Causation, mediation and explanation

Causation, mediation and explanation

doi: 10.1093/ije/dyw281 Advance Access Publication Date: 18 November 2016 Causation, mediation and explanation Neil Pearce and Jan P Vandenbroucke* Department of Medical Statistics and Centre for Global NCDs, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK and Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand and Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden...

Causation and Explanation

Causation , Explanation and Nonmonotonic Temporal Reasoning

We introduce a new approach to reasoning about action and change using nonmonotonic logic. The approach is arrived at by applying Pearl's theory of causal networks to logical formalizations of temporal reasoning domains. It handles complicated reasoning domains involving concurrent actions, actions with nondeterministic eects, preconditions over several points in time, ramication/qualication co...

The Idealization of Causation in Mechanistic Explanation∗

Causal relations among components and activities are intentionally misrepresented in mechanistic explanations found routinely across the life sciences. Since several mechanists explicitly advocate accurately representing factors that make a difference to the outcome, these idealizations conflict with the stated rationale for mechanistic explanation. We argue that these idealizations signal an o...

Hierarchy, causation and explanation: ubiquity, locality and pluralism.

The ubiquity of top-down causal explanations within and across the sciences is prima facie evidence for the existence of top-down causation. Much debate has been focused on whether top-down causation is coherent or in conflict with reductionism. Less attention has been given to the question of whether these representations of hierarchical relations pick out a single, common hierarchy. A negativ...