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Inference to the best explanation in the catch-22: how much autonomy for Mill’s method of difference?

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Abstract

In his seminal Inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton adopted a causal view of explanation and a broadly Millian view of how causal knowledge is obtained. This made his account vulnerable to critics who charged that Inference to the Best Explanation is merely a dressed-up version of Mill’s methods, which in the critics’ view do the real inductive work. Lipton advanced two arguments to protect Inference to the Best Explanation against this line of criticism: the problem of multiple differences and the problem of inferred differences. Lipton claimed that these two problems show Mill’s method of difference to be largely unworkable unless it is embedded in an explanationist framework. Here I consider both arguments as well as the best Millian defense against them. Since the existing Millian defense is only partially successful, I will develop a new and improved account. As an integral part of the argument, I show that my solutions to the problems of multiple and inferred differences offer new insight into Lipton’s main case study: Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of childbed fever. I conclude that the method of difference can overcome Lipton’s challenges outside an explanationist framework.

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Notes

  1. Lipton (1991, 2004). For Lipton’s account of causal explanation, see chapter 3 in Lipton (2004) and especially pp. 41–54.

  2. For the IBE vs. Mill argument, see Rappaport (1996); for a Millian analysis of Lipton’s main case study of IBE, see Scholl (2013).

  3. As far as modeling our causal intuitions goes, I think a regularity theoretic account based on John Mackie’s notion of INUS-conditions (Mackie 1980) has much to recommend itself (for recent defenses, see Graßhoff and May 2001; Baumgartner 2008). While my arguments about multiple and inferred differences do not depend on the regularity theoretic account, they are influenced by suggestions in the textbook by Baumgartner and Graßhoff (2004), which defends such an account. Particularly relevant to my arguments concerning multiple and inferred differences are chapters 10 and 11, respectively. The textbook is regrettably not available in English.

  4. I here follow Baumgartner and Graßhoff (2004), p. 68. But see also Mill (1843), III.V. And see Hofmann and Baumgartner (2011) for a recent in-depth discussion of the logic underlying the method of difference.

  5. There is room for debate about whether such reasoning would be necessarily vicious. If the causal knowledge we need to presuppose for our causal inferences is different from the causal knowledge we wish to establish, then the circularity may be benign (see e.g. Woodward 2003, pp. 104–107).

  6. See among others Hempel (1966, pp. 3–18), Lipton (1991, pp. 79–98), Gillies (2005), Russo and Williamson (2007), Bird (2010) and Scholl (2013). Consider also that the most widely used English translation of Semmelweis’s Etiology of Childbed Fever was produced by the philosopher K. Codell Carter (Semmelweis 1983).

  7. This is not without exception. For instance, a cell biologist’s use of the same well-mixed culture medium for both the experiment and the control can certainly be understood as an attempt to control for potential unknown confounders by distributing them evenly. The same holds for randomization in clinical trials. However, the precise function of randomization has been the topic of interesting recent debates (reviewed in Howick 2011, chapter 5).

  8. This can be made precise using a binomial test. First, we determine the frequency f C with which alternative causes occur in the control experiment (or more precisely the upper bound of f C compatible with the control). Then we ask whether the frequency of the occurrence of the effect in the experiment (f E ) is compatible with the null hypothesis that only one or several alternative causes with overall frequency f C are active in the system.

  9. See also Scheines (2005), as well as Woodward’s characterization of interventions (Woodward 2003, chapter 3).

  10. Semmelweis (1861), p. 300: “[J]eder nämlich, der durch eine längere Reihe von Jahren dazu Gelegenheit gehabt hat, das periodische Steigen und Fallen der Kränklichkeit in Gebäranstalten zu beobachten, wird ohne Zweifel eingestehen müssen, dass uns zur Würdigung der gewonnen Resultate wesentlich darüber Aufschluss mangelt, ob nicht auch in früheren Jahren die Anstalt ebenso günstige Perioden gehabt hat, als in den letzten sieben Monaten, wozu eine genaue statistische Mittheilung über die monatlichen Krankheits- und Todesfälle erforderlich wäre.” K. Codell Carter offers a less faithful but more felicitous translation in Semmelweis (1983), p. 184.

  11. Semmelweis (1861), p. 301: “Diesen Punkt hat die Zeit widerlegt, es handelt such jetzt nicht mehr um sieben Monate, sondern um mehr als zwölf Jahre.” See also Semmelweis (1983), p. 184.

  12. I thank an anonymous referee for urging me to discuss this point at greater length.

  13. I take it that Lipton (2004), p. 127, shares my interpretation of Mill.

  14. An anonymous referee has raised an interesting worry about modularity: If A causes Y and B causes Z, then the conjunction of A&B may not simply cause the conjunction of Y &Z but rather some qualitatively different phenomenon. In this case, the method of residues would not yield good results. However, since Semmelweis’s inferences cannot be reconstructed as an instance of the method of residues in any case (as discussed below), the method’s problems remain an intriguing topic for another occasion.

  15. However, my inclination would be to confine the term to Mill’s notion and to regard what Rappaport describes as “diagnostic causal reasoning”.

  16. Herzfelder (1850), p. CXXXVIII: “Dieser Idee nun folgend, führte Herr Dr. Semmelweiss [sic] ein, dass jedweder der Schüler oder sonst Untersuchenden vor jeder Exploration einer Schwangeren, Kreissenden oder Wöchnerin seine Hände in einer Chlorkalklösung sorgfältig wasche, um so jedes möglicher Weise an den Fingern haftende, faulende organische Atom, selbst bis auf den Geruch desselben vollends zu tilgen...”. The emphasis is mine, as is the translation.

  17. Semmelweis (1861, p. 54): “Dass nach der gewöhnlichen Art des Waschens der Hände mit Seife die an der Hand klebenden Cadavertheile nicht sämmtlich entfernt werden, beweist der cadaveröse Geruch, welchen die Hand für längere oder kürzere Zeit behält.”

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Acknowledgments

I benefited from discussing an early version of this material at the “Evidence and Explanation” workshop organized by the Episteme Group at the University of Geneva in April 2012. I thank Adrian Wüthrich, Tim Räz, Michael Baumgartner, the members of the Lake Geneva Biology Interest Group (LG-BIG) and several anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

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  1. History and Philosophy of Science, Institute of Philosophy, University of Bern, Sidlerstr. 5, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Raphael Scholl

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Scholl, R. Inference to the best explanation in the catch-22: how much autonomy for Mill’s method of difference?. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 5, 89–110 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-014-0099-0

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