Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation

By Clark Glymour. 2004

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Citations in the corpus

Preliminary Evolutionary Explanations: A Basic Framework for Conceptual Change and Explanatory Coherence in Evolution (2009, background): “Despite the differences, it seems that there is agreement among philosophers that the concept of cause is central to the process of scientific explanation (Kitcher 1989; Salmon 1990; Godfrey-Smith 2003; Woodward 2003; Strevens 2004; Rosenberg 2005).”
Explanation-seeking curiosity in childhood (2020, background): “Causal intervention and question asking, by contrast, are likely to be especially useful for the pursuit of explanations because they allow the learner to infer causal relations [79,80] and inquire about unobservable entities [81] (Figure 1).”
The problem of variable choice (2016, background): “…characterization of what is involved in causal representation/ explanation, I think of this along broadly interventionist lines in the sense of Woodward (2003): successful causal explanation involves the representation of true claims about what would happen to some variables under…”
A Functional Account of Causation; or, A Defense of the Legitimacy of Causal Thinking by Reference to the Only Standard That Matters—Usefulness (as Opposed to Metaphysics or Agreement with Intuitive Judgment) (2014, methodology): “For this reason, the conditions on interventions in Woodward (2003) (and also the very similar conditions in, e.g., Pearl 2000; Spirtes et al. 2000) do not require that one control for P1 and P2 in assessing whether M1 causes M2.”
General theories of explanation: buyer beware (2013, unknown): “More frequently, theories of explanation try to capture a broad kind of explanatory relevance, e.g. causal (Woodward 2003) or functional (Cummins 1975), while nevertheless countenancing other kinds of explanatory relevance.”