Causal Constraints in the Life and Social Sciences

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines constraints and their role in scientific explanation. Common views in the philosophical literature suggest that constraints are non-causal and that they provide non-causal explanations. While much of this work focuses on examples from physics, this paper explores constraints from other fields, including neuroscience, physiology, and the social sciences. I argue that these cases involve constraints that are causal and that provide a unique type of causal explanation. This paper clarifies what it means for a factor to be a constraint, when such constraints are causal, and how they figure in scientific explanation.