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Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019968443X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
Without cause and effect, there would be no science or technology, no moral responsibility, and no system of law. Causation is therefore the most fundamental connection in the universe and a core topic of philosophical thought. This Very Short Introduction introduces all of the main theories of causation and its key debates.
Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019968443X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Get Book
Book Description
Without cause and effect, there would be no science or technology, no moral responsibility, and no system of law. Causation is therefore the most fundamental connection in the universe and a core topic of philosophical thought. This Very Short Introduction introduces all of the main theories of causation and its key debates.
Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191640263
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Metaphysics is one of the traditional four main branches of philosophy, alongside ethics, logic and epistemology. It is also an area that continues to attract and hold a fascination for many people yet it is associated with being complex and abstract. For some it is associated with the mystical or religious. For others it is known through the metaphysical poets who talk of love and spirituality. This Very Short Introduction goes right to the heart of the matter, getting to the basic and most important questions of metaphysical thought in order to understand the theory: What are objects? Do colours and shapes have some form of existence? What is it for one thing to cause another rather than just being associated with it? What is possible? Does time pass? By using these questions to initiate thought about the basic issues around substance, properties, changes, causes, possibilities, time, personal identity, nothingness and emergentism, Stephen Mumford provides a clear and simple path through this analytical tradition at the core of philosophical thought. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: John Arnold
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 019285352X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152
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Book Description
Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.
Author: Peter Tse
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262019108
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
Author: Ernest Sosa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Helen Beebee
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191629464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 816
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Book Description
Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers.
Author: Stephen Mumford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019969561X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Here, the authors develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.
Author: Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher: Oxford Philosophical Concepts
ISBN: 0199782172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
"This volume is a contribution to the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series, the main goal of which is to provide historical accounts of the development of central philosophical concepts. Among these concepts would seem to be that of efficient causation (or, today, simply causation). Causation is now commonly supposed to involve a succession that instantiates some law-like regularity. This understanding of causality has a history that includes various interrelated conceptions of efficient causation that date from ancient Greek philosophy and that extend to contemporary discussions of causation in metaphysics and philosophy of science. The consideration here of this history is divided into three sections comprising eleven chapters total. The first section concerns concepts of efficient causation in Aristotle, the Stoics, late antiquity and earlier medieval philosophy, and later medieval philosophy dating from Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) to Ockham. The second concerns the different forms of this concept in the modern period, starting with late scholasticism (as represented in Suaréz) and Descartes, and including Spinoza and Leibniz, Malebranche and Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Finally, there is a third section divided into a consideration of conceptions of causation in contemporary philosophy that derive from the work of Hume and Aristotle, respectively. A distinctive feature of the volume is that it also includes four short "Reflections" that explore the significance of the concept of efficient causation for literature, the history of music, the history of science and contemporary art theory"--
Author: Rani Lill Anjum
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198733666
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
Causation is the main foundation upon which the possibility of science rests. Without causation, there would be no scientific understanding, explanation, prediction, nor application in new technologies. How we discover causal connections is no easy matter, however. Causation often lies hiddenfrom view and it is vital that we adopt the right methods for uncovering it. The choice of methods will inevitably reflect what one takes causation to be, making an accurate account of causation an even more pressing matter. This enquiry informs the correct norms for an empirical study of the world. In Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery, Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford propose nine new norms of scientific discovery. A number of existing methodological and philosophical orthodoxies are challenged as they argue that progress in science is being held back by an overlysimplistic philosophy of causation.
Author: Tyler J. VanderWeele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199325871
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 729
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Book Description
The book begins with a comprehensive introduction to mediation analysis, including chapters on concepts for mediation, regression-based methods, sensitivity analysis, time-to-event outcomes, methods for multiple mediators, methods for time-varying mediation and longitudinal data, and relations between mediation and other concepts involving intermediates such as surrogates, principal stratification, instrumental variables, and Mendelian randomization. The second part of the book concerns interaction or "moderation," including concepts for interaction, statistical interaction, confounding and interaction, mechanistic interaction, bias analysis for interaction, interaction in genetic studies, and power and sample-size calculation for interaction. The final part of the book provides comprehensive discussion about the relationships between mediation and interaction and unites these concepts within a single framework.
