Search Results

The structural account of causation derives inter alia from Herbert Simon's work on causal order and was developed in Hoover's Causality in Macroeconomics and earlier articles. The structural account easily connects to, enriches, and illuminates graphical or Bayes net approaches to causal representation and is able to handle modular, nonmodular, linear, and nonlinear causal systems. The representation is used to illuminate the mutual relationship between causal structure and counterfactuals, particularly addressing the role of counterfactuals in Woodward's manipulationist account of causation and Cartwright's attack on ‘impostor counterfactuals’.

This chapter discusses the Davidsonian Problematic for the philosophy of psychology in terms of a contrast between two types of laws as discussed in the previous chapter—“strict and exceptionless” laws and laws protected by ceteris paribus clauses. It focuses on what these laws actually amount to and whether a substantive assumption about the nature of laws is lurking under the guise of an innocuous distinction. Nancy Cartwright has argued that the interpretation of laws received from the Positivists is fundamentally flawed. She has posited that individual laws give us partial understandings of the world which are not ultimately integrated into a single omnipotent view that embraces them all as a common denominator, but rather, remain a dappled collage. Further, Cartwright has stated that laws do not yield accurate descriptions or predictions of the actual behavior of objects.

This chapter develops the weighted feature-matching account of similarity. Most accounts of the model–world relation draw on logical properties such as isomorphism and homomorphism. In contrast, accounts offered by Nancy Cartwright and Ronald Giere emphasize that the model–world relation is one of similarity in certain respects and degrees, but they provide little further analysis. Weighted feature-matching, which is derived from Amos Tversky’s contrast account of similarity, is a way of formalizing the notion of similarity in respects and degrees. Roughly, it says that a model is similar to its target when they share many, and do not fail to share too many, features that are thought to be salient by the scientific community.

Introduces the figure of Contamination as an alternative to dialectics. Challenging various concepts of purity, Contaminations enables us to recognise the simultaneity of catastrophe and hope, of anxiety and grace. It develops the figure of contamination through a close reading of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom. Analyses how the satirical irony of Freedom operates at the level of incongruity: Walter Berglund’s moralistic stance fighting the evil of the Anthropocene (humanity’s overpopulation) clashes with the ruthlessness of his actions (colliding with the interests the coal industry). Walter separates society from nature, playing off the latter against the former. Walter thus creates a notion of nature as pure entity which he opposes to the pollutions caused by humanity. The human induced destruction of our planet dialectically ensures the triumph of the positive after ecological collapse. In dialectical manner ‘collapse’ morphs into ‘a window of opportunity’. Walter’ environmental activism actually supports the destruction of the environment: he campaigns for the mining of coal (in order preserve a bird species). In search for the positive we delude ourselves about what is truly harmful. Walter Berglund evaporates his own sense of freedom by dialectically turning the negative into the positive: by spinning ecological collapse into opportunities for preservation.