Explanation beyond causation? New directions in the philosophy of scientific explanation

Philosophy, Ontology, and Scientific 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

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...

Scientific Explanation

The three cardinal aims of science are prediction, control, and explanation; but the greatest of these is explanation. Also the most inscrutable: prediction aims at truth, and control at happiness, and insofar as we have some independent grasp of these notions, we can evaluate science’s strategies of prediction and control from the outside. Explanation, by contrast, aims at scientific understan...