Dear all,
The last Lent Term meeting of the Serious Metaphysics Group will take place on Wednesday 12th March at 11am in the philosophy board room. Our speaker is Alison Fernandes (Columbia) who will be giving a talk entitled _Why Causes? Justifying Causal Talk in Epistemic Terms_ (abstract below). Hope to see many of you there! Best wishes, Matthew Simpson Alison Fernandes - _Why Causes? Justifying Causal Talk in Epistemic Terms _ "Fundamental physical theories are formulated without reference to causation. Yet causal claims are ubiquitous in science and everyday life. A common response to this oddity is to assign causation another role: causes are tied closely to counterfactual reasoning, to intervention, to control, to making things happen. But, I will argue, theorists like Lewis and Woodward who take this approach fail to give a philosophically satisfying explanation for how causal reasoning is useful to agents. I will argue that an epistemic model of causation does better in this regard: we should explain an agent's apparent ability to intervene in the world and bring about states of affairs in terms of the beliefs and evidence she has. While we are then owed an account of why agents generally shouldn't attempt to bring about past states of affairs, this is a problem for any account that justifies itself via this epistemic route, and there are promising solutions available." -- Matthew Simpson PhD Student in Philosophy University of Cambridge Mail: Robinson College, Cambridge, CB3 9AN
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