CFP: Causation and Explanation

Call for Papers:

The Catholic University of America School of Philosophy Graduate Conference

“Causation and Explanation”

Date of Conference: February 21-22, 2014

Location: Catholic University of America, 650 Michigan Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20064

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15, 2013

Submit Abstracts (max. 500 words) to [email protected].

Keynotes:

Peter Machamer, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

Jean DeGroot, School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America

The relationship between causation and explanation is of central importance to the philosophy of science, philosophy of nature, and metaphysics. For Aristotle, causation and explanation are of a piece: to explain something is generally nothing other than to identify its relevant cause or causes. Nonetheless, such eliding of causation and explanation gives rise to many problems. We can give explanations of uncaused events, e.g. coincidences. Is it also possible to have caused events that have no explanation? If cause and explanation are not coterminous terms, where do they diverge? What, ultimately, is a cause? And who is to judge whether or not an explanation has been given? Such problems have received considerable attention in contemporary philosophy, especially the philosophy of science.

We invite papers concerning the issue of causation, explanation, and their complicated history or current relationship. The following list of topics intends to be suggestive and by no means exhaustive.

• The hierarchical structure of Aristotle’s four causes.
• What sort of explanation is provided by a “subalternate,” or “mixed,” science?
• Uncaused events and inexplicable causes in the natural and social sciences.
• Can we “explain” human behavior, especially if we grant that there is free will?
• The elimination of final and formal causality in early modern philosophy.
• Do each of the individual sciences pursue different causes and different explanations?
• Does causation entail determinism?
• Is the “uncertainty principle” a limitation on causation or on explanation?
• If Newton’s “gravity” as cause is a complete mystery, what does it explain?
• Mechanisms, causation, and materialistic explanations.
• What does evolutionary biology explain?
• Are laws of nature causally efficacious? What do they cause?
• Should explanation be considered as primarily a pragmatic issue, as in Scriven and van Fraassen?
• Is probability and statistics theory concerned with the structure of our explanations and therefore “subjective,” or is it concerned with the propensities of causal powers and therefore “objective”?
• Do Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts” relate to shifting what counts as a paradigmatic explanation or what counts as a possible sort of cause?
• Do mathematical accounts of natural causes and effects really explain those phenomena?

Submission Deadline is December 15. Please submit Abstracts (max. 500 words) to [email protected]. Include your name, submission title, institutional affiliation, and contact information in the body of your submission e-mail. Final papers should be around 3000 words (20 minutes).