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Causality, mosaics, and the health sciences

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Notes

  1. Illari and Russo use the “mosaic” metaphor for their proposed causal pluralist mosaic (see below and their chapter 23).

  2. In brief, the Russo–Williamson thesis suggests that causal claims in the health sciences need to be supported by evidence of difference-making and evidence of mechanism. This framework, which has come to be called the Russo–Williamson thesis [11, 22], has recently been discussed and criticized by philosophers [23–26].

  3. Details of the potential outcomes approach are far beyond the scope of this essay; they can be found in recently published concise [8] and comprehensive [31] treatments of the topic.

  4. For an interesting alternative position, see [32].

  5. Craver was not the first to use the “mosaic” metaphor [33, p. ix; 34].

  6. If this is indeed what those who do exposomics research think they do, “exposomics” is a misnomer and should be replaced with “exposology.” If, instead, exposomics is what the term denotes, it is the idea to consider all lifetime exposures and their individual and joint health effects (see [36] for a concise discussion of exposomics in light of multiple other –omics approaches).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to James A. Marcum for more than just a few suggestions on how to improve this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, 02111, USA

    Olaf Dammann

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Olaf Dammann

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  1. Olaf Dammann
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Correspondence to Olaf Dammann.

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Dammann, O. Causality, mosaics, and the health sciences. Theor Med Bioeth 37, 161–168 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-016-9360-1

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