book The Direction of Time ends somewhere between Socratic aporia and historical irony. Prompted by Feynman’s diagrammatic formulation of quantum electrodynamics, Reichenbach eventually abandoned the delicate balancing between the macroscopic foundation of the direction of time and microscopic descriptions of time order undertaken throughout the previous chapters in favor of an exclusively macroscopic theory that he had vehemently rejected in the 1920s. I analyze Reichenbach’s reasoning against the backdrop of the history of Feynman diagrams and the current (...)
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  • The causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation.Jonathan L. Shaheen - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (3):553-578.
    This paper argues that the semantic facts about ‘because’ are best explained via a metaphorical treatment of metaphysical explanation that treats causal explanation as explanation par excellence. Along the way, it defends a commitment to a unified causal sense of ‘because’ and offers a proprietary explanation of grounding skepticism. With the causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation on the table, an extended discussion of the relationship between conceptual structure and metaphysics ends with a suggestion that the semantic facts about ‘because’ (...)
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  • Causation by disconnection.Jonathan Schaffer - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (2):285-300.
    The physical and/or intrinsic connection approach to causation has become prominent in the recent literature, with Salmon, Dowe, Menzies, and Armstrong among its leading proponents. I show that there is a type of causation, causation by disconnection, with no physical or intrinsic connection between cause and effect. Only Hume-style conditions approaches and hybrid conditions-connections approaches appear to be able to handle causation by disconnection. Some Hume-style, extrinsic, absence-relating, necessary and/or sufficient condition component of the causal relation proves to be needed.
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  • Causality and explanation: A reply to two critiques.Wesley C. Salmon - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (3):461-477.
    This paper discusses several distinct process theories of causality offered in recent years by Phil Dowe and me. It addresses problems concerning the explication of causal process, causal interaction, and causal transmission, whether given in terms of transmission of marks, transmission of invariant or conserved quantities, or mere possession of conserved quantities. Renouncing the mark-transmission and invariant quantity criteria, I accept a conserved quantity theory similar to Dowe's--differing basically with respect to causal transmission. This paper also responds to several fundamental (...)
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  • Local theories of causation and the a posteriori identification of the causal relation.Alexander Rueger - 1998 - Erkenntnis 48 (1):25-38.
    The need to find an intrinsic characterization of what makes a relation between events causal arises not only in local theories of causation like Salmon's process theory but also in global approaches like Lewis' counterfactual theory. According to the localist intuition, whether a process connecting two events is causal should depend only on what goes on between the events, not on conditions that hold elsewhere in the world. If such intrinsic characterizations could be found, an identification of the causal relation (...)
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  • A causal ontology of objects, causal relations, and various kinds of action.Andrew Newman - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-28.
    The basic kinds of physical causality that are foundational for other kinds of causality involve objects and the causal relations between them. These interactions do not involve events. If events were ontologically significant entities for causality in general, then they would play a role in simple mechanical interactions. But arguments about simple collisions looked at from different frames of reference show that events cannot play a role in simple mechanical interactions, and neither can the entirely hypothetical causal relations between events. (...)
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  • Actual Causation and Compositionality.Jonathan Livengood & Justin Sytsma - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (1):43-69.
    Many theories of actual causation implicitly endorse the claim that if c is an actual cause of e, then either c causes e directly or every intermediary by which c indirectly causes e is itself both an actual cause of e and also an actual effect of c. We think this compositionality constraint is plausible. However, as we show, it is not always satisfied by the causal attributions ordinary people make. We conclude by considering what philosophers working on causation should (...)
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  • Causation in AI and law.Jos Lehmann, Joost Breuker & Bob Brouwer - 2004 - Artificial Intelligence and Law 12 (4):279-315.
    Reasoning about causation in fact is an essential element of attributing legal responsibility. Therefore, the automation of the attribution of legal responsibility requires a modelling effort aimed at the following: a thorough understanding of the relation between the legal concepts of responsibility and of causation in fact; a thorough understanding of the relation between causation in fact and the common sense concept of causation; and, finally, the specification of an ontology of the concepts that are minimally required for (automatic) common (...)
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  • Simulations, Explanation, Understanding: An Analytical Overview.Cyrille Imbert - 2017 - Philosophia Scientiae 21:49-109.
