A Pragmatic Concept of Causal Explanation

Abstract

Too much philosophical ink has been spilled on causality since Aristotle. But the problems remain with us as they were before him. The elimination of the notion of causality and all of its derivatives from the human language is probably the only satisfactory solution to these problems. I personally would prefer this elimination to all philosophizing on causality. The reason for my preference is this. Knowledge about causes is commonly viewed as a necessary condition of efficient action, and philosophizing on causality is justified by saying that knowledge about causes presupposes a concept of causality. In my opinion, the first part of this view, that is, the supposition of an action-theoretic demand for causal knowledge, is a dogma; hence there is no action-theoretic justification of philosophizing on causality. That does not mean that philosophizing on causality is practically irrelevant. On the contrary, even to show that philosophical inquiry into the problems — and pseudoproblems — of causality is a luxury that does not pay would be practically relevant at least in that it would perhaps contribute to a meaningful redistribution of research grants. Another practical consequence of such an inquiry would be the reduction of the plentiful ‘causal’ nonsense produced in the empirical sciences, especially in medicine. One of my aims in presenting the following thoughts on causal explanation is to demonstrate how many of the “causal explanations” offered in medicine belong to this category.