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340Back to the big pictureJournal of Economic Methodology 28 (1): 54-59. 2021.We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...
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Prediction, history and political scienceIn Harold Kincaid & Jeroen van Bouwel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science, Oxford University Press. 2023.
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10Pandemic Modeling, Good and BadPhilosophy of Medicine 3 (1). 2022.What kind of epidemiological modeling works well? This is determined by the nature of the target: the relevant causal relations are unstable across contexts. I look at two influential examples of modeling from the Covid pandemic. The first is the paper from Imperial College London, which, in March 2020, was influential in persuading the UK government to impose a lockdown. Because it assumes stability, this first example of modeling fails. A different modeling strategy is required, one less ambit…Read more
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9Reflexivity and fragilityEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (3): 1-14. 2022.Reflexivity is, roughly, when studying or theorising about a target itself influences that target. Fragility is, roughly, when causal or other relations are hard to predict, holding only intermittently or fleetingly. Which is more important, methodologically? By going systematically through cases that do and do not feature each of them, I conclude that it is fragility that matters, not reflexivity. In this light, I interpret and extend the claims made about reflexivity in a recent paper by Jessi…Read more
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39Beyond experimentsPerspectives on Pyschological Science. forthcoming.It is often claimed that only experiments can support strong causal inferences and therefore they should be privileged in the behavioral sciences. We disagree. Overvaluing experiments results in their overuse both by researchers and decision-makers, and in an underappreciation of their shortcomings. Neglecting other methods often follows. Experiments can suggest whether X causes Y in a specific experimental setting; however, they often fail to elucidate either the mechanisms responsible for an e…Read more
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254Prediction, history and political scienceIn Harold Kincaid & Jeroen van Bouwel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science, Oxford University Press. 2023.To succeed, political science usually requires either prediction or contextual historical work. Both of these methods favor explanations that are narrow-scope, applying to only one or a few cases. Because of the difficulty of prediction, the main focus of political science should often be contextual historical work. These epistemological conclusions follow from the ubiquity of causal fragility, under-determination, and noise. They tell against several practices that are widespread in the discipl…Read more
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141Big data and prediction: Four case studiesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 81 96-104. 2020.Has the rise of data-intensive science, or ‘big data’, revolutionized our ability to predict? Does it imply a new priority for prediction over causal understanding, and a diminished role for theory and human experts? I examine four important cases where prediction is desirable: political elections, the weather, GDP, and the results of interventions suggested by economic experiments. These cases suggest caution. Although big data methods are indeed very useful sometimes, in this paper’s cases the…Read more
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396Prediction versus accommodation in economicsJournal of Economic Methodology 26 (1): 59-69. 2019.Should we insist on prediction, i.e. on correctly forecasting the future? Or can we rest content with accommodation, i.e. empirical success only with respect to the past? I apply general considerations about this issue to the case of economics. In particular, I examine various ways in which mere accommodation can be sufficient, in order to see whether those ways apply to economics. Two conclusions result. First, an entanglement thesis: the need for prediction is entangled with the methodological…Read more
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386Pre-emption cases may support, not undermine, the counterfactual theory of causationSynthese 198 (1): 537-555. 2018.Pre-emption cases have been taken by almost everyone to imply the unviability of the simple counterfactual theory of causation. Yet there is ample motivation from scientific practice to endorse a simple version of the theory if we can. There is a way in which a simple counterfactual theory, at least if understood contrastively, can be supported even while acknowledging that intuition goes firmly against it in pre-emption cases—or rather, only in some of those cases. For I present several new pre…Read more
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101Conceived This Way: Innateness DefendedPhilosophers' Imprint 18. 2018.We propose a novel account of the distinction between innate and acquired biological traits: biological traits are innate to the degree that they are caused by factors intrinsic to the organism at the time of its origin; they are acquired to the degree that they are caused by factors extrinsic to the organism. This account borrows from recent work on causation in order to make rigorous the notion of quantitative contributions to traits by different factors in development. We avoid the pitfalls o…Read more
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205Free Will is Not a Testable HypothesisErkenntnis 84 (3): 617-631. 2019.Much recent work in neuroscience aims to shed light on whether we have free will. Can it? Can any science? To answer, we need to disentangle different notions of free will, and clarify what we mean by ‘empirical’ and ‘testable’. That done, my main conclusion is, duly interpreted: that free will is not a testable hypothesis. In particular, it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable by empirical evidence. The arguments for this are not a priori but rather are based on a posteriori consideration of t…Read more
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47The Efficiency Question in EconomicsPhilosophy of Science 85 (5): 1140-1151. 2018.Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain, and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question: regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals – or should research efforts be redirected? In addition to showing h…Read more
