180373 VO Causation and the Sciences (2010W)

This course follows the evolution of philosophical theories of causation in response to scientific developments. We will begin with Hume's sceptical examination of inductive inference, and discuss how this develops into a challenge to make sense of our causal reasoning. We will cover standard philosophical responses to this challenge, including regularity and counterfactual theories of causation. We will look at the place of causation in scientific explanation, which has recently prompted several philosophers to develop "contrastive" theories of causation. We will then consider how some particular sciences think about causation, and see how this has influenced some philosophical theories of causation, such as probabilistic and agency theories. We will look at aspects of physics, genetics, medicine and epidemiology, and identify some of the special problems that these sciences encounter in understanding causation.