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79The Worldly Infrastructure of CausationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
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36Signal Manipulation and the Causal Analysis of Racial DiscriminationErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (n/a). 2022.Discussions of the causal status of race focus on the question of whether race itself can be experimentally manipulated. Yet many experiments testing for racial discrimination do not manipulate race, but rather a signal by which race influences an outcome. Such signal manipulations are easily formalized, though contexts of discrimination introduce significant philosophical complications. Whether a signal counts as a signal for race is not merely a causal question, but depends on sociological and…Read more
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12Intervening and Letting Go: On the Adequacy of Equilibrium Causal ModelsErkenntnis 88 (6): 2467-2491. 2021.Causal representations are distinguished from non-causal ones by their ability to predict the results of interventions. This widely-accepted view suggests the following adequacy condition for causal models: a causal model is adequate only if it does not contain variables regarding which it makes systematically false predictions about the results of interventions. Here I argue that this condition should be rejected. For a class of equilibrium systems, there will be two incompatible causal models …Read more
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101The Frugal Inference of Causal RelationsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 821-848. 2018.Recent approaches to causal modelling rely upon the causal Markov condition, which specifies which probability distributions are compatible with a directed acyclic graph. Further principles are required in order to choose among the large number of DAGs compatible with a given probability distribution. Here we present a principle that we call frugality. This principle tells one to choose the DAG with the fewest causal arrows. We argue that frugality has several desirable properties compared to th…Read more
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71Discovering Brain Mechanisms Using Network Analysis and Causal ModelingMinds and Machines 28 (2): 265-286. 2018.Mechanist philosophers have examined several strategies scientists use for discovering causal mechanisms in neuroscience. Findings about the anatomical organization of the brain play a central role in several such strategies. Little attention has been paid, however, to the use of network analysis and causal modeling techniques for mechanism discovery. In particular, mechanist philosophers have not explored whether and how these strategies incorporate information about the anatomical organization…Read more
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69Mechanisms without mechanistic explanationSynthese 1-18. 2017.Some recent accounts of constitutive relevance have identified mechanism components with entities that are causal intermediaries between the input and output of a mechanism. I argue that on such accounts there is no distinctive inter-level form of mechanistic explanation and that this highlights an absence in the literature of a compelling argument that there are such explanations. Nevertheless, the entities that these accounts call ‘components’ do play an explanatory role. Studying causal inter…Read more
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892Puzzles for ZFEL, McShea and Brandon’s zero force evolutionary lawBiology and Philosophy 27 (5): 723-735. 2012.In their 2010 book, Biology’s First Law, D. McShea and R. Brandon present a principle that they call ‘‘ZFEL,’’ the zero force evolutionary law. ZFEL says (roughly) that when there are no evolutionary forces acting on a population, the population’s complexity (i.e., how diverse its member organisms are) will increase. Here we develop criticisms of ZFEL and describe a different law of evolution; it says that diversity and complexity do not change when there are no evolutionary causes.
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55Comparing Rubin and Pearl’s causal modelling frameworks: a commentary on Markus (2021)Economics and Philosophy 39 (3): 485-493. 2023.Markus (2021) argues that the causal modelling frameworks of Pearl and Rubin are not ‘strongly equivalent’, in the sense of saying ‘the same thing in different ways’. Here I rebut Markus’ arguments against strong equivalence. The differences between the frameworks are best illuminated not by appeal to their causal semantics, but rather reflect pragmatic modelling choices.
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18Static-Dynamic Hybridity in Dynamical Models of CognitionPhilosophy of Science 89 (2): 283-301. 2022.Dynamical models of cognition have played a central role in recent cognitive science. In this paper, we consider a common strategy by which dynamical models describe their target systems neither as purely static nor as purely dynamic, but rather using a hybrid approach. This hybridity reveals how dynamical models involve representational choices that are important for understanding the relationship between dynamical and non-dynamical representations of a system.
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21Intervening and Letting Go: On the Adequacy of Equilibrium Causal ModelsErkenntnis 88 (6): 1-25. 2021.Causal representations are distinguished from non-causal ones by their ability to predict the results of interventions. This widely-accepted view suggests the following adequacy condition for causal models: a causal model is adequate only if it does not contain variables regarding which it makes systematically false predictions about the results of interventions. Here I argue that this condition should be rejected. For a class of equilibrium systems, there will be two incompatible causal models …Read more
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425Near-Decomposability and the Timescale Relativity of Causal RepresentationsPhilosophy of Science 87 (5): 841-856. 2020.A common strategy for simplifying complex systems involves partitioning them into subsystems whose behaviors are roughly independent of one another at shorter timescales. Dynamic causal models clarify how doing so reveals a system’s nonequilibrium causal relationships. Here I use these models to elucidate the idealizations and abstractions involved in representing a system at a timescale. The models reveal that key features of causal representations—such as which variables are exogenous—may vary…Read more
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22Making sense of non-factual disagreement in scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 83 36-43. 2020.
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319Mechanisms without mechanistic explanationSynthese 196 (6): 2323-2340. 2019.Some recent accounts of constitutive relevance have identified mechanism components with entities that are causal intermediaries between the input and output of a mechanism. I argue that on such accounts there is no distinctive inter-level form of mechanistic explanation and that this highlights an absence in the literature of a compelling argument that there are such explanations. Nevertheless, the entities that these accounts call ‘components’ do play an explanatory role. Studying causal inter…Read more
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409Path-Specific EffectsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (1): 53-76. 2019.A cause may influence its effect via multiple paths. Paradigmatically (Hesslow [1974]), taking birth control pills both decreases one’s risk of thrombosis by preventing pregnancy and increases it by producing a blood chemical. Building on Pearl ([2001]), I explicate the notion of a path-specific effect. Roughly, a path-specific effect of C on E via path P is the degree to which a change in C would change E were they to be transmitted only via P. Facts about such effects may be gleaned from the s…Read more
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420Is There an Empirical Disagreement between Genic and Genotypic Selection Models? A Response to Brandon and NijhoutPhilosophy of Science 78 (2): 225-237. 2011.In a recent paper, Brandon and Nijhout argue against genic selectionism—the thesis, roughly, that evolutionary processes are best understood from the gene’s-eye point of view—by presenting a case in which genic models of selection allegedly make predictions that conflict with the (correct) predictions of higher-level genotypic selection models. Their argument, if successful, would refute the widely held belief that genic models and higher-level models are predictively equivalent. Here, I argue t…Read more
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862Systems without a graphical causal representationSynthese 191 (8): 1925-1930. 2014.There are simple mechanical systems that elude causal representation. We describe one that cannot be represented in a single directed acyclic graph. Our case suggests limitations on the use of causal graphs for causal inference and makes salient the point that causal relations among variables depend upon details of causal setups, including values of variables.
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1124Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing it Better, Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie. Oxford University Press, 2013, ix + 196 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 30 (1): 113-120. 2014.
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330Faithfulness, Coordination and Causal CoincidencesErkenntnis 83 (2): 113-133. 2018.Within the causal modeling literature, debates about the Causal Faithfulness Condition have concerned whether it is probable that the parameters in causal models will have values such that distinct causal paths will cancel. As the parameters in a model are fixed by the probability distribution over its variables, it is initially puzzling what it means to assign probabilities to these parameters. I propose that to assign a probability to a parameter in a model is to treat that parameter as a func…Read more
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44Erratum to: Systems without a graphical causal representationSynthese 192 (9): 3053-3053. 2015.Erratum to: Synthese 191:1925–1930 DOI:10.1007/s11229-013-0380-3 The authors were unaware that points in their article appeared in “Caveats for Causal Reasoning with Equilibrium Models,” by Denver Dash and Marek Druzdzel, published in S. Benferhat and P. Besnard : European Conferences on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty 2001, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2143, pp. 192–203. The authors were unaware of this essay and would like to apologize to the auth…Read more
Naftali Weinberger
Tilburg Center For Logic, Ethics, And Philosophy Of Science (TiLPS - Tilburg University)
Tilburg University
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Tilburg Center For Logic, Ethics, And Philosophy Of Science (TiLPS - Tilburg University)Postdoctoral Fellow
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Tilburg UniversityPost-doctoral fellow
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |