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Causes and Deductive Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Raimo Tuomela
Raimo Tuomela*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Extract

According to the backing law account of causation a singular causal claim is to be analyzed (or “justified”) by reference to a suitable nomic theory which, together with the given singular statement describing a cause, deductively supports or explains the statement describing the effect. This backing law (or deductive-nomological) account of singular causation has recently become the target of several kinds of criticism. First, the possibility of giving a detailed and elaborate account of the required nomic or explanatory backing has been doubted. Secondly, it has been claimed that the deductive-nomological account is bound to lead to unacceptable ontological difficulties (see Kim [1969] and [1973a]). Thirdly, it has been argued that the backing law account fails to give a satisfactory analysis of certain conditional or counterfactual aspects of causation (see Lewis [1973b]). Fourthly, it has been claimed that this approach does not work at least within the social and historical sciences as there are no laws and theories of the required sort to be found there.

Type
Contributed Papers: Session III
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 324 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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Footnotes

*

My research for this paper was supported by the Academy of Finland.

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