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https://hdl.handle.net/2440/140596
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Type: | Book chapter |
Title: | Causal Fictionalism |
Author: | Eagle, A. |
Citation: | Alternative Approaches to Causation: Beyond Difference-making and Mechanism, 2024 / Shan, Y. (ed./s), Ch.9, pp.201-240 |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Publisher Place: | Oxford |
Issue Date: | 2024 |
ISBN: | 0192863487 9780192863485 |
Editor: | Shan, Y. |
Statement of Responsibility: | Antony Eagle |
Abstract: | Causation appears to present us with an interpretative difficulty. While arguably a redundant relation given fundamental physics, it is nevertheless apparently pragmatically indispensable. This chapter revisits certain arguments made previously by the author for these claims with the benefit of hindsight, starting with the role of causal models in the human sciences, and attempting to explain why it is not possible to straightforwardly ground such models in fundamental physics. This suggests that further constraints, going beyond physics, are needed to legitimate such models. These supplementary constraints could be reified, but that would seem to conflict with the completeness of physics. A response is to emphasize the practical role of causal talk, and the author suggests that a fictionalist approach might be worth exploring. After clarifying fictionalism as a general approach, they carry out in some detail the project of clarifying what a fictionalist attitude to causation would involve. |
Keywords: | causal fictionalism; causal eliminativism; causal model; causal talk; causal perspectivalism |
Description: | Published: January 2024 |
Rights: | © Oxford University Press 2024 |
DOI: | 10.1093/oso/9780192863485.003.0009 |
Grant ID: | http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP200100190 |
Published version: | https://academic.oup.com/book/55761 |
Appears in Collections: | Research Outputs |
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hdl_140596_embargo_AM.pdf Restricted Access | Embargo ends January 2025 | 187.58 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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