Phil 8: Introduction To Philosophy of Science: Outline 23: Explanation Continued
Phil 8: Introduction To Philosophy of Science: Outline 23: Explanation Continued
It seems we could deal with the counterexamples to the D-N model by invoking
causation. The length of the shadow fails to explain the height of the flagpole because
the height of the flagpole is a cause of the length of the shadow.
But many empiricist philosophers are suspicious of causation on epistemic grounds:
we can only ever observe correlation.
Furthermore, metaphysical theories of causation (i.e. theories of what causation is)
are difficult to formulate. We’ll look at a simple theory of causation: a toy example
of a probabilistic theory of causation.