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Some Remarks on Causality and Invariance

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Causality, Meaningful Complexity and Embodied Cognition

Part of the book series: Theory and Decision Library A: ((TDLA,volume 46))

Abstract

The last few decades have seen a proliferation of theories on causality. Currently, one of the main trends is pluralism, with a few kinds of pluralism highlighting possible intersections and contact-points between different and more or less distant positions. This paper focuses on a notion that has been finding great fortune, being so-to-speak “transversal” to various contemporary approaches to causality and causal explanation, namely invariance. The notion will be used as a lens to view a portion of the latest debate on causation developed with respect to various fields.

Part 1 is by Raffaella Campaner, Part 2 is by Maria Carla Galavotti.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, e.g., Cartwright (2001, 2007).

  2. 2.

    See Woodward and Hitchcock (2003).

  3. 3.

    See in the same volume also Sober (2006) and Woodward (2006).

  4. 4.

    See also Galavotti (forthcoming), Sections 3.b and 5.

  5. 5.

    See, e.g., Woodward (2000, 2001).

  6. 6.

    Contingencies “are as important to good sciences as are the regularities that can be abstracted from distributions of their contextualised applications” (ibidem, p 330).

  7. 7.

    See Mitchell (2002) and Woodward (2002b).

  8. 8.

    Sloman and Lagnado do not refer directly to Woodward’s view. For hints on the application of his interventionist theory to psychological cases, see Woodward (2007). Appealing to experiments, Woodward maintains that the notion of causation as advanced by ‘interventionism’ “is involved in or connected with our ability to separate out means and ends in causal reasoning” and “even young children are able to reason causally about the consequences of combinations of interventions” (p 23).

  9. 9.

    See also Lagnado and Sloman (2004).

  10. 10.

    See also Sloman (2005).

  11. 11.

    Good’s theory of causality was first developed in Good (1961–1962). A more accessible version was published together with other articles on causation in Good (1983). See also Good (1988).

  12. 12.

    Good (1983), p 219.

  13. 13.

    See for instance Holland (2001) and the bibliography included.

  14. 14.

    See especially Granger (1980).

  15. 15.

    See Galavotti (1994, 2006) for a discussion of Suppes’ philosophy of science.

  16. 16.

    See, for instance, the special issue on ceteris paribus laws of Erkenntnis 57 (2002), n. 3.

  17. 17.

    See Campaner and Galavotti (2007). See also Galavotti (2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Raffaella Campaner & Maria Carla Galavotti

Authors
  1. Raffaella Campaner
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  2. Maria Carla Galavotti
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Correspondence to Raffaella Campaner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Roma - Tor Vergata, Via Columbia 1, Roma, 00133, Italy

    A. Carsetti

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Campaner, R., Galavotti, M.C. (2010). Some Remarks on Causality and Invariance. In: Carsetti, A. (eds) Causality, Meaningful Complexity and Embodied Cognition. Theory and Decision Library A:, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3529-5_12

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