Abstract
This paper comments on Jan Faye’s metadisciplinary characterization of the notion of causation. I will argue that his understanding of a causal factor as a difference-maker can be specified by relating it to similarity considerations and analogical reasoning about causal dependencies. At the same time, however, his notion of a difference-maker does not capture what is understood as a cause in many biological and biophysical investigations of robustness of living systems (e.g. in systems biology). Finally, I will show that Faye ignores crucial differences between causal processes and causal mechanisms.
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Notes
- 1.
In non-explanatory contexts relevant, for example, for non-human decision making, condition (i) means that an animal has to plan and/or carry out an action that is able to account for a certain desirable difference in an event.
- 2.
Thus condition (ii) includes similarity considerations of dependency relations showing both invariance and stability. The latter case listed above deals with similarity of stable causal dependencies.
- 3.
For the sake of the argument, let us assume that Faye is right about his claim that many higher vertebrates have a rich notion of causation similar to that of human beings. Recently this claim has come under attack by authors arguing that chimpanzees and other higher vertebrates are incapable of detecting underlying causal structures of events and that they merely respond to superficial perceptual cues (see, e.g., Povinelli 2000; Penn and Povinelli 2007). However, whether or not this is the case is an empirical issue and not subject to this paper.
- 4.
Of course, all this three cases should be understood as cases that enable observation and/or bodily experience of difference-making in order to satisfy (DM).
- 5.
This issue will be discussed in detail in Sect. 4.
- 6.
For this similarity claim of agency theories of causation, see, e.g., von Wright (1971).
- 7.
This argument includes, that also the extended version of difference-making described above (i.e. principle DM) is not able to cover all cases of scientific investigations of causation.
- 8.
Gross’ claim primarily refers to constitutive explanation in systems biology by means of presenting a causal mechanism able to produce a system-level phenomenon which shows robustness. Some component parts of this mechanism display non-change-relating relationships or very weak dependency relations with the explanandum phenomenon. Below, I will understand this view as a general – causal and constitutive – explanatory strategy of citing causal events and causal capacities (i.e. properties) of entities as explanans variables that do not (or do very weakly) make a difference in a phenomenon under study.
- 9.
However, this does not mean that these causal factors are not able to make any difference at all. For example, changes in the expression profile in one of the 1,000 genes of the gene-regulatory network may lead to a change on the protein level (although not to a change in the dynamics of cell differentiation). But with regard to the level of the explanandum phenomenon these factors have to be considered as explanatory relevant non-difference-makers.
- 10.
- 11.
On the metaphysics of constitution and causality, see Ylikoski (2013).
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Acknowledgement
I thank Dan Brooks, Jessica Pahl, Helmut Pulte, Jani Raerinne and Marcel Weber for constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. Financial support from the Ruhr University Research School (RURS) is gratefully acknowledged.
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Baedke, J. (2014). Challenges to Characterizing the Notion of Causation Across Disciplinary Boundaries: Comment on Faye. In: Galavotti, M., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Hartmann, S., Uebel, T., Weber, M. (eds) New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04382-1_13
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