Explanation and determination
Gijsbers, V.A.
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Gijsbers, V. A. (2011, August 28). Explanation and determination. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/17879
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Curriculum vitae
Victor Gijsbers was born in Leiden on July 22nd, 1982. After completing his secondary education at the Utrechts Stedelijk Gymnasium (1993-1999), he studied physics and philosophy at Utrecht University, getting an MSc in Foundations of physics (cum laude) and an MA in Philosophy of the exact sciences, both in 2004. Since 2004 he has been working at the philosophy de- partment of Leiden University, first as a PhD student and from 2008 onwards as lecturer (docent) in philosophy of science, philosophy of the humanities, and epistemology. He has also visited the Department of History and Phi- losophy of Science at Cambridge University in 2007, where he worked with Peter Lipton.
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200 CHAPTER 10. CURRICULUM VITAE
Acknowledgements
This dissertation owes most to my supervisor, James McAllister. Our many discussions of its contents have been enormously helpful, as has been his advice about the more practical side of doing academic research. I also thank my promotor, G¨oran Sundholm; and my supervisor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, Peter Lipton.
That he will not be able to see the result of my research is the only tragedy of this thesis.
Many improvements to this thesis were possible because of the useful comments made by the members of the PhD committee. Especially helpful were the many points made by Christopher Hitchcock, and the thorough cri- tiques of Michael Strevens. If some of the latter have not yet been addressed in this final version of the thesis, it is because they are important enough to become the focus of future work.
My colleagues at Leiden University’s Department of Philosophy have made working there an intellectual as well as a social pleasure. I would like to thank them all, but will single out several for special mention: Lies Klumper for making us all feel at home, greatly enhancing the social ex- perience; Eric Schliesser and Bruno Verbeek for their eagerness to discuss philosophical positions; Gerard Visser for showing me another kind of phi- losophy and an authentic way of pursuing it; and Jeroen van Rijen, not least for his many hilarious stories.
Especially important were my fellow PhD students: during the main phase in which this dissertation was written, these were Remko van der Geest, Leon de Bruin, Marije Martijn, Wout Cornelissen, Mariska Leunissen and Zsolt Nov´ak.
For testing my ideas as well as getting a broad critical overview of phi- losophy, the many reading and discussion groups I attended were essential.
There were the DEMUS group with Henk de Regt, Hans Radder, Lieven De- cock, Kai Eigner, Sabina Leonelli, Nikki Smaniotto, Marcel Bouwmans and others; the Utrecht research seminar for analytic philosophy, with Herman Philipse, Fred Muller, Rosja Mastop, Remko Muis, Joop Leo and others;
201
202 CHAPTER 10. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS the workshops of the Dutch-Flemish Network for Philosophy of Science and Technology; as well many more informal meetings. I fondly remember the many reading groups I had with Eric Schliesser, ranging as they did from James Ladyman to Jacques Derrida. I would also like to thank my former teachers, Jos Uffink and Janneke van Lith.
My visit to Cambridge University was made possible partly through a grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds.
On a more personal note, I would like to thank my friends, who have been true throughout the years.
And finally, none of this would have been possible without my parents – a truth in more than the most obvious sense. I would like to dedicate this work to them.
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Index
abstraction, 136, 146
abundance of explanations, 23 accuracy vs. generality, 148 Achinstein, Peter, 33 action at a distance, 8 agency, 65–66
Albert, David, 119 ambiguity, 166–169
Anscombe, Elizabeth, 164 approximate truth, 7
argument from a bad lot, 35 argument pattern, 12–17
