Causal Explanation as a Research Goal (Vayda festschrift 2008, preprint of Chap. 19).doc (original) (raw)

"Causal Explanation for Environmental Anthropologists"

Chapter 9 of Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, Helen Kopnina and Elle Ouimet, eds., London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 207-224

By contrast, the approach that I advocate and will set forth here cuts straight to the causal chase. It does so by starting out with what is to be explained --with what, in philosophers' language, is the explanandum. In environmental research in which, as will be described, anthropologists have been or might be involved, the explanandum is often an adverse environmental effect or change. Accordingly, why-questions asked about such changes, like the collapse of a fishery (see McGuire 1997 and the references cited there) or an extensive forest fire (see and the references cited there), have been described as "why-the-train-wrecked" questions and environmental managers and policy-makers have been properly identified as being especially concerned to get answers to them (Rudel 1999, crediting former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt with the "train-wreck" terminology).

Causal Reasoning: Initial Report of a Naturalistic Study of Causal Inferences

Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2009

Motivation-This paper describes the initial results of a naturalistic inquiry into the way people derive causal inferences. Research approach-We examined media accounts of economic, political, military, and sports incidents to determine the types of causal explanations that are commonly invoked. Findings-We found two interacting processes at work: the identification of potential causes and the framing of these causes into explanations. Explanations took several forms: abstractions, events, lists (undifferentiated collections of partial causes), conditions, and stories (complex mechanisms linking several causes). Originality-Causal reasoning in "the real world" is both different from and far richer than the formal causal accounts found in philosophy, and from the determinate search for causes during scientific problem solving. Takeaway message-By understanding the way causal reasoning is done in natural settings we should be better able to help decision makers diagnose problems and anticipate consequences.

Andrew P. Vayda and Bradley B. Walters, editors: Causal Explanation for Social Scientists

Human Ecology, 2012

have long championed an argument that resonates with many researchers: abandon over-ripened theoretical constructs that constrain our powers of reasoning and observation, leave aside investigation that seeks to determine the effects of abstract forces, and pursue instead, with a keen and open mind, practical explanations of what makes known outcomes happen. In Causal Explanation for Social Scientists Vayda and Walters are at their most persuasive, perhaps because they allow a number of luminaries in the history of science to do the talking for them. The volume is, in this way, a compendium unlike most others. Rather than gather causal arguments about specific substantive outcomes (fire in the tropics, for example), Vayda and Walters have assembled essays on how to question, how to reason, and why to do it a pragmatic fashion. The voices gathered to speak in the volume are numerous (23 contributions, apart from Vayda and Walters' own) and include some heavy artillery in rigorous scientific thinking, including Stephen Jay Gould, E.E. Evans-Prichard, and Richard Lewontin, among others. With very few exceptions, each contribution is drawn from its own conversations and histories, and so out of its own context, but they together form a powerful phalanx in support of Vayda's "causal" agenda. This agenda, laid out clear detail in the useful and brief (25 page) introduction, reiterates a few key admonitions that readers may know from earlier work (Vayda 1996; Vayda 2006; Vayda 2009): 1) pick outcomes or events and work backward to form explanations, 2) avoid reified concepts

Explanation, Causality and Causal Inferences

Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty: Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 2017

One of our main activities, as human beings, consists of the attempt to explain and to understand what is not known (yet) by what is already known and familiar. Our explanations are often causal which is why it is frequently considered that to explain a phenomenon means to describe its causes. But we must keep in mind the idea that explaining what is new and we do not know yet through known notions is a complex and risky process. Some of the most common risks consist of the fact that sometimes, through such explanation we don't succeed to bring any extra knowledge and other times we fail to grasp the real causal connections between the phenomena, which lacks our judgments of truth value. The modifications of the concept of causality due to the new discoveries of physics added to our tendency to invent causal explanations is confusing in science as well as in philosophy. In the case of the judicial philosophy for instance, the manner in which the relations and social phenomena are understood and explained have direct influence over the legal regulation, making the law enforcement more or less efficient. In this paper we intend to analyze to what extent our willingness to provide explanations for everything that happens affects the concept of causation and whether these difficulties can be related to causal inference. In classical logic, the specialists analyzed the causal inferences and the logical rules implied in order to achieve reliable conclusions and we will refer to them with the purpose of avoiding errors.

Explanation and Causality: a List of Issues

Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2015

After a concise description of issues concerning the causal and the deductive-nomological models of explanation, the flaws in the alternative view centred on relevance-to-context are examined. The paper argues for the need of a wider spectrum of options which takes into account both the Local/Global and the Internal/External aspects in order to determine the sense and the adequacy of any explanation. As a test for this argument, some specific problems are considered about the range of causal bonds, the admission of top-down causation, the appeal to emergence, the shift from explanation to explainability, the equivalence classes referred to as "cause" and "effect". Finally, the paper deals with the comparison between inequivalent explanations and lists three remaining issues to complete the picture.

Causal patterns and adequate explanations

Philosophical Studies, 2015

Causal accounts of scientific explanation are currently broadly accepted (though not universally so). My first task in this paper is to show that, even for a causal approach to explanation, significant features of explanatory practice are not determined by settling how causal facts bear on the phenomenon to be explained. I then develop a broadly causal approach to explanation that accounts for the additional features that I argue an explanation should have. This approach to explanation makes sense of several aspects of actual explanatory practice, including the widespread use of equilibrium explanations, the formulation of distinct explanations for a single event, and the tight relationship between explanations of events and explanations of causal regularities.

A plea for a pragmatic approach in the philosophy of causation and explanation.

We defend a pragmatic approach in the philosophy of causation and explanation. Our approach is grounded in the more general pragmatic stance that we take towards the goals of the sciences. By means of our pragmatic view on explanation and causal reasoning we primarily want to do justice to the diversity in scientific practice. We show how this approach leads us to the defence of explanatory and causal pluralism. We further argue that a pragmatic approach, at least in the philosophy of causation and explanation, can lead to knowledge that is better achievable, more interesting, and more useful for practice, in comparison with the traditional approach which is routed in monistic presuppositions and which denies the diversity of scientific practice.

Causality and Causal Explanation: The Constitution of Sufficient Reasoning in Social Research

Asian Journal of Advanced Research and Reports

As Social Researchers, we have for the last one and half decades witnessed a disturbing lag in the existing body of literature for causal explanations. The majority seem to contradict and provide no clear-cut explanations about the relevancy of applying causal techniques to understand social patterns. Much as it is true that understanding social processes and patterns is in many ways more challenging than understanding the physical world, social researchers need to provide a justification to these complexities through scientific inquiry using causal techniques and interpretations. Many times social researchers concentrate on the simple linearity between cause and effect and yet its ability to explain reality is doubtable. This sounds to reason that, our focus as social experts should be on what form of social interactions extend over time in the social world to establish the links between cause and effect. Again, how relevant is the available evidence to claim that social factor X c...

Causality and Explanation in the Sciences

THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 2012

Editors' introduction to the special issue on the Causality and Explanation in the Sciences conference, held at the University of Ghent in September 2011.