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  1. Scientific Explanation.Erik Weber, Jeroen Van Bouwel & Leen De Vreese - 2013 - Springer.
    When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers (...)
  2.  47
    How to Proceed in the Disease Concept Debate? A Pragmatic Approach.Leen De Vreese - 2017 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (4):424-446.
    In the traditional philosophical debate over different conceptual analyses of “disease,” it is often presupposed that “disease” is univocally definable and that there are clear boundaries which distinguish this univocal category “disease” from the category of “nondisease.” In this paper, I will argue for a shift in the discussion on the concept of “disease” and propose an alternative, pragmatic approach that is based on the conviction that “disease” is not a theoretical concept but a practical term. I develop a view (...)
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  3.  74
    Explanatory pluralism in the medical sciences: Theory and practice.Leen De Vreese, Erik Weber & Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2010 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31 (5):371-390.
    Explanatory pluralism is the view that the best form and level of explanation depends on the kind of question one seeks to answer by the explanation, and that in order to answer all questions in the best way possible, we need more than one form and level of explanation. In the first part of this article, we argue that explanatory pluralism holds for the medical sciences, at least in theory. However, in the second part of the article we show that (...)
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  4.  87
    (1 other version)Causal Pluralism and Scientific Knowledge: an Underexposed Problem.Leen de Vreese - 2006 - Philosophica 77 (1).
    Causal pluralism is currently a hot topic in philosophy. However, the consequences of this view on causation for scientific knowledge and scientific methodology are heavily underexposed in the present debate. My aim in this paper is to argue that an epistemological-methodological point of view should be valued as a line of approach on its own and to demonstrate how epistemological- methodological causal pluralism differs in its scope from conceptual and metaphysical causal pluralism. Further, I defend epistemological-methodological causal pluralism and try (...)
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  5.  53
    Epidemiology and causation.Leen De Vreese - 2009 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 12 (3):345-353.
    Epidemiologists’ discussions on causation are not always very enlightening with regard to the notion of ‘cause’ in epidemiology. Epidemiologists rightly work from a science-based approach to causation in epidemiology, but largely disagree about the matter. Disagreement may be partly due to confusion of the question of useful concepts for causal inference in epidemiological practice with the question of the metaphysical presuppositions of causal concepts used in epidemiology. In other words, epidemiologists seem to confuse the practical results of epidemiological research at (...)
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  6.  80
    How to Study Scientific Explanation?Erik Weber, Leen De Vreese & Jeroen Van Bouwel - unknown
    This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...)
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  7.  30
    Causal (mis)understanding and the search for scientific explanations: a case study from the history of medicine.Leen De Vreese - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (1):14-24.
    In 1747, James Lind carried out an experiment which proved the usefulness of citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy. Nonetheless, he rejected the earlier hypothesis of Bachstrom that the absence of fresh fruit and vegetables was the only cause of the disease. I explain why it was rational for James Lind not to accept Bachstrom’s explanation. I argue that it was the urge for scientific understanding that guided Lind in his rejection and in the development of his alternative theory (...)
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  8.  49
    Evidence-based medicine and progress in the medical sciences.Leen De Vreese - 2011 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 17 (5):852-856.
    The question what scientific progress means for a particular domain such as medicine seems importantly different from the question what scientific progress is in general. While the latter question received ample treatment in the philosophical literature, the former question is hardly discussed. I argue that it is nonetheless important to think about this question in view of the methodological choices we make. I raise specific questions that should be tackled regarding scientific progress in the medical sciences and demonstrate their importance (...)
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  9.  31
    Comparative Causation at Multiple Levels and Across Scientific Disciplines.Erik Weber & Leen De Vreese - 2017 - Axiomathes 27 (6):667-683.
    In this paper, we analyse the fruitfulness of Ronald Giere’s comparative model for causation in populations. While the original model was primarily developed to capture the meaning of causal claims in the biomedical and health sciences, we want to show that the model is not only useful in these domains, but can also fruitfully be applied to other scientific domains. Specifically, we demonstrate that the model is fruitful for characterizing the meaning of causal claims found in classical genetics, epidemiology and (...)
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  10.  72
    The Causes and Cures of Scurvy. How modern was James Lind's methodology?Leen De Vreese & Erik Weber - 2005 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 14 (1):55-67.
    The Scottish physician James Lind is the most celebrated name in the history of research into the causes and cures of scurvy. This is due to the famous experiment he conducted in 1747 on H.M.S. Salisbury in order to compare the efficiency of six popular treatments for scurvy. This experiment is generally regarded as the first controlled trial in clinical science (see e.g. Carpenter 1986, p. 52).
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  11.  61
    How do we Have to Investigate Scientific Explanation?Erik Weber, Leen De Vreese & Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2016 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 78 (3):489-524.
    This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher, and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...)
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  12.  39
    Causation in Perspective. Are All Causal Claims Equally Warranted?Erik Weber & Leen de Vreese - 2012 - Philosophica 84 (1).
  13.  45
    Applications of the adaptive logic for causal discovery.Leen De Vreese & Erik Weber - 2004 - Logique Et Analyse 185 (188):33-51.
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  14. Chapter 3. Against the Disorder/NonDisorder Dichotomy.Leen De Vreese - 2021 - In Luc Faucher & Denis Forest (eds.), Defining Mental Disorders: Jerome Wakefield and his Critics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
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  15.  43
    Confusion and bad arguments in the conceptual analysis of causation.Leen De Vreese & Erik Weber - 2008 - Logique Et Analyse 201:81-99.
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  16.  16
    Conceptual analysis of causation and theoretical utility in everyday contexts.Erik Weber & Leen De Vreese - 2009 - Logique Et Analyse 52 (206):177-190.
    In this paper we elaborate Ned Hall's theoretical utility perspective for causation in everyday contexts. We do this by presenting some instances of it, thereby adding some flesh to the skeleton that Hall has provided. Our elaboration of the theoretical utility perspective also provides arguments for it: the instances we present show the fruitfulness of the approach. A question raised by Hall's proposal is: should we give up descriptive analysis of causation (and descriptive analysis in general) completely? We argue that, (...)
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