The Nature of Explanation

The Nature of Explanation
Author: Peter Achinstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 1985-10-31
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0198020767

Offering a new approach to scientific explanation, this book focuses initially on the explaining act itself. From that act, a "product" emerges: an explanation. To understand what that product is, as well as how it can be evaluated in the sciences, reference must be made to the concept of the explaining act. Following an account of the explaining act, its product, and the evaluation of explanations, the theory is brought to bear on these issues: Why have the standard models of scientific explanation been unsuccessful, and can there be a model of the type sought? What is causal explanation, and must explanation in the sciences be causal? What is a functional explanation? The "illocutionary" theory of explanation developed at the outset is used in discussing these issues, and contrasting philosophical viewpoints are assessed.

Drinking Hemlock

Drinking Hemlock
Author: Helen Sarah Robertson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-03-08
Genre:
ISBN:

Is the Law just? After facing a jury of his peers, Socrates was sentenced to death for the crime of 'corrupting the youth'. Athenian law required him to drink a cup of poison hemlock, but did he deserve to die? Are lawyers immoral? Should defence lawyers be allowed to help the guilty go free by outsmarting prosecutors and raising technical points? Are judges lawmakers? Courts have legalised gay marriage and banned the death penalty. When judges deliver landmark decisions, are they making law or merely interpreting it? Drinking Hemlock combines Socratic dialogue with years of experience from practising lawyers to solve these legal conundrums. Author Info: Helen Sarah Robertson completed her doctorate in philosophy at University College London. She lectures at the University of the Witwatersrand. Mark Oppenheimer is an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. He has appeared in the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court.

A Variety of Causes

A Variety of Causes
Author: Paul Noordhof
Publisher:
Total Pages: 591
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199251460

The book provides an analysis of a key notion in our lives, causation: what its nature is; how we should characterise it in language, how it relates to laws of nature, how causes differ from their effects and why they tend to occur earlier than their effects.

Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation

Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation
Author: Christoph Hoerl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019161839X

How are causal judgements such as 'The ice on the road caused the traffic accident' connected with counterfactual judgements such as 'If there had not been any ice on the road, the traffic accident would not have happened'? This volume throws new light on this question by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches to causation and counterfactuals. Traditionally, philosophers have primarily been interested in connections between causal and counterfactual claims on the level of meaning or truth-conditions. More recently, however, they have also increasingly turned their attention to psychological connections between causal and counterfactual understanding or reasoning. At the same time, there has been a surge in interest in empirical work on causal and counterfactual cognition amongst developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists—much of it inspired by work in philosophy. In this volume, twelve original contributions from leading philosophers and psychologists explore in detail what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify the issues at stake in empirical work on the cognitive underpinnings of, and relationships between, causal and counterfactual thought.

Power and Influence

Power and Influence
Author: Richard Corry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2019-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192577204

The world is a complex place, and this complexity is an obstacle to our attempts to explain, predict, and control it. In Power and Influence, Richard Corry investigates the assumptions that are built into the reductive method of explanation—the method whereby we study the components of a complex system in relative isolation and use the information so gained to explain or predict the behaviour of the complex whole. He investigates the metaphysical presuppositions built into the reductive method, seeking to ascertain what the world must be like in order that the method could work. Corry argues that the method assumes the existence of causal powers that manifest causal influence—a relatively unrecognised ontological category, of which forces are a paradigm example. The success of the reductive method, therefore, is an argument for the existence of such causal influences. The book goes on to show that adding causal influence to our ontology gives us the resources to solve some traditional problems in the metaphysics of causal powers, laws of nature, causation, emergence, and possibly even normative ethics. What results, then, is not just an understanding of the reductive method, but an integrated metaphysical worldview that is grounded in an ontology of power and influence.

Causation and Laws of Nature

Causation and Laws of Nature
Author: Max Kistler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134150687

What is a causal relation? -- Laws of nature and universal generalisations -- Applicability conditions and the concept of strict law -- Consequences -- The nomological theory of causation and causal responsibility -- Efficacious properties and the instantiation of laws -- Causal responsibility and its applications.

Reality Making

Reality Making
Author: Mark Jago
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2016-02-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191072354

What makes up reality, and how? What kinds of entity are fundamental to reality, and how do dependent entities depend on the fundamental ones? How does one entity metaphysically ground another? These questions are central to contemporary metaphysics. The papers in this collection, written by a new generation of metaphysicians, address these and related questions. They investigate the metaphysical concepts of grounding and fundamentality, and the relationship between the fundamental and all the other parts of reality. Together, these papers represent the cutting-edge of a central topic in contemporary metaphysics.

The Oxford Handbook of Causation

The Oxford Handbook of Causation
Author: Helen Beebee
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2012-01-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191629464

Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers.

Causal Asymmetries

Causal Asymmetries
Author: Daniel M. Hausman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1998-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521622891

This book, by one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science writing today, offers the most comprehensive account available of causal asymmetries. Causation is asymmetrical in many different ways. Causes precede effects; explanations cite causes not effects. Agents use causes to manipulate their effects; they don't use effects to manipulate their causes. Effects of a common cause are correlated; causes of a common effect are not. This book explains why a relationship that is asymmetrical in one of these regards is asymmetrical in the others. Hausman discovers surprising hidden connections between theories of causation and traces them all to an asymmetry of independence. This is a major book for philosophers of science that will also prove insightful to economists and statisticians.