Causality : philosophical theory meets scientific practice / Phyllis Illari, University College London, Federica Russo, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Illari, Phyllis McKay, author.

Russo, Federica, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Philosophy.

Science.

Causation.

Physical Description:

xiv, 310 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Head hits cause brain damage-but not always. Should we ban sport to protect athletes? Exposure to electromagnetic fields is strongly associated with cancer development-does that mean exposure causes cancer? Should we encourage old fashioned communication instead of mobile phones to reduce cancer rates? According to popular wisdom, the Mediterranean diet keeps you health, is this belief scientifically sound? Should public health bodies encourage consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables? Severe financial constraints on research and public policy, media pressure, and public anxiety make such questions of immense current concern not just to philosophers but to scientists, governments, public bodies, and the general public. In the last decade there has been an explosion of theorizing about causality in philosophy, and also in the sciences. This literature is both fascinating and important, but is involved and highly technical. This makes it inaccessible to many who would like to use it, philosophers and scientists alike. This book is an introduction to philosophy of causality-one that is highly accessible: to scientists unacquainted with philosophy, to philosophers unacquainted with science, and to anyone else lost in the labyrinth of philosophical theories of causality. It presents key philosophical accounts, concepts and methods, using examples from the sciences to show how to apply philosophical debates to scientific problems. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Prelude to Causality

1 Problems of Causality in the Sciences 3

1.1 Why this book on causality? 3

1.2 Five scientific problems 4

1.3 The contents of this book 6

2 A Scientific Toolbox for Philosophy 9

2.1 Methods for finding causes 9

2.2 Observational methods 10

2.3 Experimental methods 11

2.4 Between observation and experiment 14

2.5 Beyond observation and experiment 15

2.6 How to make a study work 15

3 A Philosophical Toolbox for Science 19

3.1 Arguments 19

3.2 Methods 21

3.3 Levels of abstraction 22

Part II Causality: Accounts, Concepts and Methods

4 Necessary and Sufficient Components 27

4.1 Examples: electrical short-circuit and AIDS 27

4.2 Component causes 28

4.3 INUS causes and related concepts 30

4.4 Rothman's pie charts 32

5 Levels of Causation 35

5.1 Examples: personalized medicine and migration behaviours 35

5.2 Three parallel literatures 36

5.3 Bridging the levels-and the terminology! 41

6 Causality and Evidence 46

6.1 Examples: effects of radiation and smoking causing heart disease 46

6.2 What do we want to know? 47

6.3 Evidence for causal relations 51

6.4 Evidence-based approaches 56

7 Causal Methods: Probing the Data 60

7.1 Examples: apoptosis and self-rated health 60

7.2 The need for causal methods 61

7.3 The most widespread causal methods 64

7.4 Key notions in causal methods 67

8 Difference-Making: Probabilistic Causality 75

8.1 Example: smoking and lung cancer 75

8.2 Is causality probability-altering? 76

8.3 Beyond probabilistic causes 82

9 Difference-Making: Counterfactuals 86

9.1 Example: mesothelioma and safety at work 86

9.2 The unbearable imprecision of counterfactual reasoning 87

9.3 Philosophical views of counterfactuals 88

9.4 Counterfactuals in other fields 93

10 Difference-Making: Manipulation and Invariance 99

10.1 Example: gene knock-out experiments 99

10.2 The manipulationists: wiggle the cause, and the effect wiggles too 100

10.3 What causes can't we wiggle? 103

11 Production Accounts: Processes 111

11.1 Examples: billiard balls colliding and aeroplanes crossing 111

11.2 Tracing processes 112

11.3 How widely does the approach apply? 114

12 Production Accounts: Mechanisms 120

12.1 Example: how can smoking cause heart disease? 120

12.2 What is a mechanism? The major mechanists 121

12.3 Important features of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation 127

12.4 What is not a mechanism? 132

13 Production Accounts: Information 135

13.1 Examples: tracing transmission of waves and of disease 135

13.2 The path to informational accounts 136

13.3 Integrating the informational and mechanistic approaches 143

13.4 Future prospects for an informational account of causality 146

14 Capacities, Powers, Dispositions 150

14.1 Examples: systems in physics and biology 150

14.2 The core idea of capacities, powers and dispositions 151

14.3 Capacities in science: explanation and evidence 154

15 Regularity 161

15.1 Examples: natural and social regularities 161

15.2 Causality as regular patterns 162

15.3 Updating regularity for current science 164

16 Variation 167

16.1 Example: mother's education and child survival 167

16.2 The idea of variation 168

16.3 Variation in observational and experimental methods 172

17 Causality and Action 178

17.1 Example: symmetry in physics; asymmetry in agency 178

17.2 Early agency theorists 179

17.3 Agency and the symmetry problem 181

17.4 Agency and action 183

17.5 Problems for agency theories 184

17.6 Merits of agency theories 186

18 Causality and Inference 188

18.1 Example: combatting the spread of AIDS 188

18.2 Different sorts of inferences 189

18.3 Does inferentialism lead to anti-realism? 194

18.4 The heart of inference 195

Part III Approaches to Examining Causality

19 How we got to the Causality in the Sciences Approach (CITS) 201

19.1 A methodological struggle 201

19.2 Causality and language 202

19.3 Causality, intuitions and concepts 203

19.4 Causality in the sciences 206

20 Examples and Counterexamples 211

20.1 Examples of examples! 211

20.2 Toy examples or scientific examples? 214

20.3 Counterexamples 220

21 Truth or Models? 227

21.1 Two approaches to causal assessment 227

21.2 Causal assessment using models 228

21.3 Causal assessment identifying truthmakers 230

21.4 Truth or models? 233

22 Epistemology, Metaphysics, Method, Semantics, use 237

22.1 Fragmented theorizing about causality 237

22.2 Which question to answer when? 240

22.3 Which question interests me? 242

22.4 Should we integrate the fragments? 243

Part IV Conclusion: Towards a Causal Mosaic

23 Pluralism 249

23.1 If pluralism is the solution, what is the problem? 249

23.2 Various types of causing 250

23.3 Various concepts of causation 251

23.4 Various types of inferences 252

23.5 Various sources of evidence for causal relations 253

23.6 Various methods for causal inference 253

23.7 The pluralist mosaic 255

24 The Causal Mosaic under Construction: The Example of Exposomics 258

24.1 Making mosaics 258

24.2 Preparing materials for the exposomics mosaic 260

24.3 Building the exposomics mosaic 267

Appendix Accounts, Concepts and Methods: Summary Tables 273

A.1 The scientific problems of causality 273

A.2 The philosophical questions about causality 273

A.3 The accounts: how they fare with scientific problems 274

A.4 The accounts: how they fare with philosophical questions 277.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-302) and index.

ISBN:

0199662673

9780199662678

OCLC:

896986906