5 March 2021
Edward Hall
Department of Philosophy
Harvard University
Consider two theses about causation: (1) Causes are connected to their effects by way of mediating causal mechanisms or processes. (A biochemical pathway would be a canonical example.) (2) Scientific inquiry writ large aims (at least in part) at discerning and describing the causal structure of our world. Some of the best contemporary work on causation claims (often implicitly, but sometimes quite explicitly) that, in giving an account of what causation is, we must sacrifice (1) for the sake of producing an account that makes the best sense of (2). I will first try to show why this claim is quite attractive, and then obstreperously argue against it: I will aim to show that the best way to make sense of (2) is, in fact, by means of an account of causal structure that fully vindicates (1). We'll see that it is very easy to generate a characteristic kind of example that illustrates the need to think in terms of connecting mechanisms or processes; one thing I will be interested to hear about from the group is the extent to which examples with this characteristic structure show up in biological systems.