Waters, C. Kenneth (2007) Causes that Make a Difference. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Biologists studying complex causal systems typically identify some factors as causes and treat other factors as background conditions. For example, when geneticists explain biological phenomena, they often foreground genes and relegate the cellular milieu to the background. But factors in the milieu are as causally necessary as genes for the production of phenotypic traits, even traits at the molecular level such as amino acid sequences. Gene-centered biology has been criticized on the grounds that because there is parity among causes, the “privileging” of genes reflects a reductionist bias, not an ontological difference. The idea that there is an ontological parity among causes is related to a philosophical puzzle identified by John Stuart Mill: what, other than our interests or biases, could possibly justify identifying some causes as the actual or operative ones, and other causes as mere background? The aim of this paper is to solve this conceptual puzzle and to explain why there is not an ontological parity among genes and the other factors. It turns out that solving this puzzle helps answer a seemingly unrelated philosophical question: what kind of causal generality matters in biology?

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Waters, C. Kenneth
Keywords:	cause, laws of nature, scientific laws, causal, difference maker, specificity, sensitivity, gene, DNA, parity, Mill's problem, DST, developmental systems theory
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Causation General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Depositing User:	C. Kenneth Waters
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2008
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:16
Item ID:	3833
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology/Genetics Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Causation General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Date:	November 2007
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/3833

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