Where is the theory in our "theories" of causality?

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 103, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 55-66

  Cartwright, Nancy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 49249122298     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2006103227     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. For more on these see: Patrick Suppes, A Probabilistic Theory of Causality (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970);
2. Wolfgang Spohn, "Bayesian Nets Are All There Is to Causality"in Dominico Costantini, Maria Carla Galavotti, and Suppes, eds., Stochastic Causality (Stanford: CSLI, 2001), pp. 157-72;
3. Judea Pearl, Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference (New York:Cambridge, 2000);
4. Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines, Causation, Prediction, and Search (New York: Springer, 1993);
5. James Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation (New York: Oxford, 2003);
6. Stephen LeRoy, "Causality in Economics, " Causality: Metaphysicsand Methods Technical Report, CTR 20/04 (London: CPNSS, London School of Economics, 2004);
7. Kevin Hoover, Causality in Macroeconomics (New York: Cambridge, 2001);
8. Herbert Simon, "Causal Ordering and Identifiability" (1953), in Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957), pp. 10-35;
9. James Hamilton, "Measuring the Liquidity Effect, " American Economic Review, LXXI (1997): 80-97;
10. Nancy Cartwright, Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement (New York:Oxford, 1989);
11. Wesley Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton: University Press, 1984);
12. Philip Dowe, Physical Causation (New York: Cambridge, 2000);
13. David Lewis, "Causation, " this JOURNAL, LXX, 17 (October 11, 1973): 556-67;
14. David Hendry, "Causality and Exogeneity in Non-stationary Economic Time Series, " Causality: Metaphysics and Methods Technical Report, CTR18/04 (London: CPNSS, London School of Economics, 2001);
15. Huw Price, "Agency and Probabilistic Causality, " British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XLII (1991): 157-76;
16. Peter Menzies and Price, "Causation as a Secondary Quality, "British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XLIV (1993): 187-203;
17. Clive Granger, "Testing for Causality: A Personal Viewpoint, "Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, II (1980): 329-52;
18. Paul Holland and Donald Rubin, "Causal Inference in Retrospective Studies, " Evaluation Review, XII (1988): 203-31.
19. See the theorem in section II.6 in Cartwright, Hunting Causes and Using Them (New York: Cambridge, forthcoming),
20. and for this interpretation of the theorem, see Cartwright, "In Praise of the Representation Theorems, " presented at the International Lauener Symposium on Analytic Philosophy, in Honour of Patrick Suppes (Berne, Switzerland, forthcoming).
21. The scare quotes are around "complete" because it is adifficult notion to define. In my opinion it can only be defined relative to aparticular choice of causal structure. That is why it has been so difficult toget an exact formulation for the general case. (See, for instance, all thedifficulties laid out in Cartwright, Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement).
22. Galavotti, "Plurality in Causality, " presented at the Seventh Meeting of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, Konstanz, Germany (May 2005).
23. Suarez, "Theories, Models and Representations, " in Lorenzo Magnani, Nancy Nersessian, and Paul Thagard, eds., Model Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (New York: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 75-83.
24. Swoyer, "Structural Representation and Surrogative Reasoning, "Synthese, LXXXVII (1991): 449-508.
25. Cartwright, "Causal Laws and Effective Strategies, " Noûs, XIII (1979): 419-37.
26. See Robert Engle, Hendry, and Jean-François Richard, "Exogeneity, " Econometrica, LI (1983): 277-304,
27. and Hendry, "Causality and Exogeneity in Non-stationary Economic Time Series, " plus the discussions of Hendry in section III.6
28. Friedman, "The Methodology of Positive Economics, " in Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University Press, 1953), pp. 3-43.
29. Mitchell, Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism (New York:Cambridge, 2003).
30. Cf. the famous Lucas critique of macroeconomics, which depends on theassumption that manipulating policy variables produces changes in the causalprinciples governing the system. See Robert Lucas, "Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique" (1976), in Studies in Business Cycle Theory(Cambridge: MIT, 1983), pp. 104-30.
31. Russell, "On the Notion of Cause, " Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XIII (1913): 1-26.