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102Portable Causal Dependence: A Tale of ConsiliencePhilosophy of Science 79 (5): 942-951. 2012.This article describes research pursued by members of the McDonnell Collaborative on Causal Learning. A number of members independently converged on a similar idea: one of the central functions served by claims of actual causation is to highlight patterns of dependence that are highly portable into novel contexts. I describe in detail how this idea emerged in my own work and also in that of the psychologist Tania Lombrozo. In addition, I use the occasion to reflect on the nature of interdiscipli…Read more
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292No one knows the date or the hour: An unorthodox application of rev. Bayes's theoremPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 353. 1999.Carter and Leslie (1996) have argued, using Bayes's theorem, that our being alive now supports the hypothesis of an early 'Doomsday'. Unlike some critics (Eckhardt 1997), we accept their argument in part: given that we exist, our existence now indeed favors 'Doom sooner' over 'Doom later'. The very fact of our existence, however, favors 'Doom later'. In simple cases, a hypothetical approach to the problem of 'old evidence' shows that these two effects cancel out: our existence now yields no info…Read more
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1Do All and Only Causes Raise the Probabilities of Effects?In J. Collins, E. J. Hall & L. A. Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. 2004.
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313Contrastive explanation and the demons of determinismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (4): 585-612. 1999.It it tempting to think that if an outcome had some probability of not occurring, then we cannot explain why that outcome in fact occurred. Despite this intuition, most philosophers of science have come to admit the possibility of indeterministic explanation. Yet some of them continue to hold that if an outcome was not determined, it cannot be explained why that outcome rather than some other occurred. I argue that this is an untenable compromise: if indeterministic explanation is possible, then…Read more
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138What is the 'Cause' in Causal Decision Theory?Erkenntnis 78 (1): 129-146. 2013.A simple counterfactual theory of causation fails because of problems with cases of preemption. This might lead us to expect that preemption will raise problems for counterfactual theories of other concepts that have a causal dimension. Indeed, examples are easy to find. But there is one case where we do not find this. Several versions of causal decision theory are formulated using counterfactuals. This might lead us to expect that these theories will yield the wrong recommendations in cases of …Read more
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75Thought experiments, real experiments, and the expertise objectionEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (2): 205-218. 2012.It is a commonplace that in philosophy, intuitions supply evidence for and against philosophical theories. Recent work in experimental philosophy has brought to bear the intuitions of philosophically naïve subjects in a number of different ways. One line of response to this work has been to claim that philosophers have expertise that privileges their intuitive judgments, and allows them to disregard the judgments of non-experts. This expertise is supposed to be analogous to the expertise of the …Read more
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329Beauty and the betsSynthese 139 (3). 2004.In the Sleeping Beauty problem, Beauty is uncertain whether the outcome of a certain coin toss was heads or tails. One argument suggests that her degree of belief in heads should be 1/3, while a second suggests that it should be 1/2. Prima facie, the argument for 1/2 appears to be stronger. I offer a diachronic Dutch Book argument in favor of 1/3. Even for those who are not routinely persuaded by diachronic Dutch Book arguments, this one has some important morals.
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316Prediction versus accommodation and the risk of overfittingBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1): 1-34. 2004.an observation to formulate a theory, it is no surprise that the resulting theory accurately captures that observation. However, when the theory makes a novel prediction—when it predicts an observation that was not used in its formulation—this seems to provide more substantial confirmation of the theory. This paper presents a new approach to the vexed problem of understanding the epistemic difference between prediction and accommodation. In fact, there are several problems that need to be disent…Read more
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221Probabilistic measures of causal strengthIn Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. pp. 600--627. 2011.
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121Causality: Models, reasoning and inferencePhilosophical Review 110 (4): 639-641. 2001.book reveiw van boek met gelijknamige titel van Judea Pearl.
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152Contemporary debates in philosophy of science (edited book)Blackwell. 2004.Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...
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130Theories of Causation and the Causal Exclusion ArgumentJournal of Consciousness Studies 19 (5-6): 40-56. 2012.There are a wide variety of theories of causation available in the philosophical literature. For the philosopher working in philosophy of mind, who makes use of causal concepts, what is to be made of this embarrassment of riches? By considering a variety of theoretical perspectives, she can discover which principles or assumptions about causation are robust, and which hold only within particular frameworks. In particular, she should be suspicious when the different premises in an argument can on…Read more
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102Trumping and contrastive causationSynthese 181 (2). 2011.Jonathan Schaffer introduced a new type of causal structure called 'trumping'. According to Schaffer, trumping is a species of causal preemption. Both Schaffer and I have argued that causation has a contrastive structure. In this paper, I analyze the structure of trumping cases from the perspective of contrastive causation, and argue that the case is much more complex than it first appears. Nonetheless, there is little reason to regard trumping as a species of causal preemption.
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91Problems for the Conserved Quantity TheoryThe Monist 92 (1): 72-93. 2009.The conserved quantity theory of causation aims to analyze causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities. In order to be successful, the theory must correctly distinguish between causal processes and interactions, on the one hand, and pseudoprocesses and mere intersections on the other.Moreover, it must do this while satisfying two further criteria: it must avoid circularity; and the appeal to conserved quantities must not be redundant. I argue that the theory is not success…Read more
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214The shooting-room paradox and conditionalizing on measurably challenged setsSynthese 118 (3): 403-437. 1999.We provide a solution to the well-known “Shooting-Room” paradox, developed by John Leslie in connection with his Doomsday Argument. In the “Shooting-Room” paradox, the death of an individual is contingent upon an event that has a 1/36 chance of occurring, yet the relative frequency of death in the relevant population is 0.9. There are two intuitively plausible arguments, one concluding that the appropriate subjective probability of death is 1/36, the other that this probability is 0.9. How are t…Read more
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93Evolutionary and Newtonian ForcesErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 1 39-77. 2014.A number of recent papers have criticized what they call the dynamical interpretation of evolutionary theory found in Elliott Sober’s The Nature of Selection. Sober argues that we can think of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces analogous to Newtonian mechanics. These critics argue that there are several important disanalogies between evolutionary and Newtonian forces: Unlike evolutionary forces, Newtonian forces can be considered in isolation, they have source laws, they compose causally …Read more
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California Institute of TechnologyDepartment of Scientific PhilosophyKoepfli Professor of Philosophy
APA Western Division
Pasadena, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
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Areas of Interest
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