Making Things Happen Research Articles

(Conceptual) explanations in logic

Abstract To explain phenomena in the world is a central human activity and one of the main goals of rational inquiry. There are several types of explanation: one can explain by drawing an analogy, as one can explain by dwelling on the causes (see e.g. see [Woodward (2004, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford University Press, Oxford)]. Amongst these different kinds of explanation, in the last decade, philosophers have become receptive to those explanations that explain by providing the reasons (or the grounds) why a statement is true; these explanations are often called conceptual explanations (e.g. see [Betti (2010, Explanation in metaphysics and Bolzano's theory of ground and consequence. Logique et analyse, 211:281316)]). The main aim of the paper is to propose a logical account of conceptual explanations. We will do so by using the resources of proof theory, in particular sequent rules analogous to deep inferences ([e.g. see Brunnler (2004, Deep Inference and Symmetry in Classical Proofs. Logoc Verlag)]). The results we provide not only shed light on conceptual explanations themselves, but also on the role that logic and logical tools might play in the burgeoning field of inquiry concerning explanations. Indeed, we conclude the paper by underlining interesting links between the present research and some other existing works on explanations and logic that have arise in recent years, e.g. see [Arieli et al. (2022, Explainable logic-based argumentation. Computational Models of Argument, 353:3243); Darwiche and Hirth (2023, On the (complete) reasons behind decisions. Journal of Logic Language and Information, 32:6388); Piazza, Pulcini, and Sabatini (2023, Abduction as deductive saturation: a proof-theoretic inquiry. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 52:15751602)]. For here it is for the empirical scientist to know the fact and for the mathematical to know the reason why (our emphasis) [Aristotle (1993, Posterior Analytics. Oxford University Press, Oxford)].

Observing interventions: a logic for thinking about experiments

AbstractThis paper makes a first step towards a logic of learning from experiments. For this, we investigate formal frameworks for modeling the interaction of causal and (qualitative) epistemic reasoning. Crucial for our approach is the idea that the notion of an intervention can be used as a formal expression of a (real or hypothetical) experiment (Pearl, 2009, Causality. Models, Reasoning, and Inference, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; Woodward, 2003, Making Things Happen, vol. 114 of Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Oxford University Press). In a first step we extend a causal model (Briggs, 2012, Philosophical Studies, 160, 139–166; Galles and Pearl, 1998, An axiomatic characterisation of causal counterfactuals. Foundations of Science, 3, 151–182; Halpern, 2000, Axiomatizing causal reasoning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 12, 317–337; Pearl, 2009, Causality. Models, Reasoning, and Inference, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) with a simple Hintikka-style representation of the epistemic state of an agent. In the resulting setting, one can talk about the knowledge of an agent and information update. The resulting logic can model reasoning about thought experiments. However, it is unable to account for learning from experiments, which is clearly brought out by the fact that it validates the principle of no learning for interventions. Therefore, in a second step, we implement a more complex notion of knowledge (Nozick, 1981, Philosophical Explanations. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts) that allows an agent to observe (measure) certain variables when an experiment is carried out. This extended system does allow for learning from experiments. For all the proposed logics, we provide a sound and complete axiomatization.

A Defence of Manipulationist Noncausal Explanation: The Case for Intervention Liberalism

Recent years have seen growing interest in modifying interventionist accounts of causal explanation in order to characterise noncausal explanation. However, one surprising element of such accounts is that they have typically jettisoned the core feature of interventionism: interventions. Indeed, the prevailing opinion within the philosophy of science literature suggests that interventions exclusively demarcate causal relationships. This position is so prevalent that, until now, no one has even thought to name it. We call it “intervention puritanism”. In this paper, we mount the first sustained defence of the idea that there are distinctively noncausal explanations which can be characterized in terms of possible interventions; and thus, argue that I-puritanism is false. We call the resultant position “intervention liberalism” (I-liberalism, for short). While many have followed Woodward (Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003) in committing to I-pluralism, we trace support for I-liberalism back to the work of Kim (in: Kim (ed) Supervenience and mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974/1993). Furthermore, we analyse two recent sources of scepticism regarding I-liberalism: debate surrounding mechanistic constitution; and attempts to provide a monistic account of explanation. We show that neither literature provides compelling reasons for adopting I-puritanism. Finally, we present a novel taxonomy of available positions upon the role of possible interventions in explanation: weak causal imperialism; strong causal imperialism; monist intervention puritanism; pluralist intervention puritanism; monist intervention liberalism; and finally, the specific position defended in this paper, pluralist intervention liberalism.

