Séminaire de philosophie : The Cognitive Uses of Causal Order

Four lectures by Prof. Michael Strevens (New York University):
What is the significance of our representation of the world as objectively causally ordered? One way to answer this question is to give a metaphysical theory of causation—to say what it is for the world to be causally ordered, independently of us. My method in this seminar is different: it is to investigate the role of causal thinking in scientific inquiry, under two headings:
1. What benefit do we gain from representing the world as a causal place? (Lectures 1 & 2)
2. How is causation built into the very nature of scientific inquiry? (Lectures 3 & 4)
Bibliography:
• Strevens, M. “Why represent causal relations?”, in Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, Computation, A. Gopnik & L. Schulz, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.
• Strevens, M. “Physically contingent laws and counterfactual support”, Philosopher’s Imprint, 8(8), 2008.
• Bennett, J. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.
• Strevens, M. “Ceteris paribus: Causal Voodoo that Works”, manuscript available at http://www.strevens.org/research/lawmech/cpmech.shtml.

Ressources en ligne

• Why think causally? (le 4 mai 2010) — Michael Strevens
  (conférence non enregistrée, mais document d’accompagnement disponible)
  What advantage is there, in everyday cognition, to thinking of the world causally? Even if the world is causally ordered in some objective sense, why devote cognitive resources to representing this order rather than representing, say, only statistical regularities?
  
• Why care about counterfactual support? (le 11 mai 2010) — Michael Strevens
  Why do we care so much more about regularities that offer counterfactual support (“laws of nature”) than those that don’t (“mere coincidences”)? Surely the latter are just as practically useful as the former?
  
• The significance of ’ceteris paribus’ hedges in causal hypotheses (le 18 mai 2010) — Michael Strevens
  An investigation of the significance of the words “ceteris paribus” attached to a causal hypothesis suggests a theory of the meaning of causal generalizations on which causal facts unknown to the framer of a hypothesis in part determine the hypothesis’s meaning.
  
• Causal hypotheses and evidential relevance (le 25 mai 2010) — Michael Strevens
  The theory of the meaning of causal hypotheses developed in the previous lecture is investigated further; it points to an externalist conception of evidential relevance rather different from standard empiricist conceptions.
  

Organisateurs

Claude Debru (ENS) Claude Debru est philosophe, professeur de philosophie des sciences à l’École normale supérieure, membre du département de philosophie et responsable du collectif " Histoire, philosophie, sciences " de l’ENS. Il a été élu correspondant de l’Académie des sciences (section " Biologie humaine et sciences médicales ") et, depuis le 15 mars 2011, a été élu membre de l’Académie des sciences. Il est également membre de la Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.

Michael Strevens (New York University)