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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
Introduction
I am going to describe here a three-year project on causality under way at the London School of Economics (LSE) funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Board. The central idea behind my contribution to the project is Elizabeth Anscombe's. My work thus shares a lot in common with that of Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver, which is also discussed at these Philosophy of Science Association meetings. My basic point of view is adumbrated in my 1999 book The Dappled World:
The book takes its title from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a follower of Duns Scotus. So too am I. I stress the particular over the universal and what is plotted and pieced over what lies in one gigantic plane …
About causation I argue … there is a great variety of different kinds of causes and that even causes of the same kind can operate in different ways …
The term ‘cause’ is highly unspecific. It commits us to nothing about the kind of causality involved nor about how the causes operate. Recognizing this should make us more cautious about investing in the quest for universal methods for causal inference.
The defence of these claims proceeds in three stages.
Stage 1: as a start I shall outline troubles we face in taking any of the dominant accounts now on offer as providing universal accounts of causal laws:
the probabilistic theory of causality (Patrick Suppes) and consequent Bayes-nets methods of causal inference (Wolfgang Spohn, Judea Pearl, Clark Glymour);
[…]
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