Causal Reasoning
James Woodward · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014
This chapter explores some of the interactions between normative and theoretical work on causation and causal reasoning (both in philosophy and in disciplines such as statistics and machine learning), and descriptive work from experimental psychology on causal cognition. It argues that research in each of these areas can fruitfully inform the other. It describes some ideas about causal reasoning that have emerged from this research, focusing on “interventionist” ideas; it also attempts to extract some general morals about the kinds of interactions between the empirical and the traditionally philosophical that have been fruitful. Comparisons with research strategies in experimental philosophy are also explored.