Common cause explanation

Philosophy of Science 51 (2):212-241 (1984)
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Abstract

Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that "matching" events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the principle, so construed, runs afoul of certain results in quantum mechanics. In this paper a new formulation of the principle is offered that emerges from its use in evolutionary theory. This characterization identifies fairly general conditions in which postulating common causes will be more explanatory than postulating separate causes

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Elliott Sober
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Citations of this work

Coincidences and the Grain of Explanation.Harjit Bhogal - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):677-694.
Coincidence and Common Cause.Tamar Lando - 2017 - Noûs 51 (1):132-151.
No place for causes? Causal skepticism in physics.Mathias Frisch - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (3):313-336.

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References found in this work

Simplicity.Elliott Sober - 1975 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
A Probabilistic Theory of Causality.P. Suppes - 1973 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (4):409-410.
Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits.Bertrand Russell - 1949 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 54 (2):198-199.
Equilibrium explanation.Elliott Sober - 1983 - Philosophical Studies 43 (2):201 - 210.

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