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55Conceived this way: innateness defendedPhilosophers' Imprint. forthcoming.We propose a novel account of the distinction between innate and acquired biological traits: biological traits are innate to the degree that they are caused by factors intrinsic to the organism at the time of its origin; they are acquired to the degree that they are caused by factors extrinsic to the organism. This account borrows from recent work on causation in order to make rigorous the notion of quantitative contributions to traits by different factors in development. We avoid the pitfalls o…Read more
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266When are Purely Predictive Models Best?Disputatio 9 (47): 631-656. 2017.Can purely predictive models be useful in investigating causal systems? I argue ‘yes’. Moreover, in many cases not only are they useful, they are essential. The alternative is to stick to models or mechanisms drawn from well-understood theory. But a necessary condition for explanation is empirical success, and in many cases in social and field sciences such success can only be achieved by purely predictive models, not by ones drawn from theory. Alas, the attempt to use theory to achieve explanat…Read more
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1244Can ANOVA measure causal strength?Quarterly Review of Biology 83 (1): 47-55. 2008.The statistical technique of analysis of variance is often used by biologists as a measure of causal factors’ relative strength or importance. I argue that it is a tool ill suited to this purpose, on several grounds. I suggest a superior alternative, and outline some implications. I finish with a diagnosis of the source of error – an unwitting inheritance of bad philosophy that now requires the remedy of better philosophy.
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395The Irrational Game: why there’s no perfect systemIn Eric Bronson (ed.), Poker and Philosophy, Open Court. pp. 105-115. 2006.This is a chapter written for a popular audience, in which I use poker as a convenient illustration of probability, determinism and counterfactuals. More originally, I also discuss the roles of rationality versus psychological hunches, and explain why even in principle game theory cannot provide us the panacea of a perfect winning srategy. (N.B. The document I have uploaded here is slightly longer than the abbreviated version that appears in the book, and also differs in a few other minor detail…Read more
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2098Prisoner's dilemma doesn't explain muchIn Martin Peterson (ed.), The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Classic philosophical arguments., Cambridge University Press. pp. 64-84. 2015.We make the case that the Prisoner’s Dilemma, notwithstanding its fame and the quantity of intellectual resources devoted to it, has largely failed to explain any phenomena of social scientific or biological interest. In the heart of the paper we examine in detail a famous purported example of Prisoner’s Dilemma empirical success, namely Axelrod’s analysis of WWI trench warfare, and argue that this success is greatly overstated. Further, we explain why this negative verdict is likely true genera…Read more
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207Harm and CausationUtilitas 27 (2): 147-164. 2015.I propose an analysis of harm in terms of causation: harm is when a subject is caused to be worse off. The pay-off from this lies in the details. In particular, importing influential recent work from the causation literature yields a contrastive-counterfactual account. This enables us to incorporate harm's multiple senses into a unified scheme, and to provide that scheme with theoretical ballast. It also enables us to respond effectively to previous criticisms of counterfactual accounts, as well…Read more
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192A Dilemma for the Doomsday ArgumentRatio 29 (3): 268-282. 2015.I present a new case in which the Doomsday Argument runs afoul of epistemic intuition much more strongly than before. This leads to a dilemma: in the new case either DA is committed to unacceptable counterintuitiveness and belief in miracles, or else it is irrelevant. I then explore under what conditions DA can escape this dilemma. The discussion turns on several issues that have not been much emphasised in previous work on DA: a concern that I label trumping; the degree of uncertainty about rel…Read more
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428Walsh on causes and evolutionPhilosophy of Science 77 (3): 457-467. 2010.Denis Walsh has written a striking new defense in this journal of the statisticalist (i.e., noncausalist) position regarding the forces of evolution. I defend the causalist view against his new objections. I argue that the heart of the issue lies in the nature of nonadditive causation. Detailed consideration of that turns out to defuse Walsh’s ‘description‐dependence’ critique of causalism. Nevertheless, the critique does suggest a basis for reconciliation between the two competing views. *Recei…Read more
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234On Lewis, Schaffer and the non-reductive evaluation of counterfactualsTheoria 75 (4): 336-343. 2009.Jonathan Schaffer (2004 ) proposes an ingenious amendment to David Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals. This amendment explicitly invokes the notion of causal independence, thus giving up Lewis's ambitions for a reductive counterfactual account of causation. But in return, it rescues Lewis's semantics from extant counterexamples. I present a new counterexample that defeats even Schaffer's amendment. Further, I argue that a better approach would be to follow the causal modelling literature and …Read more
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766Comparing apples with orangesAnalysis 65 (1): 12-18. 2005.Comparisons of causal efficacy are ubiquitous in the practice of science and indeed everyday life. I focus on just one aspect of this task – one to my knowledge nowhere yet addressed satisfactorily – namely, comparing the efficacies of two causes that work in apparently incommensurable ways. Contrary to common opinion I argue that, to be comparable, it is neither necessary nor sufficient that two causes also be commensurable.
