-
626Updating on the Credences of Others: Disagreement, Agreement, and SynergyPhilosophers' Imprint 16 (11): 1-39. 2016.We introduce a family of rules for adjusting one's credences in response to learning the credences of others. These rules have a number of desirable features. 1. They yield the posterior credences that would result from updating by standard Bayesian conditionalization on one's peers' reported credences if one's likelihood function takes a particular simple form. 2. In the simplest form, they are symmetric among the agents in the group. 3. They map neatly onto the familiar Condorcet voting result…Read more
-
3Lewis on CausationIn Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A companion to David Lewis, Wiley-blackwell. 2015.This chapter focuses on the connection between counterfactuals and causation, and on the use of causation in the analyses of other concepts, especially decision and dispositions. It briefly reviews two preliminary pieces of conceptual apparatus. The chapter divides Lewis's treatment of causation into three stages: The first is the theory presented in the 1973 paper "Causation.” The second includes the amendments included in postscripts to “Causation” in Philosophical Papers, Volume II, in 1986.T…Read more
-
7Statistical ExplanationIn W. Newton-Smith (ed.), A companion to the philosophy of science, Blackwell. 2000.Generally speaking, scientific explanation has been a topic of lively discussion in twentieth‐century philosophy of science; philosophers of science have endeavored to characterize rigorously a number of different types of explanation to be found in the various fields of scientific research. Given the indispensability of statistical concepts and techniques in virtually every branch of modern science, it is natural to ask whether some scientific explanations are essentially statistical or probabi…Read more
-
24Causal Models with ConstraintsProceedings of the 2Nd Conference on Causal Learning and Reasoning. 2023.Causal models have proven extremely useful in offering formal representations of causal relationships between a set of variables. Yet in many situations, there are non-causal relationships among variables. For example, we may want variables LDL, HDL, and TOT that represent the level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the level of lipoprotein high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and total cholesterol level, with the relation LDL+HDL=TOT. This cannot be done in standard causal models, becaus…Read more
-
24IntroductionIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press Uk. 2009.18 page
-
19The Mind's Arrows: Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology (review)Mind 112 (446): 340-343. 2003.
-
4Wittgenstein on private language: Exorcising the ghost from the machinePhilosophia 24 (3-4): 559-559. 1995.
-
56Discussion: Massey and Kirk on the Indeterminacy of TranslationJournal of Philosophical Research 17 215-223. 1992.Gerald Massey has constructed translation manuals for the purposes of illustrating Quine’s Indeterminacy Thesis. Robert Kirk has argued that Massey’s manuals do not live up to their billing. In this note, I will present Massey’s manuals and defend them against Kirk’s objections. The implications for Quine’s Indeterminacy Thesis will then be briefly discussed
-
166Reflections on reflection: Van Fraassen on beliefSynthese 98 (2). 1994.In Belief and the Will, van Fraassen employed a diachronic Dutch Book argument to support a counterintuitive principle called Reflection. There and subsequently van Fraassen has put forth Reflection as a linchpin for his views in epistemology and the philosophy of science, and for the voluntarism (first-person reports of subjective probability are undertakings of commitments) that he espouses as an alternative to descriptivism (first-person reports of subjective probability are merely self-descr…Read more
-
13And Causal JudgmentIn Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack & Sarah R. Beck (eds.), Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford University Press. pp. 171. 2011.
-
290Causal explanation and scientific realismErkenntnis 37 (2). 1992.It is widely believed that many of the competing accounts of scientific explanation have ramifications which are relevant to the scientific realism debate. I claim that the two issues are orthogonal. For definiteness, I consider Cartwright's argument that causal explanations secure belief in theoretical entities. In Section I, van Fraassen's anti-realism is reviewed; I argue that this anti-realism is, prima facie, consistent with a causal account of explanation. Section II reviews Cartwright's a…Read more
-
Probabilistic Causation in Scientific ExplanationDissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1993.Salmon has argued that science provides explanations by describing a causal nexus: For Salmon, this nexus is a network of processes and interactions. I argue that this picture of the causal nexus is insufficient for an account of scientific explanation: a taxonomy of causal relevance is also needed. ;Probabilistic theories of causation seem to provide such a taxonomy in their dichotomy between promoting and inhibiting causes. However, standard probabilistic theories are beset by a difficulty cal…Read more
-
246A generalized probabilistic theory of causal relevanceSynthese 97 (3). 1993.I advance a new theory of causal relevance, according to which causal claims convey information about conditional probability functions. This theory is motivated by the problem of disjunctive factors, which haunts existing probabilistic theories of causation. After some introductory remarks, I present in Section 3 a sketch of Eells's (1991) probabilistic theory of causation, which provides the framework for much of the discussion. Section 4 explains how the problem of disjunctive factors arises …Read more
-
60Wittgenstein on private language: Exorcising the ghost from the machinePhilosophia 24 (3-4): 127-147. 1995.
