碩士 / 國立清華大學 / 哲學研究所 / 98 / This thesis is devoted to the exploration of Wesley C. Salmon’s theory of causality. Beginning with his investigation of theories of scientific explanation, he denied that the covering-law model is an adequate model of scientific explanation. Instead, he claimed that an adequate explanation should be a causal explanation. Accordingly, he started to do research on causality. On the whole, there are two main characteristics in his theory of causality: physical and aleatory, and also causal realistic and indeterministic. Besides, he claimed that his theory was an empirical theory. There are two main enemies: first, the Humean problem of causation, and second, the statistical account when discussing probabilistic causality. What I will do in this essay is to introduce Salmon’s theory and evaluate his rebuttal of the two enemies above; at the end, I will argue that Salmon’s view still makes senses.
Based on process ontology, he distinguished between causal and pseudo processes by the method called “mark method.” A causal process has the ability to transmit marks while a pseudo process doesn’t; furthermore, the “mark” means physical conserved quantities. When causal processes intersect and interact, there will be exchange of these conserved quantities so that a new mark which can be propogated would be made. Only causal processes can reveal causation, and the criterion is physical conserved quantities possessed by the process.
When facing the Humean problem of causation, Salmon added a new criterion – the ability of mark-transmitting. He introduced Russell’s at-at theory, which was dealing with Zeno’s paradox of flying arrow, to make sure that marks can move. However, his solution was not complete. He can’t coherently maintain both his empirical assumption and his own theory. But this imperfection won’t be critical to his theory. Secondly, when facing the statistical account of probabilistic causality, he argued that statistical positive relevance doesn’t mean probabilistically causal. What concerned him was the following question: “how can an event occur even its probability is very low?” He mentioned the concept “propensity”, both causal and probabilistic. Propensity is possessed by causal processes; it makes the probabilistic distribution after interaction between causal processes.
Finally, I argue that Salmon’s theory can help us to capture the conception of causality better; moreover, in construing scientific explanation as causal explanation, his theory is more convincing than the ones advanced by his two enemies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/098NTHU5259002 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Tsao, Chun-Ju, 曹君如 |
| Contributors | 王榮麟 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 101 |
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