    J’analyse dans cet article la valeur explicative que peuvent avoir les simulations numériques. On rencontre en effet souvent l’affirmation selon laquelle les simulations permettent de prédire, de reproduire ou d’imiter des phénomènes, mais guère de les expliquer. Les simulations rendraient aussi possible l’étude du comportement d’un système par la force brute du calcul mais n’apporteraient pas une compréhension réelle de ce système et de son comportement. Dans tous les cas, il semble que, à tort ou à raison, les simulations posent, (...)
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  • In Defence of Activities.Phyllis Illari & Jon Williamson - 2013 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1):69-83.
    In this paper, we examine what is to be said in defence of Machamer, Darden and Craver’s (MDC) controversial dualism about activities and entities (Machamer, Darden and Craver’s in Philos Sci 67:1–25, 2000). We explain why we believe the notion of an activity to be a novel, valuable one, and set about clearing away some initial objections that can lead to its being brushed aside unexamined. We argue that substantive debate about ontology can only be effective when desiderata for an (...)
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  • The Multifaceted Legacy of the Human Genome Program for Evolutionary Biology: An Epistemological Perspective.Philippe Huneman - 2019 - Perspectives on Science 27 (1):117-152.
  • Contrastive, non-probabilistic statistical explanations.Bruce Glymour - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (3):448-471.
    Standard models of statistical explanation face two intractable difficulties. In his 1984 Salmon argues that because statistical explanations are essentially probabilistic we can make sense of statistical explanation only by rejecting the intuition that scientific explanations are contrastive. Further, frequently the point of a statistical explanation is to identify the etiology of its explanandum, but on standard models probabilistic explanations often fail to do so. This paper offers an alternative conception of statistical explanations on which explanations of the frequency of (...)
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  • Establishing backward causation on empirical grounds: An interventionist approach.Alexander Gebharter, Dennis Graemer & Frenzis H. Scheffels - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (2):129-138.
    We propose an analysis of backward causation in terms of interventionism that can avoid several problems typically associated with backward causation. Its main advantage over other accounts is that it allows for reducing the problematic task of supporting backward causal claims to the unproblematic task of finding evidence for several ordinary forward directed causal hypotheses.
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  • The Ontology of Causal Process Theories.Anton Froeyman - 2012 - Philosophia 40 (3):523-538.
    There is a widespread belief that the so-called process theories of causation developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe have given us an original account of what causation really is. In this paper, I show that this is a misconception. The notion of “causal process” does not offer us a new ontological account of causation. I make this argument by explicating the implicit ontological commitments in Salmon and Dowe’s theories. From this, it is clear that Salmon’s Mark Transmission Theory collapses (...)
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  • What's right and what's wrong with transference theories.Phil Dowe - 1995 - Erkenntnis 42 (3):363 - 374.
    This paper examines the Transference Theory of causation, developed originally by Aronson (1971) and Fair (1979). Three difficulties for that theory are presented: firstly, problems associated with the direction of transference and causal asymmetry; secondly, the case of persistence as causation, for example where a body's own inertia is the cause of its motion; and thirdly the problematic notion of identity through time of physical quantities such as energy or momentum. Finally, the theory is compared with the Conserved Quantity Theory (...)
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  • The conserved quantity theory of causation and chance raising.Phil Dowe - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):501.
    In this paper I offer an 'integrating account' of singular causation, where the term 'integrating' refers to the following program for analysing causation. There are two intuitions about causation, both of which face serious counterexamples when used as the basis for an analysis of causation. The 'process' intuition, which says that causes and effects are linked by concrete processes, runs into trouble with cases of 'misconnections', where an event which serves to prevent another fails to do so on a particular (...)
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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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  • Is hybrid formal theory of arguments, stories and criminal evidence well suited for negative causation?Charles A. Barclay - 2020 - Artificial Intelligence and Law 28 (3):361-384.
    In this paper, I have two primary goals. First, I show that the causal-based story approach in A hybrid formal theory of arguments, stories and criminal evidence is ill suited to negative causation. In the literature, the causal-based approach requires that hypothetical stories be causally linked to the explanandum. Many take these links to denote physical or psychological causation, or temporal precedence. However, understanding causality in those terms, as I will show, cannot capture cases of negative causation, which are of (...)
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