Big Chemical Encyclopedia

Chemical substances, components, reactions, process design ...

Articles Figures Tables About

Causation Humean

If the methods of actual scientific practice for resolving questions about sampling in experimental design rely upon prior (approximate) theoretical knowledge of unobservable factors, then, in particular, knowledge of such factors is actual and therefore possible. Thus, the empiricist conception that experimental knowledge cannot extend to unobservable causal powers and mechanisms must be mistaken and the philosophical justification of the Humean definition of causation rests upon a false epistemological premise. (Boyd, 1985, p. 73)... [Pg.216]

There is, I think, also a psychological preference for simplicity that is related to comprehensibihty, but which also may have an esthetic component. I will return to the psychology of explanation after finishing this brief review of the principal proposals for scientific explanation from the community of professional philosophers. In completing the summary of Boyd s position, though, I would say that the evidence for the important role of nonexperimental factors that Boyd cites as the reason to overthrow Humean causation is not clear-cut. I guess I remain a Humean at heart. [Pg.217]

A non-Humean response is to maintain that state and event types have at least some of their causal powers essentially, namely, the (conditional) powers to produce their manifestations. I will not attempt to determine here whether we should be Humeans or non-Humeans about causation. Suffice it for the moment just to note that even if event types endow causal powers essentially, the question remains whether functional state and event types endow causal powers. Thus, suppose that the Humean view is indeed wrong, and that some structures are essentially killer structures, and so essentially endow the power to kill. The question would still remain why the state of having some or other killer structure is a state that is itself a killer state - a state that endows the power to kill — given that it is not identical with any of the killer structures. Why think that the property of having some property or other that essentially endows the power to kill is itself a property that endows the power to kill Similarly, even if all the bases or core realizers of a functional property, water solubility, essentially endow the (conditional) power to cause dissolvings in water, what reason is there to think that the functional property does - that water solubility itself does For the moment, suffice it to note that these questions deserve answers. [Pg.86]

Of course, if the core physical realizer has the causal role essentially (an idea Lewis would reject), then the core realizer will imply the functional event. Shoemaker (2001) holds that the way to go in responding to Kims exclusion problem is to embrace essential causal powers. But that invokes causal oomph, and we are now focused on the Humean conception of causation. As 1 mentioned earlier, I discuss Shoemaker s view in McLaughlin (2006b) it faces problems different from those of the view under discussion here. [Pg.101]


See other pages where Causation Humean is mentioned: [Pg.80]    [Pg.216]    [Pg.88]   
See also in sourсe #XX -- [ Pg.7 , Pg.216 ]




SEARCH



Causation

© 2024 chempedia.info