Abstract
Larry Wright and others have advanced causal accounts of functional explanation, designed to alleviate fears about the legitimacy of such explanations. These analyses take functional explanations to describe second order causal relations. These second order relations are conceptually puzzling. I present an account of second order causation from within the framework of Eells' probabilistic theory of causation; the account makes use of the population-relativity of causation that is built into this theory.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Boorse, C.: 1976 ‘Wright on Functions’, Philosophical Review 85, 70–86.
Bigelow, J., J.Collins, and R.Pargetter: 1993, ‘The Big Bad Bug: What are the Humean's Chances?’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44, 443–462.
Cummins, R.: 1975, ‘Functional Analysis’, Journal of Philosophy 72, 741–764.
Eells, E.: 1991, Probabilistic Causality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Gaifman, H.: 1988, ‘A Theory of Higher Order Probabilities’, in B.Skyrms and W.Harper (eds.), Causation, Chance, and Credence, Vol. 1, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 191–219.
Godfrey-Smith, P.: 1994: ‘A Modern History Theory of Functions’, Noûs 28, 344–362.
Horwich, P.: 1987, Asymmetries in Time, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Humphreys, P.: 1989, The Chances of Explanation: Causal Explanations in the Social, Medical, and Physical Sciences, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Kincaid, H.: 1990, ‘Assessing Functional Explanations in the Social Sciences’, in A.Fine, M.Forbes, and L.Wessels (eds.), PSA 1990, Vol. 1, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing, pp. 341–354.
Lloyd, E.: 1988, The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory, Greenwood Press, New York.
Skyrms, B.: 1980, ‘Higher Order Degrees of Belief’, in D. H.Mellor (ed.), Prospects for Pragmatism: Essays in Honor of F. P. Ramsey, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., pp. 109–137.
Sober, E.: 1984, The Nature of Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Wright, L.: 1973, ‘Functions’, Philosophical Review 82, 139–168.
Wright, L.: 1976, Teleological Explanations, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hitchcock, C. A probabilistic theory of second order causation. Erkenntnis 44, 369–377 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167664
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167664