Causation as Folk Science
Norton, John D. (2003) Causation as Folk Science.
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Abstract
I deny that the world is fundamentally causal, deriving the skepticism on non-Humean grounds from our enduring failures to find a contingent, universal principle of causality that holds true of our science. I explain the prevalence and fertility of causal notions in science by arguing that a causal character for many sciences can be recovered, when they are restricted to appropriately hospitable domains. There they conform to a loose collection of causal notions that form a folk science of causation. This recovery of causation exploits the same generative power of reduction relations that allows us to recover gravity as a force from Einstein's general relativity and heat as a conserved fluid, the caloric, from modern thermal physics, when each theory is restricted to appropriate domains. Causes are real in science to the same degree as caloric and gravitational forces.
| Keywords: | cause causation causality determinism skepticism reduction |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences: Physics: Classical Physics General Issues: Causation General Issues: Reductionism/Holism General Issues: Determinism/Indeterminism |
| ID Code: | 1214 |
| Deposited By: | Norton, John |
| Deposited On: | 05 November 2003 |
| Additional Information: | Revised version published in Philosophers' Imprint http://www.philosophersimprint.org/003004/ |
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