Causal processes and interactions: What are they and what are they good for?

Concerning any object of philosophical analysis, we can ask several questions, including the two posed in the title of this paper. Despite difficulties in formulating a precise criterion to distinguish causal processes from pseudoprocesses, and causal interactions from mere spatiotemporal intersections, I argue that Salmon answered the first of these questions with extraordinary clarity. The second question, by contrast, has received very little attention. I will present two problems: in the first, it seems that Salmon has provided exactly the conceptual resources needed to solve the problem; in the second, it is difficult to see how causal processes and interactions may be used to shed any light. In general, the way to carry Salmon's program forward will be to demonstrate that these resources can be made to do real philosophical work

Actual causation and the art of modeling

We look more carefully at the modeling of causality using structural equations. It is clear that the structural equations can have a major impact on the conclusions we draw about causality. In particular, the choice of variables and their values can also have a significant impact on causality. These choices are, to some extent, subjective. We consider what counts as an appropriate choice. More generally, we consider what makes a model an appropriate model, especially if we want to take defaults into account, as was argued is necessary in recent work.Comment: In Heuristics, Probability and Causality: A Tribute to Judea Pearl (editors, R. Dechter, H. Geffner, and J. Y. Halpern), College Publications, 2010, pp. 383-40

Introduction: What is the Philosophy of Science

What is the philosophy of science? It is the application of philosophical methods to philosophical problems as they arise in the context of the sciences. That's not a particularly helpful answer as it stands, but at least it allows us to break our original question into parts: What are the methods of philosophy? What are philosophical problems? How do these problems arise within different scientific fields

Causation: Philosophy of Science

In The Critique of Pure Reason (first published in 1781), the German philosopher Immanuel Kant maintained that causation was one of the fundamental concepts that rendered the empirical world comprehensible to humans. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, psychology was beginning to show just how pervasive human reasoning concerning cause and effect is. Even young children seem to naturally organize their knowledge of the world according to relations of cause and effect. It is hardly surprising, then, that causation has been a topic of great interest in philosophy, and that many philosophers have attempted to analyze the relationship between cause and effect. Among the more prominent proposals are the following: Causation consists in the instantiation of exceptionless regularities (Hume 1975, 1999; Mill1856; Hempel1965; Mackie 1974); causation is to be understood in terms of relations of probabilistic dependence (Reichenbach 1956, Suppes 1970, Cartwright 1983, Eells 1991); causation is the relation that holds between means and ends (Gasking 1955, von Wright 1975, Woodward 2003); causes are events but for which their effects would not have happened (Lewis 1986); causes and effects are connected by physical processes that are capable of transmitting certain types of properties (Salmon 1984, Dowe 2000). It often happens, however, that advances in science force people to abandon aspects of their common sense picture of the world. For example, Einstein's theories of relativity have forced people to rethink their conceptions of time, space, matter, and energy. What lessons does science teach about the concept of causation

History, exam, and labs: Is one enough to diagnose acute adult appendicitis?

No, none of the 3--history, exam, or labs-- is sufficiently accurate to diagnose acute appendicitis (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, based on meta-analysis of high- quality studies). When combined, the following tests are helpful: an elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), elevated total white blood cell (WBC) count, elevated percentage of polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) cells (left shift), and the presence of guarding or rebound on physical examination. The combination of any 2 of these tests yields a very high positive likelihood ratio (LR +), but the absence of these does not exclude appendicitis (SOR: A, based on meta-analysis of high-quality studies)

The Metaphysical Bases of Liability: Commentary on Michael Moore's "Causation and Responsibility"

[Introduction] Let me begin by saying how much I enjoyed Professor Michael Moore’s thick, rich, and learned book. I learned a great deal from reading it, and recommend it to anyone with an interest in any of the three topics it covers: moral responsibility, legal liability, and the metaphysics of causation. It covers such a wide breadth of terrain that even the most expert readers will learn a great deal from it. It is also very clearly and engagingly written. While it is possible to break the book roughly into sections corresponding to the three problem areas of ethics, legal theory, and metaphysics, the real strength of the book lies in the interaction between these different topics. As a philosopher interested in the metaphysics of causation, I will focus my discussion on the last section of the book, but a discussion of the metaphysics that is divorced from the applications to ethics or legal theory would be impossible

Do All and Only Causes Raise the Probabilities of Effects?

[Introduction] According to probabilistic theories of causation, causes raise the probabilities of their effects. Opponents of probabilistic theories of causation offer putative counterexamples. A moment's reflection should lead us to expect such counterexamples to be of two types: (1) causes that appear not to raise the probabilities of their effects; and (2) events that appear to raise the probabilities of other events, without causing those events. Almost all of the cases that have been discussed in the literature have been of the first sort; these can be effectively handled using resources that are already available. Counterexamples of the second sort, which have been largely ignored, still pose a threat. I will explore some options for avoiding these counterexamples, and more important, argue that they raise fundamental questions about the nature of indeterministic causation-questions that transcend issues about the correctness of any particular philosophical theory