European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (3):36 (2019)
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Abstract |
Recently, many have argued that there are certain kinds of abstract mathematical explanations that are noncausal. In particular, the irrelevancy approach suggests that abstracting away irrelevant causal details can leave us with a noncausal explanation. In this paper, I argue that the common example of Renormalization Group explanations of universality used to motivate the irrelevancy approach deserves more critical attention. I argue that the reasons given by those who hold up RG as noncausal do not stand up to critical scrutiny. As a result, the irrelevancy approach and the line between casual and noncausal explanation deserves more scrutiny.
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Keywords | causal explanation non-causal explanation renormalization group abstraction |
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DOI | 10.1007/s13194-019-0260-x |
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References found in this work BETA
Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation.James Woodward - 2003 - Oxford University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
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Mathematical Representation and Explanation: Structuralism, the Similarity Account, and the Hotchpotch Picture.Ziren Yang - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Leeds
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