Johannes Persson

Sometimes instances of perceived causation turn out to lack causal relata. The reasons may vary. Causation may display itself as prevention, or as omission, and in some cases causation occurs within such complex environments that few of the things we associate with causes and effects are true of them, etc. But even then, there may be causal explanations to be had. This suggests that the explanatory power of causal reports have other sources than the relation between cause and effect. In this paper it is argued that the causal mechanisms we allude to in explanations have relevant determinables other than the traditionally acknowledged ones. The traditional but in this aspect mistaken view of causation is to be blamed. Discernability, complexity of manifestation, originality, and even stability have often been overlooked. We know, that, in fact, heat is a constant attendant of flame; but what is the connexion between them, we have no room so much as to conjecture or imagine. (Hume 1777, VII. 2, 64).

Isaac Levi is more interested in inquiry and how it progresses than he is in metaphysics. Questions concerning the role of disposition predicates in inquiry are more central to him than those concerning the nature and reality of dispositions. It has not stopped him from giving me and others very useful metaphysical advice. Currently, where empirical metaphysics is in vogue, there is every reason to see whether the two forms of philosophical interest might interlock substantially. Levi has stimulating ideas indeed on the two forms of philosophical interest, and has recently summarized them in the slogan: “The reality of dispositions is a work in progress”. We can learn much about what kinds of dispositions are acceptable from tracing and comparing the histories of successful and less successful disposition predicates in scientific inquiry. Levi explores one route along which dispositions become real. His idea is that the introduction of dispositions facilitates covering law explanation by increasing the number of laws. The successful disposition predicate eventually becomes integrated in scientific theory, much like an ordinary theoretical term, whereas the unsuccessful does not. My impression is that Levi thinks that this is the only way a disposition can become real. To evaluate this claim, an alternative course suggested by Jon Elster is introduced. I then try to bring out the differences between Levi's and Elster's views on dispositions, partly by suggesting that they resemble two aspects of full explanations discussed by Wesley Salmon. But more about that below

BACKGROUND: Representing is about theories and theory formation. Philosophy of science has a long-standing interest in representing. At least since Ian Hacking's modern classic Representing and Intervening analytical philosophers have struggled to combine that interest with a study of the roles of intervention studies. With few exceptions this focus of philosophy of science has been on physics and other natural sciences. In particular, there have been few attempts to analyse the use of the notion of intervention in other disciplines where intervention studies are important, such as in nursing research. One unintended consequence of this is that the relations between representing and intervening tend to be less understood outside the natural sciences. OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN: This article highlights a number of possible topics on which nursing science and analytic philosophy of science can fruitfully interact. The basic idea is simple. Building on a characterisation of interventions in terms of what is intervened on and with respect to what, we suggest that interventions in nursing research typically are a blend of varieties belonging to the three dimensions of agency, epistemology, and ontology. The details of the blend determine the relation of the particular intervention study to traditional representational categories such as inductivism and hypothetico-deductive method, and have a bearing on its explanatory power and other more theory independent features of research as well. The framework we suggest should be relevant for nurse researchers who want to adopt a more general and analytically entrenched perspective on representing and intervening than the methodological boundaries in nursing research typically allow

According to Jon Elster, mechanisms are frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences. In the absence of laws, moreover, mechanisms provide explanations. In this paper I argue that Elster’s view has difficulties with progressing knowledge. Normally, filling in the causal picture without revising it should not threaten one’s explanation. But this seems to be Elster’s case. The critique is constructive in the sense that it is built up from a discussion of a mechanism that might explain ‘unwarranted’ risk taking in connection with swimming—a mechanism that is mirrored in the proverb: The best swimmers drown

Background Positivism is sometimes rejected for the wrong reasons. Influential textbooks on nursing research and in other disciplines tend to reinforce the misconceptions underlying these rejections. This is problematic, since it provides students of these disciplines with a poor basis for making epistemological and methodological decisions. It is particularly common for positivist views on reality and causation to be obscured. Objectives and design The first part of this discussion paper identifies and explains the misconceptions about positivism as they appear in two influential textbooks. The second part pinpoints five mistakes these misconceptions easily result in when the researcher adopts an epistemological and methodological standpoint. What is already known about the topic? There are several impeccable descriptions of positivism in nursing research literature; but a relatively large number of inaccurate or confused views of positivism appear in the nursing research literature as well. Mistakes of the kind identified in this paper have been noted before—for instance, in Shadish. What this paper adds: This paper provides a detailed analysis of two particularly common and influential misconceptions about positivism. It traces the historical roots of these misconceptions and characterizes them more carefully than many earlier attempts have done. The paper shows how and why these misconceptions affect epistemological and methodological decisions negatively, regardless of one’s interest in positivism

We are good at discussing law statements of different epistemic status, and to describe logical relationships between different law statements. But contemporary discussion often suffers from a difficulty to formulate questions concerning laws of different ontological status. This paper presents a framework for distinguishing between properties and fake properties that seems to provide better tools for such inquiries. This paper also examines criteria for properties in connection with laws of nature. It discusses three suggested tests for properties, by Maxwell, Ramsey, and Cartwright. None of these tests is good as it stands. Rather than favouring one particular test, we should opt for methodologically stable decisions, i.e. decisions where several tests come to the same conclusion.

In this article I examine whether an influential theory of mechanisms proposed by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver can accommodate polygenic effects. This theory is both interesting and problematic, I will argue, because it ascribes a central role to activities. In it, activities are needed not only to constitute mechanisms but also to perform their causal role. These putative functions of activities become problematic in certain situations where several causes or elements of a mechanism contribute simultaneously, i.e. with certain forms of polygenic causation. The problematic form of polygeny, polygeny 2, occurs when the polygenic contribution concerns one and the same property or aspect of the affected object. When the result of such causation is that nothing happens, the theory suggested by Machamer and his colleagues cannot be applied. More generally, it seems that, whenever polygeny 2 is involved, the Machamer approach leads to an impoverished conception of mechanism