-
363Salmon on explanatory relevancePhilosophy of Science 62 (2): 304-320. 1995.One of the motivations for Salmon's (1984) causal theory of explanation was the explanatory irrelevance exhibited by many arguments conforming to Hempel's covering-law models of explanation. However, the nexus of causal processes and interactions characterized by Salmon is not rich enough to supply the necessary conception of explanatory relevance. Salmon's (1994) revised theory, which is briefly criticized on independent grounds, fares no better. There is some possibility that the two-tiered st…Read more
-
196The mishap at Reichenbach fall: Singular vs. general causationPhilosophical Studies 78 (3). 1995.
-
211The role of contrast in causal and explanatory claimsSynthese 107 (3). 1996.Following Dretske (1977), there has been a considerable body of literature on the role of contrastive stress in causal claims. Following van Fraassen (1980), there has been a considerable body of literature on the role of contrastive stress in explanations and explanation-requesting why-questions. Amazingly, the two bodies of literature have remained almost entirely disjoint. With an understanding of the contrastive nature of ordinary causal claims, and of the linguistic roles of contrastive str…Read more
-
54The mechanist and the snailPhilosophical Studies 84 (1). 1996.Introduction: One of the most influential theories of scientific explanation to have emerged in the past two decades is Salmon's causal/mechanical theory (Salmon 1984). According to this account, scientific explanations describe a network of causal processes and interactions. In this paper, I will use an example from evolutionary biology to argue that the causal nexus, as characterized by Salmon, is not rich enough to account for many causal explanations in the sciences.
-
71Farewell to Binary CausationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (2). 1996.Causation is a topic of perennial philosophical concern. As well as being of intrinsic interest, almost all philosophical concepts — such as knowledge, beauty, and moral responsibility — involve a causal dimension. Nonetheless, attempts to provide a satisfactory account of the nature of causation have typically led to barrages of counterexamples. I hope to show that a number of the difficulties plaguing theories of causation have a common source.Most philosophical theories of causation describe …Read more
-
39Discussion: Screening-off and visibility to selection (review)Biology and Philosophy 12 (4): 521-529. 1997.Philosophers have used the probabilistic relation of ’screening-off‘ to explicate concepts in the theories of causation and explanation. Brandon has used screening-off relations in an attempt to reconstruct an argument of Mayr and Gould that natural selection acts at the level of the organism. I argue that Brandon‘s reconstruction is unsuccessful.
-
1Actual causation and the art of modelingIn Halpern Joseph & Hitchcock Christopher (eds.), Causality, Probability, and Heuristics: A Tribute to Judea Pearl, College Publications. pp. 383-406. 2010.
-
87Compact Representations of Extended Causal ModelsCognitive Science 37 (6): 986-1010. 2013.Judea Pearl (2000) was the first to propose a definition of actual causation using causal models. A number of authors have suggested that an adequate account of actual causation must appeal not only to causal structure but also to considerations of normality. In Halpern and Hitchcock (2011), we offer a definition of actual causation using extended causal models, which include information about both causal structure and normality. Extended causal models are potentially very complex. In this study…Read more
-
229Probabilistic causationStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.“Probabilistic Causation” designates a group of theories that aim to characterize the relationship between cause and effect using the tools of probability theory. The central idea behind these theories is that causes change the probabilities of their effects. This article traces developments in probabilistic causation, including recent developments in causal modeling. A variety of issues within, and objections to, probabilistic theories of causation will also be discussed
-
110Causal processes and interactions: What are they and what are they good for?Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 932-941. 2004.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 fir…Read more
-
3Contrastive ExplanationIn Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy, Routledge/taylor & Francis Group. 2013.
-
California Institute of TechnologyDepartment of Scientific PhilosophyKoepfli Professor of Philosophy
APA Western Division
Pasadena, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17 more
Areas of Interest
24 more