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223It’s Just A Feeling: Why Economic Models Do Not ExplainJournal of Economic Methodology 20 (3). 2013.Julian Reiss correctly identified a trilemma about economic models: we cannot maintain that they are false, but nevertheless explain and that only true accounts explain. In this reply we give reasons to reject the second premise ? that economic models explain. Intuitions to the contrary should be distrusted
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391Pearson’s Wrong Turning: Against Statistical Measures of Causal EfficacyPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 900-912. 2005.Standard statistical measures of strength of association, although pioneered by Pearson deliberately to be acausal, nowadays are routinely used to measure causal efficacy. But their acausal origins have left them ill suited to this latter purpose. I distinguish between two different conceptions of causal efficacy, and argue that: 1) Both conceptions can be useful 2) The statistical measures only attempt to capture the first of them 3) They are not fully successful even at this 4) An alternative …Read more
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622Is Actual Difference Making Actually Different?Journal of Philosophy 106 (11): 629-633. 2009.This paper responds to Kenneth Waters’s account of actual difference making. Among other things, I argue that although Waters is right that researchers may sometimes be justified in focusing on genes rather than other causes of phenotypic traits, he is wrong that the apparatus of actual difference makers overcomes the traditional causal parity thesis.
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213Bad luck or the ref's fault?In Ted Richards (ed.), Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game, Open Court. pp. 319-326. 2010.In this book chapter written for a popular audience, I discuss classic issues surrounding luck, determinism and probability in the context of the penalty shoot-outs used in football’s World Cup. Can it ever make objective sense to blame an outcome on bad luck? I go on to discuss whether we can legitimately pin the blame on any one factor at all, such as a referee. This takes us into issues surrounding the apportioning of causal responsibility.
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495Genetic traits and causal explanationIn Kathryn Plaisance & Thomas Reydon (eds.), Philosophy of Behavioral Biology, Springer. pp. 65-82. 2012.I use a contrastive theory of causal explanation to analyze the notion of a genetic trait. The resulting definition is relational, an implication of which is that no trait is genetic always and everywhere. Rather, every trait may be either genetic or non-genetic, depending on explanatory context. I also outline some other advantages of connecting the debate to the wider causation literature, including how that yields us an account of the distinction between genetic traits and genetic disposition…Read more
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420Opinion Polling and Election PredictionsPhilosophy of Science 82 (5): 1260-1271. 2015.Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: Methodology over metaphysics. Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether successful prediction would be possible; instead, the crucial thing was selecting an effective methodology. Which methodology? Success required sophisticated use of case-specific evidence from opinion polling. …Read more
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625Causal efficacy and the analysis of varianceBiology and Philosophy 21 (2): 253-276. 2006.The causal impacts of genes and environment on any one biological trait are inextricably entangled, and consequently it is widely accepted that it makes no sense in singleton cases to privilege either factor for particular credit. On the other hand, at a population level it may well be the case that one of the factors is responsible for more variation than the other. Standard methodological practice in biology uses the statistical technique of analysis of variance to measure this latter kind of …Read more
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544Progress in economics: Lessons from the spectrum auctionsIn Harold Kincaid & Don Ross (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, Oxford University Press. pp. 306--337. 2009.The 1994 US spectrum auction is now a paradigmatic case of the successful use of microeconomic theory for policy-making. We use a detailed analysis of it to review standard accounts in philosophy of science of how idealized models are connected to messy reality. We show that in order to understand what made the design of the spectrum auction successful, a new such account is required, and we present it here. Of especial interest is the light this sheds on the issue of progress in economics. In …Read more
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Metaphysics and Epistemology |
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