Wolfgang Spohn (Konstanz) gives a talk at the Workshop on Causal and Probabilistic Reasoning (18-20 June, 2015) titled "Fifteen Dimensions of Evaluating Theories of Causation. A Case Study of the Structural Model and the Ranking Theoretic Approach to Causation". Abstract: The point of the talk is not to defend any exciting thesis. It is rather to remind you of all the dimensions theories of causation must take account of. It explains 15 such dimensions, not just in the abstract, but as exemplified by the structural model and the ranking theoretic approach to causation, which, surprisingly, differ on all 15 dimensions. Of course, the subcutaneous message is that the ranking theoretic approach might be preferable. However, the main moral is to be: Keep all these dimensions in mind, and don't think that any one of these dimensions would be settled! Even if working at a specific issue, you are never on secure ground.

Fifteen Dimensions of Evaluating Theories of Causation. A Case Study of the Structural Model and the Ranking Theoretic Approach to Causation

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists.
The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws.
Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists. The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws. Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.

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Fifteen Dimensions of Evaluating Theories of Causation. A Case Study of the Structural Model and the Ranking Theoretic Approach to Causation

Fifteen Dimensions of Evaluating Theories of Causation. A Case Study of the Structural Model and the Ranking Theoretic Approach to Causation

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