Causal selection and the pathway concept

Causal selection has to do with a distinction between mere background conditions and the "true" cause or causes of some outcome of interest. Most philosophical work on this topic examines the selection of single causal factors and aims to clarify what grounds, if any, justify this selection. Such analyses overlook the fact that in scientific (and often ordinary life) contexts multiple factors are often selected as the important causes of some outcome. This analysis examines one such multicausal case where factors in causal pathways are selected in biological explanations. This work provides a novel analysis of the pathway concept, its role in causal selection, and the rationale behind this selection. It is argued that this rationale is guided by principled considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature

Causal selection in biochemistry: Making things by making things happen

Causal selection has to do with a distinction between mere background conditions and the "true" causes of some outcome of interest. Mainstream philosophical views claim that causal selection is "groundless" in the sense that it lacks any type of principled rationale (Schaffer 2016; Mill 1874; Lewis 1986). I argue against this position in the context of biochemistry where causal factors are selected in explanations of metabolic processes. These factors are selected on the basis of a principled rationale, which is best understood in terms of the causal control that they provide over an outcome of interest

Causal concepts in biology: How pathways differ from mechanisms and why it matters

In the last two decades few topics in philosophy of science have received as much attention as mechanistic explanation. A significant motivation for these accounts is that scientists frequently use the term “mechanism” in their explanations of biological phenomena. While scientists appeal to a variety of causal concepts in their explanations, many philosophers argue or assume that all of these concepts are well understood with the single notion of mechanism (Robins and Craver 2009; Craver 2007). This reveals a significant problem with mainstream mechanistic accounts– although philosophers use the term “mechanism” interchangeably with other causal concepts, this is not something that scientists always do. This paper analyses two causal concepts in biology–the notions of “mechanism” and “pathway”–and how they figure in biological explanation. I argue that these concepts have unique features, that they are associated with distinct strategies of causal investigation, and that they figure in importantly different types of explanation

Finding causal structure

The periodic table of elements represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial the role that it plays in scientific reasoning remains heavily disputed. Many philosophers deny the explanatory role of the periodic table, while insisting that it is "merely" classificatory (Shapere 1977, 534-5; Scerri 1997a, 239). In particular, it has been claimed that the table doesn’t figure in causal explanation because it "does not reveal causal structure" (Woody 2014, 143). This paper argues that the modern periodic table does reveal causal structure in the sense of containing causal information that figures in explanations in chemistry. However, this analysis suggests that the earliest versions of the table did serve more of a classificatory role, as they lack the causal structure present in modern versions

Causal Control: A Rationale for Causal Selection

Causal selection has to do with the distinction we make between background conditions and “the” true cause or causes of some outcome of interest. A longstanding consensus in philosophy views causal selection as lacking any objective rationale and as guided, instead, by arbitrary, pragmatic, and non-scientific considerations. I argue against this position in the context of causal selection for disease traits. In this domain, causes are selected on the basis of the type of causal control they exhibit over a disease of interest. My analysis clarifies the principled rationale that guides this selection and how it involves both pragmatic and objective considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature

Causal selection in biochemistry: Making things by making things happen

Causal selection has to do with a distinction between mere background conditions and the "true" causes of some outcome of interest. Mainstream philosophical views claim that causal selection is "groundless" in the sense that it lacks any type of principled rationale (Schaffer 2016; Mill 1874; Lewis 1986). I argue against this position in the context of biochemistry where causal factors are selected in explanations of metabolic processes. These factors are selected on the basis of a principled rationale, which is best understood in terms of the causal control that they provide over an outcome of interest

Causal Explanation and the Periodic Table

The periodic table represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial, the role that it plays in scientific reasoning remains heavily disputed. Many philosophers deny the explanatory role of the table and insist that it is “merely” classificatory (Shapere, 1977, 534-5) (Scerri, 1997a, 239). In particular, it has been claimed that the table does not figure in causal explanation because it “does not reveal causal structure” (Woody, 2014, 143). This paper provides an analysis of what it means to say that a scientific figure reveals causal structure and it argues that the modern periodic table does just this. It also clarifies why these “merely” classificatory claims have seemed so compelling–this is because these claims often focus on the earliest periodic tables, which lack the causal structure present in modern versions

Multiple Realizability from a Causal Perspective

This paper examines the multiple realizability thesis within a causal framework. The beginnings of this framework are found in an influential paper by Sober (1999), in which he argues that the multiple realizability thesis poses no challenge to reductive explanation. While Sober’s causal approach has the potential to reveal new insights, I argue that his set up fails to capture important aspects of the multiple realizability thesis. After correcting for these issues, I argue that this causal framework reveals something quite different. It reveals how multiple realizability relates to a common type of causal complexity in biology that poses problems for reductive explanation

Distinguishing topological and causal explanation

Recent philosophical work has explored the distinction between causal and non-causal forms of explanation. In this literature, topological explanation is viewed as a clear example of the non- causal variety–it is claimed that topology lacks temporal information, which is necessary for causal structure (Pincock 2012; Huneman 2010). This paper explores the distinction between topological and causal forms of explanation and argues that this distinction is not as clear cut as the literature suggests. One reason for this is that some explanations involve both topological and causal information. In these “borderline” cases scientists explain some outcome by appealing to the causal topology of the system of interest. These cases help clarify a type of topological ex- planation that is genuinely causal, but that differs from standard topological and interventionist accounts of explanation (Woodward 2003)