Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:51:39.756Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Levels of Reasons and Causal Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bradford Skow
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I defend the theory that the reasons why some event occurred are its causes. Many “counterexamples” to this theory turn on confusing two levels of reasons. We should distinguish the reasons why an event occurred (“first-level reasons”) from the reasons why those reasons are reasons (“second-level reasons”). An example that treats a second-level reason as a first-level reason will look like a counterexample if that second-level reason is not a cause. But second-level reasons need not be first-level reasons.

Type
Explanation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 905 - 915
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bromberger, Sylvain. 1992. On What We Know We Don’t Know. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, Ronald A. 1931. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl. 1965. “Aspects of Scientific Explanation.” In Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, 331–496. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher. 2001. “The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs.” Journal of Philosophy 98:273–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Marc. 2013. “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64:485–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pincock, Christopher. 2007. “A Role for Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.” Nous 41:253–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, Peter. 1981. “Probability, Explanation, and Information.” Synthese 48:233–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skow, Bradford. 2016. Reasons Why. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott. 1983. “Equilibrium Explanation.” Philosophical Studies 43:201–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2008. Depth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980. The Scientific Image. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yablo, Stephen. 1992. “Mental Causation.” Philosophical Review 101:245–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar