Precis of Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement

Abstract

Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement is an apology for causality at all levels. It aims not just to show that causality has a respectable role to play in modern sciences but that it has a central role. And it claims to show this not just for generic-level claims-like Aspirins relieve headaches or Inverting a population of molecules causes lasing-but for the much despised singular claims as well-The cat is lapping up the milk. Indeed it argues that the best way to understand generic claims is as claims that a certain range of singular causal facts is possible. For example: In ideal circumstances an aspirin will (or will probably, or may) cause headache relief; in other circumstances within the right range, it will (or will probably, or may) a headache-reducing element to the outcome; similarly for inverting populations and getting out a laser beam, though what contribute amounts to will be different in the case of the laser from the case of the aspirin. There is already a large literature in defense of singular causes; Nature's Capacities adds one new argument to the case. Humeans try to reduce causal laws to claims about probabilities. The rest of us at least want to use probabilities to test causal laws. Nature's Capacities argues that it is not possible to characterize correctly the relation between probabilities and causal laws without referring to singular causal facts. This is a point that Ellery Eells takes up in his discussion here. The general standpoint of the book is empiricist, so the defense that causality has a respectable role to play aims to establish that causal claims are testable, or at least as testable as any other kinds of claim-and not only by the hypothetico-deductive method. In fortuitous cases we are not just able to infer data claims from causal laws but the converse as well: Causal claims can be deduced from the data. That is what is meant in the title of the book by reference to their measurement. Of course in order to do so we need a considerable amount of background knowledge, some of which will itself be