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An empiricist defence of singular causes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Nancy Cartwright
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Extract

Empiricism has traditionally been concerned with two questions: (a) What is the source of our concepts and ideas? and (b) How should claims to empirical knowledge be judged? The empiricist answer to the first question is ‘From observation or experience.’ The concern in the second question is not to ground science in pure observation or in direct experience, but rather to ensure that claims to scientific knowledge are judged against the natural phenomena themselves. Questions about nature must be settled by nature — not by faith, nor metaphysics, nor mathematics, and not by convention or convenience either. From Francis Bacon to Karl Popper empiricists have wanted to police the methods of scientific enquiry.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 46 , March 2000 , pp. 47 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2000

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References

1 See especially , Anscombe's, ‘Causality and Determination: An Inaugural Lecture’ (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

2 Cartwright, N., How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford University 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This formulation is from , Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics CC* is a new formulationGoogle Scholar.

4 Eells, Ellery and Sober, Elliott, ‘Probabilistic Causality and the Question of Transitivity’, Philosophy of Science, 50 (1983), p. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For a discussion of this problem, see Cartwright, N., ‘What's wrong with controlled experiments?’, manuscript, (Stanford University, 1985)Google Scholar.

6 In fact, I do not think CC* works as well as I say here, for it cannot handle cases where the same factor can both cause and prevent a given result along different paths. For a discussion of this point, see Cartwright, N., ‘Reply to Eells and Dupré’, manuscript, (Stanford University, 1985)Google Scholar.

7 Of course not all experiments in physics are one-shot. See Galison's, PeterHow Experiments End (University of Chicago Press), especially chapter 10, for an extended discussion of some experiments in physics where statistics matter. But even in those experiments the point of statistics is not to establish a regular association and thereby a causal connection, but instead to provide evidence that makes it improbable that the data could have a different cause than the one hypothesised. One-shot experiments are often repeated as well. But again the repetition serves other purposes — for example to ensure that the machine is operating properly — and does not aim to establish a statistical regularity.Google ScholarCf. Franklin, Allan and Howson, Colin, ‘Why do Scientists Prefer to Vary their Experiments?’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 15 (1984), pp. 51–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Galison, Peter, ‘Theoretical Predispositions in Experimental Physics: Einstein and the Gyromagnetic Experiments, 1915–25’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 12(2) (1982), pp. 285–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 , Galison, ‘Theoretical Predispositions’, p. 00Google Scholar.

10 , Galison, ‘Theoretical Predispositions’, p. 00Google Scholar.

11 Glymour, Clark, Theory and Evidence (Princeton University press 1980)Google Scholar.