Casual Language in Science and Generic Generalizations, Stability, and Scope

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Zoom registration: https://uci.zoom.us/j/91644840724 

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Casual Language in Science
Lauren N. Ross, Logic and Philosophy of Science, UCI

This talk discusses philosophy of science research on causation in the life sciences. While causation is viewed as central to scientific reasoning and explanation, it is often appreciated that scientists study a variety of types of causes, causal relationships, and causal systems. In efforts to understand this variety, many philosophical projects study causal language, concepts, and terms in science. Examples include attention to causal terms such as “mechanism,” “pathway,” “cascade,” and descriptions of causes that are “structural,” “strong,” “stable,” and “fast,” among others (Ross 2021, Ross and Bassett 2024). This talk introduces a research framework that examines causal language in science in order to capture “distinctions among causation” (Woodward 2023) that matter for scientific explanation, inference, and reasoning.

 

Generic Generalizations, Stability, and Scope
Katherine Ritchie, Philosophy, UCI

Humans seek to predict, explain, and control their environments. Generalizations—like those expressed by “children like candy” and “cigarettes cause cancer”—provide one resource to facilitate these tasks. We develop a proposal tying the acceptability judgments of generics to the psychological functions of generalizations. We argue that the notion of stability and a recognition of the varied scope of regularities provide resources for a unified account of an apparently diverse range of generics: causal and categorical, essentialist and structural. We then briefly discuss empirical work suggesting that this account is on the right track.

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