argument theories of explanation, 158 arguments
explanations as, 158–160 Aristotle, 1, 33
Armstrong, David, 19
asymmetry problem, see causal asym- metry
Barnes, Eric, 21, 33, 38, 40 basic phenomenon, 17, 18 Bayesianism, 50–53
beauty, explanatory, see loveliness Bechtel, William, 170, 171
being-in-need-of-explanation, 26–29 Berm´udez, Jos´e Luis, 165
Bird, Alexander, 54
Bouwel, Jeroen van, 171, 172 Bradie, Michael, 164
Braithwaite, R. B., 158 Camus, Albert, 187
Carroll, John W., 82, 85, 86, 89–91
Cartwright, Nancy, 116, 117, 120 causal asymmetry, 11, 13, 19–22, 25,
71, 159, 160 causal influence, 135
causal mechanism, see mechanism causal overdetermination, 169 causal relevance, 135
causal singularism, 164 causal structures, basic, 44 causal testing, 46–47
causal theory, 11, 19, 25, 57–66, 71, 76, 78, 92, 93, 97, 102, 103, 144
causality
and explanation, 53, 59–62, 171, 172
and unification, 19–22, 25–26 as determination, 102
conceptual vs. empirical theories of, 59
Humean theories of, 63
reductive vs. non-reductive theo- ries of, 62–66
causation
as a quaternary relation, 93 Woodward’s analysis of, 59–60 change debate, 114–121
characterising property, 68, 69 circularity
and unification, 17
of the interventionist theory, 62–
66
classification, 178–181 214
INDEX 215 closure, deductive, 15, 151–155
coherence, 17, 26, 181
Collingwood, R. G., 182, 183
combination of explanations, 166–169 of different types, 172–173
conceptual analysis vs. theoretical def- inition, 59
condition U, 26, 27, 29 conjunctive theory, 85–91
connectedness, see unification, local vs. global
connection
horizontal vs. vertical, 180–181 conserved quantity theory, 59 constitutive explanation, 164
contrast class, 81, 83–85, 89–91, 152–
155, 166, 173
contrast of parallels, 83–85, 89–91 informal definition, 83
contrastive explanation, 46, 81–98 contrastive theory, 85–91
contrasts
compatible vs. incompatible, 83–
85, 89–91
contributing cause, 59–60, 116 contributing ground
definition of, 77 correlation
underdetermines causation, 63 counteracting cause, 116, 120, 121 counterfactuals, 21, 74–76, 78, 93, 149,
162–164, 167, 168, 171, 184–
187
between cause and function, 172 Craver, Carl, 164
critical event, 149–151 Cummins, Robert, 164
Darwinian explanation, 132–134 Davidson, Donald, 158
Day, Timothy, 33, 36, 50, 55
deduction
as an ingredient of the determi- nation theory, 103
deductive closure, see closure, deduc- tive
Derrida, Jacques, 187
determination, 100, 106–110
determination theory, 78, 93, 99–129, 157–188
definition of, 104–105 determined set
definition of, 104 determining set
definition of, 104
difference maker, 134, 148–155 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 173, 182 direct cause, 59–60
direct ground definition of, 76
disunifying explanations, 26–30 DN model, 22, 92–95, 97, 102, 159,
160, 162 Dorling, Jon, 166
double-contrast theory, 91–94
as an ingredient of the determi- nation theory, 103
Dowe, Phil, 59 Dretske, Fred, 19
Droysen, Johann Gustav, 182 egalitarianism, 114–121 Eigner, Kai, 2
elitism, 114–121
end-and-regression pattern, 21 Erkl¨aren and Verstehen, 182–184 Euripides, 41
examples
Adam eating an apple, 81, 83, 84, 91, 92, 96, 106–109, 161 baldness, 22–25
bigger than the moon, 16
216 INDEX biological classification, 178–180
broken vase, 100 bursting dam, 161 childbed fever, 45–49 defoliant, 116, 120–121
dormitive virtue, 37, 38, 43, 45, 185
electron mass, 21 essay competition, 85
existence of something rather than nothing, 36
expanding gas, 115
eye colour, 114–115, 117–119 fall of the Roman Empire, 42 falling past the window, 27–29 firebrigade, see examples, falling
past the window
flagpole and shadow, 19–22, 159 Gal´apagos finches, 132–134 Galileo vs. Newton, 44 gravity, 93
heat and molecule velocity, 165 heat flow, 119–120
hexed salt, 95–97, 106, 159 John not getting pregnant, 95–96 Jumpers and Candide, 86–89 Kepler and Newton, 58, 73–76,
161
Kummer’s convergence test, 69 Lewis going to Monash, 127 lost poisoned flask, 169
Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club, see examples, baldness
Mary not getting pregnant, 131 Mr. Jones going to bed, 101 non-human animals representing
abstractions, 165
opium, see examples, dormitive virtue
paresis, 82–83, 89, 90, 112–114, 117, 127, 186
