Causal Explanations: Are They Possible in Physics?

2019 ◽  
pp. 303-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Rivadulla
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanations

Rationalization and internalization

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Léon Beauvois
Keyword(s):  
Phase 1 ◽  
Facilitatory Effect ◽  
Phase 2 ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Reduction Effect ◽  
Dissonance Reduction

After having been told they were free to accept or refuse, pupils aged 6–7 and 10–11 (tested individually) were led to agree to taste a soup that looked disgusting (phase 1: initial counter-motivational obligation). Before tasting the soup, they had to state what they thought about it. A week later, they were asked whether they wanted to try out some new needles that had supposedly been invented to make vaccinations less painful. Agreement or refusal to try was noted, along with the size of the needle chosen in case of agreement (phase 2: act generalization). The main findings included (1) a strong dissonance reduction effect in phase 1, especially for the younger children (rationalization), (2) a generalization effect in phase 2 (foot-in-the-door effect), and (3) a facilitatory effect on generalization of internal causal explanations about the initial agreement. The results are discussed in relation to the distinction between rationalization and internalization.

Impact of the Locus of Causality and Internal Control on the Social Utility of Causal Explanations

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Perrin ◽  
Benoît Testé
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
External Control ◽  
Job Interview ◽  
Locus Of Causality ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types

Research into the norm of internality ( Beauvois & Dubois, 1988 ) has shown that the expression of internal causal explanations is socially valued in social judgment. However, the value attributed to different types of internal explanations (e.g., efforts vs. traits) is far from homogeneous. This study used the Weiner (1979 ) tridimensional model to clarify the factors explaining the social utility attached to internal versus external explanations. Three dimensions were manipulated: locus of causality, controllability, and stability. Participants (N = 180 students) read the explanations expressed by appliants during a job interview. They then described the applicants on the French version of the revised causal dimension scale and rated their future professional success. Results indicated that internal-controllable explanations were the most valued. In addition, perceived internal and external control of explanations were significant predictors of judgments.

Explanation Beyond Causation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Causal Information ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Wide Range

Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in philosophy of science, since the 1980s. However, philosophers have recently begun to break with this causal tradition by shifting their focus to kinds of explanation that do not turn on causal information. The increasing recognition of the importance of such non-causal explanations in the sciences and elsewhere raises pressing questions for philosophers of explanation. What is the nature of non-causal explanations—and which theory best captures it? How do non-causal explanations relate to causal ones? How are non-causal explanations in the sciences related to those in mathematics and metaphysics? This volume of new essays explores answers to these and other questions at the heart of contemporary philosophy of explanation. The essays address these questions from a variety of perspectives, including general accounts of non-causal and causal explanations, as well as a wide range of detailed case studies of non-causal explanations from the sciences, mathematics and metaphysics.

scholarly journals Cyclic quantum causal models

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Barrett ◽  
Robin Lorenz ◽  
Ognyan Oreshkov
Keyword(s):  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Bell Inequalities ◽  
Quantum Correlations ◽  
Quantum Systems ◽  
Causal Models ◽  
Causal Order ◽  
Quantum Processes ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Structures

AbstractCausal reasoning is essential to science, yet quantum theory challenges it. Quantum correlations violating Bell inequalities defy satisfactory causal explanations within the framework of classical causal models. What is more, a theory encompassing quantum systems and gravity is expected to allow causally nonseparable processes featuring operations in indefinite causal order, defying that events be causally ordered at all. The first challenge has been addressed through the recent development of intrinsically quantum causal models, allowing causal explanations of quantum processes – provided they admit a definite causal order, i.e. have an acyclic causal structure. This work addresses causally nonseparable processes and offers a causal perspective on them through extending quantum causal models to cyclic causal structures. Among other applications of the approach, it is shown that all unitarily extendible bipartite processes are causally separable and that for unitary processes, causal nonseparability and cyclicity of their causal structure are equivalent.

CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS IN MENTAL EVENT CONTEXTS

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Robert Wyllie
Keyword(s):  
Mental Event ◽  
Causal Explanations

Causal Judgments and Causal Explanations

1965 ◽  
Vol 62 (23) ◽  
pp. 695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Gorovitz
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Causal Judgments

Causal Explanations for Infertility

Infertility ◽  
1991 ◽  
pp. 109-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Tennen ◽  
Glenn Affleck ◽  
Richard Mendola
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanations

Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Hans Agné
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Explanatory Theory ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Global Democracy ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Democratic Practices ◽  
New Research

Democratic practices exist in politics within and beyond individual states. To date, however, it is only the democratic practices within states that have been analyzed in search for causal explanations of political outcomes, for example, peace and human rights protection. Having established the problematic nature of this situation, the purpose of this article is to explain why the situation emerges in political science and then to suggest a strategy to overcome it. The lack of attention to global democracy, or democracy beyond the state more generally, in explanatory theory is suggested to depend on prevalent but unnecessary conceptual delimitations of democracy which contradict standard assumptions about international politics. Those contradictions can be avoided, however, by defining democracy as rule by the largest group. It is argued that the concept of rule by the largest group, while protecting traditional virtues of democracy such as freedom and equality of individual persons in politics, allows scholars to describe a wider range of international practices than have been available for empirical research based on the dominating conceptions of democracy in normative and empirical literatures. Most fundamentally, it frees future research on the effects of democracy beyond the state from a key risk of self-contradiction.

scholarly journals The coevolution of networks and health

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID R. SCHAEFER ◽  
JIMI ADAMS
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Network Dynamics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Network Research ◽  
Literature Highlight ◽  
The Relationship

Historically, health has played an important role in network research, and vice versa (Valente, 2010). This intersection has contributed to how we understand human health as well as the development of network concepts, theory, and methods. Throughout, dynamics have featured prominently. Even when limited to static methods, the emphasis in each of these fields on providing causal explanations has led researchers to draw upon theories that are dynamic, often explicitly. Here, we elaborate a variety of ways to conceptualize the relationship between health and network dynamics, show how these possibilities are reflected in the existing literature, highlight how the articles within this special issue expand that understanding, and finally, identify paths for future research to push this intersection forward.

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