Part I Prelude to Causality
1 PROBLEMS OF CAUSALITY IN THE SCIENCES ........................ 3
1.1 Why this book on causality? ............................. 3
1.2 Five scientific problems ................................ 4
1.3 The contents of this book ............................... 6
2 A SCIENTIFIC TOOLBOX FOR PHILOSOPHY .......................... 9
2.1 Methods for finding causes .............................. 9
2.2 Observational methods .................................. 10
2.3 Experimental methods ................................... 11
2.4 Between observation and experiment ..................... 14
2.5 Beyond observation and experiment ...................... 15
2.6 How to make a study work ............................... 15
3 A PHILOSOPHICAL TOOLBOX FOR SCIENCE ......................... 19
3.1 Arguments .............................................. 19
3.2 Methods ................................................ 21
3.3 Levels of abstraction .................................. 22
Part II Causality: Accounts, Concepts and Methods
4 NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT COMPONENTS ......................... 27
4.1 Examples: electrical short-circuit and AIDS ............ 27
4.2 Component causes ....................................... 28
4.3 INUS causes and related concepts ....................... 30
4.4 Rothman's pie charts ................................... 32
5 LEVELS OF CAUSATION ......................................... 35
5.1 Examples: personalized medicine and migration
behaviours ............................................. 35
5.2 Three parallel literatures ............................. 36
5.3 Bridging the levels - and the terminology! ............. 41
6 CAUSALITY AND EVIDENCE ...................................... 46
6.1 Examples: effects of radiation and smoking causing
heart disease .......................................... 46
6.2 What do we want to know? ............................... 47
6.3 Evidence for causal relations .......................... 51
6.4 Evidence-based approaches .............................. 56
7 CAUSAL METHODS: PROBING THE DATA ............................ 60
7.1 Examples: apoptosis and self-rated health .............. 60
7.2 The need for causal methods ............................ 61
7.3 The most widespread causal methods ..................... 64
7.4 Key notions in causal methods .......................... 67
8 DIFFERENCE-MAKING: PROBABILISTIC CAUSALITY .................. 75
8.1 Example: smoking and lung cancer ....................... 75
8.2 Is causality probability-altering? ..................... 76
8.3 Beyond probabilistic causes ............................ 82
9 DIFFERENCE-MAKING: COUNTERFACTUALS .......................... 86
9.1 Example: mesothelioma and safety at work ............... 86
9.2 The unbearable imprecision of counterfactual
reasoning .............................................. 87
9.3 Philosophical views of counterfactuals ................. 88
9.4 Counterfactuals in other fields ........................ 93
10 DIFFERENCE-MAKING: MANIPULATION AND INVARIANCE .............. 99
10.1 Example: gene knock-out experiments .................... 99
10.2 The manipulationists: wiggle the cause, and the
effect wiggles too .................................... 100
10.3 What causes can't we wiggle? .......................... 103
11 PRODUCTION ACCOUNTS: PROCESSES ............................. 111
11.1 Examples: billiard balls colliding and aeroplanes
crossing .............................................. 111
11.2 Tracing processes ..................................... 112
11.3 How widely does the approach apply? ................... 114
12 PRODUCTION ACCOUNTS: MECHANISMS ............................ 120
12.1 Example: how can smoking cause heart disease? ......... 120
12.2 What is a mechanism? The major mechanists ............. 121
12.3 Important features of mechanisms and mechanistic
explanation ........................................... 127
12.4 What is not a mechanism? .............................. 132
13 PRODUCTION ACCOUNTS: INFORMATION ........................... 135
13.1 Examples: tracing transmission of waves and of
disease ............................................... 135
13.2 The path to informational accounts .................... 136
13.3 Integrating the informational and mechanistic
approaches ............................................ 143
13.4 Future prospects for an informational account of
causality ............................................. 146
14 CAPACITIES, POWERS, DISPOSITIONS ........................... 150
14.1 Examples: systems in physics and biology .............. 150
14.2 The core idea of capacities, powers and dispositions .. 151
14.3 Capacities in science: explanation and evidence ....... 154
15 REGULARITY ................................................. l6l
15.1 Examples: natural and social regularities ............. 161
15.2 Causality as regular patterns ......................... 162
15.3 Updating regularity for current science ............... 164
16 VARIATION .................................................. 167
16.1 Example: mother's education and child survival ........ 167
16.2 The idea of variation ................................. 168
16.3 Variation in observational and experimental methods ... 172
17 CAUSALITY AND ACTION ....................................... 178
17.1 Example: symmetry in physics; asymmetry in agency ..... 178
17.2 Early agency theorists ................................ 179
17.3 Agency and the symmetry problem ....................... 181
17.4 Agency and action ..................................... 183
17.5 Problems for agency theories .......................... 184
17.6 Merits of agency theories ............................. 186
18 CAUSALITY AND INFERENCE .................................... 188
18.1 Example: combatting the spread of AIDS ................ 188
18.2 Different sorts of inferences ......................... 189
18.3 Does inferentialism lead to anti-realism? ............. 194
18.4 The heart of inference ................................ 195
Part III Approaches to Examining Causality
19 HOW WE GOT TO THE CAUSALITY IN THE SCIENCES APPROACH
(CITS) ..................................................... 201
19.1 A methodological straggle ............................. 201
19.2 Causality and language ................................ 202
19.3 Causality, intuitions and concepts .................... 203
19.4 Causality in the sciences ............................. 206
20 EXAMPLES AND COUNTEREXAMPLES ............................... 211
20.1 Examples of examples! ................................. 211
20.2 Toy examples or scientific examples? .................. 214
20.3 Counterexamples ....................................... 220
21 truth or models? ........................................... 227
21.1 Two approaches to causal assessment ................... 227
21.2 Causal assessment using models ........................ 228
21.3 Causal assessment identifying truthmakers ............. 230
21.4 Truth or models? ...................................... 233
22 epistemology, metaphysics, method, semantics, use .......... 237
22.1 Fragmented theorizing about causality ................. 237
22.2 Which question to answer when? ........................ 240
22.3 Which question interests me? .......................... 242
22.4 Should we integrate the fragments? .................... 243
Part IV Conclusion: Towards a Causal Mosaic
23 Pluralism .................................................. 249
23.1 If pluralism is the solution, what is the problem? .... 249
23.2 Various types of causing .............................. 250
23.3 Various concepts of causation ......................... 251
23.4 Various types of inferences ........................... 252
23.5 Various sources of evidence for causal relations ...... 253
23.6 Various methods for causal inference .................. 253
23.7 The pluralist mosaic .................................. 255
24 The causal mosaic under construction: the example of
exposomics ................................................. 258
24.1 Making mosaics ........................................ 258
24.2 Preparing materials for the exposomics mosaic ......... 260
24.3 Building the exposomics mosaic ........................ 267
Aappendix accounts, concepts and methods: summary tables ...... 273
A.1 The scientific problems of causality ................... 273
A.2 The philosophical questions about causality ............ 273
A.3 The accounts: how they fare with scientific problems .. 274
A.4 The accounts: how they fare with philosophical
questions ............................................. 277
References .................................................... 281
Index ......................................................... 303
|
