This essay is concerned with concentrations of entities, which play an important— albeit often overlooked—role in scientific explanation. First, I discuss an example from molecular biology to show that concentrations can play an irreducible causal role. Second, I provide a preliminary philosophical analysis of this causal role, suggesting some implications for extant theories of causation. I co...

Research is often conducted in agricultural education with the purpose of explaining and/or predicting phenomena. This research is frequently labeled associational, relational, correlational, a m facto or causal-comparative depending primarily upon which author one studied when learning about research. The purpose of explaining is most often addressed by what is known as the correlation questio...

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the probability of causation, that is, the probability that one event was the real cause of another, in a given scenario. Starting from structural-semantical deenitions of the probabilities of necessary or suucient causation (or both), we show how to bound these quantities from data obtained in experimental and observational studies, under general...

The multivariate lognormal model is a basic pricing model for derivatives with multiple underlying processes, for example, spread options. However, the market observation of implied correlation skew examplifies how inaccurate the constant correlation assumption in the multivariate lognormal model can be. In this paper, we study alternative modeling approaches that generate implied correlation s...

This paper is intended as a stimulus to wider discussion on the nature of cause–effect models, and their role in educational research.It is clearlynot intendedtobedefinitive. Nor is it based on new evidence. It considers in turn models based on no causation at all, models based on causation alongside other explanatory processes, models based solely on causation, and variations of the latter. Am...

Branching space-times (BST) theory, as developed elsewhere, permits a sound and rigorously definable notion of ‘originating cause’ or causa causans—a type of transition event—of an outcome event. Mackie has famously suggested that causes form a family of ‘inus’ conditions, where an inus condition is ‘an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition’. In this ess...

Unitary random matrix ensembles Z n,N (detM) α exp(−N TrV (M)) dM defined on positive definite matrices M , where α > −1 and V is real analytic, have a hard edge at 0. The equilibrium measure associated with V typically vanishes like a square root at soft edges of the spectrum. For the case that the equilibrium measure vanishes like a square root at 0, we determine the scaling limits of the eig...

II. THE TROUBLE WITH AI ............................................................... 358 A. What Is AI? ............................................................................... 359 B. The Problematic Characteristics of AI .................................... 362 1. Autonomy, Foreseeability, and Causation ............................ 363 2. Control ........................................

This paper asks why Argentina slipped into a deep crisis with its currency board (CB) arrangement though this regime had received so much academic support as a stabilisation device. It is argued that a CB does not make devaluation risks disappear but translates them into an explosive, strongly pro-cyclical mixture of exchange rate, financial system and default risk which might trap a country in...