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Cartwright, Causality, and Coincidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Deborah G. Mayo
Deborah G. Mayo*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Instituteand, State University
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Extract

In How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983)2 Cartwright argues for being a realist about theoretical entities but non-realist about theoretical laws. Her reason for this distinction is that only the former involves causal explanation, and accepting causal explanations commits us to the existence of the causal entity invoked. “What is special about explanation by theoretical entity is that it is causal explanation, and existence is an internal characteristic of causal claims. There is nothing similar for theoretical laws.” (p. 93). For, according to Cartwright, the acceptability of a theoretical explanation is a matter of its ability to satisfy such criteria as prganizing and simplifying, and in her view, “success at organizing, predicting, and classifying is never an argument for truth.” (p. 91). In contrast, Cartwright claims, “When I infer from an effect to a cause, I am asking what made the effect occur, what brought it about.

Type
Part I. Physics
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 42 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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Footnotes

1

I am greatly indebted to Ronald Giere and Alan Musgrave for many helpful discussions and comments on early drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Larry Laudan for very valuable criticisms, and to Norman Gilinsky and Joseph Pitt for useful suggestions.

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