Contrastive Causal Claims: A Case Study
Georgie Statham · The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science · 2017
Contrastive and deviant/default accounts of causation are becoming increasingly common. However, discussions of these accounts have neglected important questions, including how the context determines the contrasts (or defaults), and what shared knowledge is necessary for this to be possible. I address these questions, using organic chemistry as a case study. Focusing on one example—nucleophilic substitution—I show that the kinds of causal claims that can be made about an organic reaction depend on how the reaction is modelled, and argue that paying attention to the various ways that reactions are modelled has important implications for our understanding of causation. 1 Introduction2 General Contrastive Causal Claims in Organic Chemistry3 Deviant Causal Claims in Organic Chemistry4 Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions5 The Causal Modelling Tradition5.1 The type/token distinction6 Competing Reactions6.1 Type- and token-causal claims, variables, and values of variables7 Disambiguation of ‘Reaction’8 Reaction Kinds9 Specific Reactions9.1 Specific reactions and token-causal claims9.2 Specific reactions and type-causal claims10 Implications10.1 Kinds of causal claim10.2 Contrastive and deviant causal claims10.3 Model relativity