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Discussion: Correlations and Giere's Theory of Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Gene Miller
Gene Miller*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Abstract

After briefly presenting Ronald Giere's (1979, 1980) recent counterfactual characterization of population-level causation, I present two counterexamples to the characterization. The difficulty discussed stems from nonaccidental correlations that can obtain between causally effective and causally neutral factors.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 612 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

The author wishes to thank Elliott Sober and Ellery Eells for their helpful comments, criticisms, and encouragement. The anonymous referee's comments motivated several useful changes in the original manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Collier, J. (1983), “Frequency-Dependent Causation: A Defense of Giere”, Philosophy of Science 50: 618–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. (1979), Understanding Scientific Reasoning. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Giere, R. (1980), “Causal Systems and Statistical Hypotheses”, in Applications of Inductive Logic, Cohen, L. Jonathan (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Giere, R. (1984), “Causal Models with Frequency Dependence”, The Journal of Philosophy 81: 384–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1982), “Frequency-Dependent Causation”, The Journal of Philosophy 79: 247–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1985), “What Would Happen If Everyone Did It? A Reply to Collier and Giere on Frequency-Dependent Causation”, Philosophy of Sciency 52: 141–50.Google Scholar