Making Things Happen (Un)Expectedly: Interactive Effects of Age, Gender, and Motives on Evaluations of Proactive Behavior

Proactive behavior entails self-starting actions oriented toward change in the future. Other people’s perceptions of an employee’s proactive behavior are likely shaped by personal characteristics of the employee and related expectations. We hypothesized that the intersectionality of age, gender, and two motives (i.e., achievement and benevolence) influences others’ evaluations of proactive behavior. Consistent with the social role theory and the notion of a lack of fit, results of a first experimental vignette methodology study with an employee sample (N = 101; 1818 ratings) showed that proactive behavior was rated as more effective for older men compared to younger men motivated by achievement, whereas proactive behavior was rated as more effective for younger men compared to older men motivated by benevolence. Younger women compared to older women received higher effectiveness ratings for proactive behavior independent of their motive. In a second experimental vignette methodology study with a sample of participants in supervisory roles (N = 164; 1205 ratings), we partially replicated the results of the first study: proactive behavior was rated as more effective for older men compared to younger men motivated by achievement, and proactive behavior was rated as more effective for younger women compared to older women motivated by achievement. In contrast, effectiveness ratings of proactive behavior of younger and older men as well as younger and older women motivated by benevolence did not differ. Overall, by investigating the intersectionality of age, gender, and motives, these findings advance research on influences of person characteristics on others’ evaluations of proactive behavior.

On Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief

This is one of a pair of discussion notes comparing some features of the account of causation in Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief with the “interventionist” account in James Woodward’s Making Things Happen. Despite striking similarities there are also important differences. These include (i) the “epistemic” orientation of Spohn’s account as opposed to the worldly or “ontic” orientation of the interventionist account, (ii) Spohn’s focus on token-level causal claims in contrast to the primary interventionist focus on type-level claims, (iii) the role of temporal information in accounting for causal asymmetry, and (iv) the extent to which causal claims are “frame relative.”

Reply to Jim Woodward’s Comments on Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief

This is one of a pair of discussion notes comparing some features of the account of causation in Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief with the “interventionist” account in James Woodward’s Making Things Happen. This note locates the core difference of the accounts in the fact that Woodward’s account follows an epistemological order, while Spohn’s follows a conceptual order. This unfolds in five further differences: (i) type- versus token-level causation, (ii) reference to time, (iii) actual/counterfactual intervention versus epistemic/suppositional wiggling, (iv) a circular versus a circle-free conception of the circumstances of a direct causal relation, and (v) absolute versus model-relative causation.

Of Miracles and Interventions

In Making Things Happen, James Woodward influentially combines a causal modeling analysis of actual causation with an interventionist semantics for the counterfactuals encoded in causal models. This leads to circularities, since interventions are defined in terms of both actual causation and interventionist counterfactuals. Circularity can be avoided by instead combining a causal modeling analysis with a semantics along the lines of that given by David Lewis, on which counterfactuals are to be evaluated with respect to worlds in which their antecedents are realized by miracles. I argue, pace Woodward, that causal modeling analyses perform just as well when combined with the Lewisian semantics as when combined with the interventionist semantics. Reductivity therefore remains a reasonable hope.

NPL for Project Managers: Make Things Happen with Neuro-linguistic Programming

NPL for Project Managers: Make Things Happen with Neuro-linguistic Programming

Letter to Sarah

Letter to Sarah Cynthia Ozick (bio) From: Cynthia Ozick To: Dr. Sarah Blacher Cohen March 30, 2000 Dear Sarah, Let us begin with a riddle: how many persons can you count among the following? A professor of English literature. An editor and publisher. A literary critic. A specialist in Jewish-American writing. A playwright and producer. A humorist. A historian of the Yiddish musical theater. If you counted nine, you would be altogether mistaken. The answer is one, and her name is Sarah Blacher Cohen. Sarah Cohen is all these things: a teacher, an essayist, an editor, an expert in the field of Jewish-American letters, a writer on comedy, a writer of comedy, a dramatist and a producer, an aficionado of the popular stars of the Yiddish stage. And, most recently, the theatrical biographer of a humanitarian heroine, