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35Book Review: The Fabric of the Cosmos. By Brian Greene, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, U.S.A., 2004, xii + 569 pp., $28.95 (hardcover) (review)Foundations of Physics 34 (8): 1267-1273. 2004.
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231A Functional Account of Causation; or, A Defense of the Legitimacy of Causal Thinking by Reference to the Only Standard That Matters—UsefulnessPhilosophy of Science 81 (5): 691-713. 2014.This essay advocates a “functional” approach to causation and causal reasoning: these are to be understood in terms of the goals and purposes of causal thinking. This approach is distinguished from accounts based on metaphysical considerations or on reconstruction of “intuitions.”
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298Scientific explanationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 41-67. 1979.Issues concerning scientific explanation have been a focus of philosophical attention from Pre- Socratic times through the modern period. However, recent discussion really begins with the development of the Deductive-Nomological (DN) model. This model has had many advocates (including Popper 1935, 1959, Braithwaite 1953, Gardiner, 1959, Nagel 1961) but unquestionably the most detailed and influential statement is due to Carl Hempel (Hempel 1942, 1965, and Hempel & Oppenheim 1948). These papers a…Read more
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458Interventionism and Causal ExclusionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (2): 303-347. 2015.A number of writers, myself included, have recently argued that an “interventionist” treatment of causation of the sort defended in Woodward, 2003 can be used to cast light on so-called “causal exclusion” arguments. This interventionist treatment of causal exclusion has in turn been criticized by other philosophers. This paper responds to these criticisms. It describes an interventionist framework for thinking about causal relationships when supervenience relations are present. I contend that th…Read more
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82Data, Phenomena, Signal, and NoisePhilosophy of Science 77 (5): 792-803. 2010.This essay attempts to provide additional motivation for the data/phenomena framework advocated in Bogen and Woodward, “Saving the Phenomena”.
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335Causation and manipulabilityStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Manipulablity theories of causation, according to which causes are to be regarded as handles or devices for manipulating effects, have considerable intuitive appeal and are popular among social scientists and statisticians. This article surveys several prominent versions of such theories advocated by philosophers, and the many difficulties they face. Philosophical statements of the manipulationist approach are generally reductionist in aspiration and assign a central role to human action. These …Read more
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191The mind is not (just) a system of modules shaped (just) by natural selectionIn Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of science, Blackwell. pp. 312-34. 2004.
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738Making things happen: a theory of causal explanationOxford University Press. 2003.Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the…Read more
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150Modularity and the causal Markov condition: A restatementBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1): 147-161. 2004.expose some gaps and difficulties in the argument for the causal Markov condition in our essay ‘Independence, Invariance and the Causal Markov Condition’ ([1999]), and we are grateful for the opportunity to reformulate our position. In particular, Cartwright disagrees vigorously with many of the theses we advance about the connection between causation and manipulation. Although we are not persuaded by some of her criticisms, we shall confine ourselves to showing how our central argument can be r…Read more
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70This paper employs an interventionist framework to elucidate some issues having to do with explanation in neurobiology and with the differences between mechanistic and non-mechanistic explanations.
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258Causation with a human faceIn Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited, Oxford University Press. 2007.What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the sorts of causal claims found in the special sciences (and in common sense) and, on the other hand, the world as described by physics? A standard picture goes like this: the fundamental laws of physics are causal laws in the sense that they can be interpreted as telling us that realizations of one set of physical factors or properties “causes” realizations of other properties. Causal claims in the special sciences are then true (to the extent…Read more
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70Book Review: World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. By Palle Yourgrau, Basic Books, New York, New York, USA, 2005, viii + 210 pp., $24 (hard cover). ISBN 0-465-09293-4 (review)Foundations of Physics 36 (2): 321-325. 2006.
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15This paper explores some general questions about the sorts of abilities that are involved in tool use and “causal cognition”, both in humans and in non-human primates. An attempt is made to relate the empirical literature on these topics to various philosophical theories of causation.
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315Simplicity in the Best Systems Account of Laws of NatureBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (1): 91-123. 2014.This article discusses the role of simplicity and the notion of a best balance of simplicity and strength within the best systems account (BSA) of laws of nature. The article explores whether there is anything in scientific practice that corresponds to the notion of simplicity or to the trade-off between simplicity and strength to which the BSA appeals. Various theoretical rationales for simplicity preferences and their bearing on the identification of laws are also explored. It is concluded tha…Read more
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58Laws, Causes, and InvarianceIn Stephen Mumford & Matthew Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science, Oxford University Press. 2013.This chapter explores some issues having to do with the structure of the evidential reasoning we use to infer causal and lawful claims. It is argued that such reasoning always makes use of prior, causally, or nomologically committed information, thus undercutting various views that attempt to reduce causal and lawful claims to claims about regularities. A non-reductive account of laws and causes built around the notion of invariance is advanced as an alternative.
