How agency can solve interventionism's problem of circularity.
Woodward's interventionist theory of causation is beset by a problem of circularity: the analysis of causes is in terms of interventions, and the analysis of interventions is in terms of causes. This is not in itself an argument against the correctness of the analysis. But by requiring us to have ca...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 191; no. 8; pp. 1775 - 1792 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
May2014
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=95298491&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 95298491 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2014 vid: 191 iid: 8 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 95298491 10.1007/s11229-013-0366-1 ppf: 1775 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 183KB tig: atl: How agency can solve interventionism's problem of circularity. aug: au: Gijsbers, Victor Bruin, Leon affil: Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands Institut für Philosophie II, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150 44801 Bochum Germany su: Causation (Philosophy) Operant behavior Agency theory Attribution (Social psychology) Developmental psychology Theory of knowledge in children sug: subj: Causation (Philosophy) Operant behavior Agency theory Attribution (Social psychology) Developmental psychology Theory of knowledge in children keyword: Agency Causation Circularity Intervention Woodward ab: Woodward's interventionist theory of causation is beset by a problem of circularity: the analysis of causes is in terms of interventions, and the analysis of interventions is in terms of causes. This is not in itself an argument against the correctness of the analysis. But by requiring us to have causal knowledge prior to making any judgements about causation, Woodward's theory does make it mysterious how we can ever start acquiring causal knowledge. We present a solution to this problem by showing how the interventionist notion of causation can be rationally generated from a more primitive agency notion of causation. The agency notion is easily and non-circularly applicable, but fails when we attempt to capture causal relations between non-actions. We show that the interventionist notion of causation serves as an appropriate generalisation of the agency notion. Furthermore, the causal judgements based on the latter generally remain true when rephrased in terms of the former, which allows one to use the causal knowledge gained by applying the agency notion as a basis for applying Woodward's interventionist theory. We then present an overview of relevant empirical evidence from developmental psychology which shows that our proposed rational reconstruction lines up neatly with the actual development of causal reasoning in children. This gives additional plausibility to our proposal. The article thus provides a solution to one of the main problems of interventionism while keeping Woodward's analysis intact. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2014. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2014 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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