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Reichenbach, Causation, and Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Richard Otte
Richard Otte*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Extract

Theories of scientific explanation have taken different forms, but many philosophers are adopting models of explanation in which causation plays a central role. The intuition behind this idea is that we explain the occurrence of an event by displaying its causal history, or by listing its causes. As natural as this may seem, problems arise when we attempt to use this model of explanation with a system that is indeterministic. If we want to give a causal explanation of an event that is not causally determined, then we need a theory of causation which allows for causation in indeterministic systems.

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References

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