photon and screen, 108, 127–128 Planck’s quantum theory, 30 plane crash, 45
poisonous mushrooms, 38, 39, 49–
52
presidential election, 152–153 radioactive decay, 35, 122–124 red and black cars, 144
red roses, 15, 41, 166–169 retrograde motion, 176 reverse gravity, 41, 43 rise of populist parties, 42
round and square wheels, 171–172 secret CIA weapon, 51
seven stars, 185
shattered window, 135–136 smoking and cancer, 115
sum of 1 + 2 + . . . + n, 67–73, 186
unicyclist, 149–151, 153 unilluminated tower, 20 volcano, 160
wheel of fortune, 136–139, 141–
147, 153–154
William the Silent, 161–165, 184–
186
wine poisoned by CIA, 39, 49 examples, scientific vs. everyday, 8–9,
102
exemplar, Kuhnian, 178 explanation, 1–188
constitutive, see constitutive ex- planation
definition of (final), 104 definition of (preliminary), 78 general vs. domain-restricted the-
ories of, 57
intentional, see intentional expla- nation
mathematical, see mathematical explanation
INDEX 217 non-causal, see non-causal expla-
nation of actions, 58
teleological, see teleological expla- nation
through redescription, see rede- scription, explanation through transcendental, see transcenden-
tal explanation
without laws, 24, 160–166 Woodward’s definition of, 61–62 explanatory asymmetry, see causal a-
symmetry
explanatory beauty, see loveliness explanatory kernel, 135
explanatory pluralism, see pluralism, explanatory
explanatory power, 114, 115, 123, 147–
149, 155, 162, 165, 166, 170, 175, 184–187
and probability, see change de- bate; size debate
definition, 184 explanatory request
definition of, 104 explanatory virtues, 40–45 filling instruction, 12–17 finitude, 187
foil, 81
Foucault, Michel, 178
Fraassen, Bas van, 33, 35, 81, 122, 152, 159, 166
Friedman, Michael, 11
functional explanation, 101, 171, 172 functional property, 144
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 182 Garfinkel, Alan, 166
general pattern vs. particular fact, 133, 134
generality theories, 161 generating set, 12–17
Gijsbers, Victor, 57, 136, 147 Glymour, Clark, 62–65 Gopnik, Alison, 174 Grant, P. R., 132
ground, see also direct ground; con- tributing ground
as generalisation of cause, 71–78 guiding thesis, 38–40
Hafner, Johannes, 66, 67, 69 Hankinson, R. J., 1
Hannson, Bengt, 166 Harman, Gilbert, 33, 37
Hempel, Carl, 2, 19, 22, 46, 112, 114, 115, 119, 124, 125, 158, 160, 173
hermeneutics, 173 Hiddleston, Eric, 62
Hitchcock, Christopher, 46, 50, 53, 81, 125–129
how possible explanations, 27, 28 Humphreys, Paul, 5, 116, 117, 125 IBE, see Inference to the Best Expla-
nation
ideal explanatory text, 126, 167 indeterminism, 108
fundamental, 122–129
indeterministic explanation, 111–156 induction, enumerative, 101
induction, mathematical, 68
inductive-statistical model, see IS mo- del
Inference to the Best Explanation, 1, 3, 33–55
Inference to the Only Explanation, 54 intentional explanation, 171, 172 intervention, 53, 160
as an ingredient of the determi- nation theory, 103–104
218 INDEX definition of, 77
in mathematics, 72–73 material constraints on, 78 on laws of nature, 73–76
Woodward’s definition of, 60–61 intervention variable, 60–61
definition of, 77
interventionism, 53, 57–79
interventionist theory, general, 76–78 intuition, 7–8, 175, 181
irrelevance, 147
and arguments, 158 and context, 149
in low-level explanations, 145–151 problem of, 95–97
IS model, 111, 112, 114 Jackson, Frank, 170
Jeffrey, Richard C., 114, 115, 117, 119, 124, 125
kairetic theory of explanation, 135–
136
Kant, Immanuel, 58
Kincaid, Harold, 33, 36, 50, 55 Kitcher, Philip, 2, 11–26, 30, 57, 66,
94
Kosso, Peter, 102, 181 Kronz, Fred, 140 Kuhn, Thomas, 178 Kuorikoski, Jaakko, 164 Kyburg, Henry E., 95 Ladyman, James, 9
Lambert, Karel, 2, 11, 12, 17–19, 25–
26, 29, 30, 57, 94 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 48 laws of nature, 101
and unification, 22–26 explanations of, 58, 73–76
not needed for explanation, see explanation, without laws
support contrastive judgments, 93–
94
Leonelli, Sabina, 2, 179 Lewis, David, 125, 126 likelihood, 50–52 likeliness, 36–53 linguistic turn, 181
Lipton, Peter, 33–55, 81, 82, 86–91, 176, 178, 183
LLD, 146–149, 153–155 loveliness, 36–53
low-level deterministic explanation, 139–
140, 145–149 Lycan, William G., 33, 40
macroperiodicity, 136–138, 140–145 Mancosu, Paolo, 66, 67, 69
Markus, Keith A., 62
mathematical construction, 72
mathematical explanation, 58, 66–73, 76, 78, 186, 187
mathematical induction, 71 McCann, Michael, 164
McCauley, Robert N., 170, 171 meaning
reductive vs. non-reductive, 64–
66
mechanism, 44, 45
Mellor, D. H., 115, 119, 122 mentalistic concepts
Sellars’s theory of, 64 Menzies, Peter, 62
metaphysical impossibility, 8 micro-explanation, 100
microconstancy, 136–138, 140, 141 Millikan, Ruth Garrett, 59
minimal explanation, 62 modest explanationism, 53–54 Moore, Michael, 164
myth of Jones, 64 Nagel, Ernest, 158
INDEX 219 Nanay, Bence, 164
ND model, 111–114, 117, 119–122 Neander, Karen, 59
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 41
non-causal explanation, 58–59, see also mathematical explanation non-linguistic explanation, 176 Northcott, Robert, 93
Nussbaum, Martha, 175
objectivity of explanation, 65, 186–
187
omniscience, 72, 186
Oppenheim, Paul, 2, 19, 22
origin-and-development pattern, 20, 21 Peano arithmetic, 71
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 33 Pettit, Philip, 170
philosophical analysis, 4–8 pluralism, explanatory, 169–173 Popper, Karl, 158
pre-emption, 48 precision, 44, 45, 148 presupposition, 87
Principle of Deductive Closure, 154 Principle of Sufficient Reason, 35, 36,
125
prior probabilities, 52
probabilistic explanation, 90 probability, 114–156, 159
and explanatory power, see change debate; size debate
and the determination theory, 108–
109
problem of causal asymmetry, see cau- sal asymmetry
problem of irrelevance, see irrelevance, problem of
problem of spurious unification, see spurious unification, problem of
Pruss, Alexander R., 36
Psillos, Stathis, 22, 33, 35, 36, 50 quantum indeterminism, see indeter-
minism, fundamental Quine, W. V. O., 158
Railton, Peter, 125, 126, 167 realism, see scientific realism
redescription, explanation through, 164–
166
reduction, 165, 169–173
reductive explanation, 100–101 Regt, Henk W. de, 2, 62–65, 177, 183 relevance
explanatory, 102 of evidence, 52
theory of Schurz & Lambert, 17 relevant information, 89
rigidity, theoretical, 101 Rogers, Ben, 116
Rorty, Richard, 59 Ross, Don, 9 Ryle, Gilbert, 161
Salmon, Wesley, 2, 4, 11, 19, 33, 36, 38, 39, 42, 57, 93, 95, 112, 114–117, 119, 124, 125, 158–
160, 164, 174 Sandborg, David, 66 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 65
Schurz, Gerhard, 2, 11, 12, 17–19, 25–
30, 57, 94 scientific method, 53 scientific realism, 35, 55 scope, 43, 44
Scriven, Michael, 112 self-explanation, 13–18, 165 Sellars, Wilfrid, 64, 65
Semmelweis, Ignaz, 34, 38, 45–49, 53–
55
Shakespeare, William, 185
220 INDEX SI model, 119
simplicity, 42
singular explanations, 160–164 size debate, 114–121
Sklar, Lawrence, 140 Smith, Quentin, 114
spurious unification, problem of, 13–
17
statistical deterministic explanation, 139–145
statistical relevance model, 111 Steiner, Mark, 66–70
Strevens, Michael, 2, 11, 57, 59, 114–
117, 119, 120, 131–156, 162 subjective probability, 38
subjectivity of explanation, see ob- jectivity of explanation symmetry principles, 101 Tannenwald, Nina, 164 teleological explanation, 7 Temple, Dennis, 85
theory of causal explanation, see cau- sal theory
third dogma of empiricism, 158 totally unspecific deductive explana-
tion, see TUDE
transcendental explanation, 58 Trout, J. D., 174, 181, 183 truth condition, 6, 105 TUDE, 121–122, 184, 185 type-token distinction, 72 underdetermination, 24
understanding, 2, 9, 17, 18, 36, 43, 59, 62, 66, 83, 96, 100, 102, 112, 115, 117, 118, 120–122, 124, 131, 133, 134, 148, 152, 153, 173–187
analogy with perception, 175 as re-enactment, 183
as Verstehen, 182–184 feeling of, 174–176 vs. explanation, 176–181
unification, 40, 42–44, see also unifi- cationism
as a measure of believability, 30 as coherence minus circularity, 17 Kitcher’s theory, 12–13
local vs. global, 29–30
Schurz & Lambert’s theory, 17–
18
unificationism, 11–31, 57, 62, 92, 94, 102, 103, 162, 166
Verstehen, 182–184
virtues, explanatory, see explanatory virtues
Weber, Erik, 171, 172 Weber, Max, 182 Weinberg, Steven, 101 Weslake, Brad, 62, 65 Whewell, William, 33 Wilson, Jessica, 164
Windelband, Wilhelm, 182 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 186
Woodward, James, 2, 11, 53, 57–79, 81, 93, 162, 168, 169
