Causation in science and the methods of scientific discovery.
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford :
Oxford University Press,
2018.
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| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
Table of Contents:
- Cover; Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery; Copyright; Preface; Contents; List of Figures; PART I: Science and Philosophy; 1: Metascience and Better Science; 1.1 What Science Is and Should Be; 1.2 Why Philosophy?; 1.3 Philosophical Assumptions in Science; 1.4 The Critical Friend; 2: Do We Need Causation in Science?; 2.1 Causal Scepticism; 2.2 Interpreting Science; 2.3 How Could We Experiment without Causation?; 2.4 How Would There Be Any Data without Causation?; 2.5 Limits of Empiricism; 2.6 The Tasks of Science; 3: Evidence of Causation Is Not Causation
- 11.2 The Alleged Roles of Data11.3 No Explanation or Prediction without Theory; 11.4 Do Data Dictate Scientific Theories?; 11.5 Could There Be Raw Data?; 11.6 Data or Theory? Would That It Were so Simple; 12: Are More Data Better?; 12.1 If Only We Had More Data; 12.2 Humeanism: Treating Causal Inference as Inductive Inference; 12.3 Dispositionalism: Causation Is Singular and Intrinsic; 12.4 The Need for Causal Theories; 13: The Explanatory Power of Mechanisms; 13.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches; 13.2 Causal Evidence; 13.3 Placing Causation Correctly; 13.4 The Theory of Mechanisms
- 3.1 A Crucial Distinction3.2 Evidence Is Restricted by Methods; 3.3 Causation Is Not Restricted by Evidence; 3.4 Is Causal Evidence Based on Causation?; 3.5 Ontology First; PART II: Perfect Correlation; 4: What's in a Correlation?; 4.1 Regularity, Alive and Well; 4.2 Regularity as the Starting Point of Science; 4.3 What Correlation Might Mean; 4.4 What Should We Conclude from Correlation?; 4.5 Collecting Evidence; 5: Same Cause, Same Effect; 5.1 Perfect Regularities; 5.2 The Folk Notion of Causation; 5.3 Dealing with Irregularities; 5.3.1 Exceptions; 5.3.2 Outliers; 5.3.3 Noise or error
- 5.3.4 Non-responders5.3.5 Interferers; 5.4 Different Effect, Different Cause?; 6: Under Ideal Conditions; 6.1 Scientific Knowledge Is Universal and Abstract; 6.2 The Messy Reality; 6.3 Getting Laws from Irregularities; 6.3.1 Probabilistic laws; 6.3.2 Nomological machines; 6.3.3 Ideal conditions; 6.4 All Else Being Equal; 6.5 Some Problems; 7: One Effect, One Cause?; 7.1 Monocausality; 7.2 Multiple Causality; 7.3 The Causal Selection Problem; 7.4 Complexity Accepted; PART III: Interference and Prevention; 8: Have Your Cause and Beat It; 8.1 Inevitability?; 8.2 The Power of Intervention
- 8.3 Subtractive and Additive Interference8.4 Isolation and Expansion; 9: From Regularities to Tendencies; 9.1 Perfect and Imperfect Regularities; 9.2 Introducing Tendencies; 9.3 Science Deals with Tendencies; 9.4 Is a Tendency Nothing but a Statistical Incidence?; 9.5 Tending away from Perfect Regularities; 10: The Modality of Causation; 10.1 Thesis: Hume against Necessity; 10.2 Antithesis: Necessitarianism; 10.3 Synthesis: Tendencies; 10.4 Does It Matter for Science?; PART IV: Causal Mechanisms; 11: Is the Business of Science to Construct Theories?; 11.1 Against Strict Empiricism