Causality Philosophical Theory meets Scientific Practice

by Illari, Phyllis; Russo, Federica

• ISBN13: 9780199662678
• ISBN10: 0199662673
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-12-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Phyllis Illari, Lecturer in Philosophy of Science, Science and Technology Studies Department, University College London,Federica Russo, Researcher in Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Ferrara, Italy

Phyllis Illari is Lecturer in Philosophy of Science in the Science and Technology Studies department at University College London. Before joining UCL in 2013, she finished a project on Information Quality with Luciano Floridi, and previously completed a project on Mechanisms and Causality with Jon Williamson. She is primarily research active in the philosophy of science, particularly the philosophy of causality and the philosophy of information. She is on the editorial board of the journal Philosophy and Technology, and on the committee of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. She is the author of numerous articles in the philosophy of science and edited volumes and special issues on causality in the sciences, including Causality in the Sciences (OUP 2011) with Federica Russo and Jon Williamson. Since 2008, she and Federica Russo have been members of the Steering Committee of the 'Causality in the Sciences' conference series.

Federica Russo is Researcher in Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Ferrara (Italy) and has visited the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (London School of Economics) from April 2004 to January 2005 and the Center for Philosophy of Science (Pittsburgh) from January to April 2009. She is interested in causality and probability in the social, biomedical and policy sciences, as well as in the philosophical, legal, and social, implications of technology. Federica is part of the editorial board of the journals Philosophy and Technology and Topoi. She is the author of Causality and causal modelling in the social sciences. Measuring variations (Springer, 2009), and of numerous articles (sole or co-authored) on causality in the social, biomedical, and policy sciences. She has edited several volumes in philosophy of science and technology, including Causality in the Sciences (OUP 2011) with Phyllis Illari and Jon Williamson.

Table of Contents

I PRELUDE TO CAUSALITY
1. Problems of causality in the sciences
2. A scientific toolbox for philosophy
3. A philosophical toolbox for science
II CAUSALITY: ACCOUNTS, CONCEPTS, AND METHODS
4. Necessary and sufficient components
5. Levels of causation
6. Causality and evidence
7. Causal methods: probing the data
8. Difference-making: probabilistic causality
9. Difference-making: counterfactuals
10. Difference-making: manipulation and invariance
11. Production accounts: processes
12. Production accounts: mechanisms
13. Production accounts: information
14. Capacities, powers, dispositions
15. Regularity
16. Variation
17. Causality and action
18. Causality and inference
III APPROACHES TO EXAMINING CAUSALITY
19. How we got to the Causality in the Sciences approach (CitS)
20. Examples and counterexamples
21. Truth or models?
22. Epistemology, metaphysics, method, semantics, use
IV CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A CAUSAL MOSAIC
23. Pluralism
24. The causal mosaic under construction: the example of exposomics