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56Explanatory asymmetriesPhilosophy of Science 51 (3): 421-442. 1984.This paper examines a recent attempt by Evan Jobe to account for the asymmetric character of many scientific explanations. It is argued that a purported counterexample to Jobe's account, from Clark Glymour, is inconclusive, but that the account faces independent objections. It is also suggested, contrary to Jobe, that the explanatory relation is not always asymmetric. Sometimes a singular sentence C can figure in a DN derivation of another singular sentence E and E can also figure in a DN deriva…Read more
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900Causation in biology: Stability, specificity, and the choice of levels of explanationBiology and Philosophy 25 (3): 287-318. 2010.This paper attempts to elucidate three characteristics of causal relationships that are important in biological contexts. Stability has to do with whether a causal relationship continues to hold under changes in background conditions. Proportionality has to do with whether changes in the state of the cause “line up” in the right way with changes in the state of the effect and with whether the cause and effect are characterized in a way that contains irrelevant detail. Specificity is connected bo…Read more
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63Book Review: Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, by Max Jammer (review)Foundations of Physics 30 (6): 959-964. 2000.
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266The problem of variable choiceSynthese 193 (4): 1047-1072. 2016.This paper explores some issues about the choice of variables for causal representation and explanation. Depending on which variables a researcher employs, many causal inference procedures and many treatments of causation will reach different conclusions about which causal relationships are present in some system of interest. The assumption of this paper is that some choices of variables are superior to other choices for the purpose of causal analysis. A number of possible criteria for variable …Read more
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93On an information-theoretic model of explanationPhilosophy of Science 54 (1): 21-44. 1987.This paper is an assessment of an attempt, by James Greeno, to measure the explanatory power of statistical theories by means of the notion of transmitted information (It). It is argued that It has certain features that are inappropriate in a measure of explanatory power. In particular, given a statistical theory T with explanans variables St and explanandum variables Mj, it is argued that no plausible measure of explanatory power should depend on the probability P(Si) of occurrence of initial c…Read more
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105Koch’s postulates: An interventionist perspectiveStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 59 35-46. 2016.We argue that Koch’s postulates are best understood within an interventionist account of causation, in the sense described in Woodward. We show how this treatment helps to resolve interpretive puzzles associated with Koch’s work and how it clarifies the different roles the postulates play in providing useful, yet not universal criteria for disease causation. Our paper is an effort at rational reconstruction; we attempt to show how Koch’s postulates and reasoning make sense and are normatively ju…Read more
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36This article is a commentary on R.G. Collingwood,d “The So-Called Idea of Causation” invited by the International Journal of Epidemiology. It discusses the relevance of Collingwood's ideas for current conceptions of causation, both in epidemiology and elsewhere. The connection between interventionist treatments of causation and the use of instrumental variables and "Mendelian randomization" is also noted.
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401Data and phenomena: a restatement and defenseSynthese 182 (1): 165-179. 2011.This paper provides a restatement and defense of the data/ phenomena distinction introduced by Jim Bogen and me several decades ago (e.g., Bogen and Woodward, The Philosophical Review, 303–352, 1988). Additional motivation for the distinction is introduced, ideas surrounding the distinction are clarified, and an attempt is made to respond to several criticisms.
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331Counterfactuals and causal explanationInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (1). 2002.This article defends the use of interventionist counterfactuals to elucidate causal and explanatory claims against criticisms advanced by James Bogen and Peter Machamer. Against Bogen, I argue that counterfactual claims concerning what would happen under interventions are meaningful and have determinate truth values, even in a deterministic world. I also argue, against both Machamer and Bogen, that we need to appeal to counterfactuals to capture the notions like causal relevance and causal mecha…Read more
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53Are Singular Causal Explanations Implicit Covering-Law Explanations?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (2). 1986.My focus in this essay is on those singular causal explanations which purport to explain the occurrence of some particular event by means of a claim of the following general sort The occurrence of event caused the occurrence of event.Examples include sentences like The short circuit caused the fire’ and The impact of the hammer caused the shattering of the glass,’ Many philosophers hold that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between singular causal explanations and those sentences which s…Read more
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1609The causal mechanical model of explanationMinnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 359-83. 1989.
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47Logic of discovery or psychology of invention?Foundations of Physics 22 (2): 187-203. 1992.It is noted that Popper separates the creation of concepts, conjectures, hypotheses and theories—the context of invention—from the testing thereof—the context of justification—arguing that only the latter is susceptible of rigorous logical analysis. Efforts on the part of others to shift or eradicate the demarcation established by this distinction are discussed and the relationship of these considerations to the claims of “strong artificial intelligence” is pointed out. It is argued that the mod…Read more
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541Explanation and invariance in the special sciencesBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (2): 197-254. 2000.This paper describes an alternative to the common view that explanation in the special sciences involves subsumption under laws. According to this alternative, whether or not a generalization can be used to explain has to do with whether it is invariant rather than with whether it is lawful. A generalization is invariant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it would continue to hold under a relevant if it is stable or robust in the sense that it would continue to hold under a relevant cla…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |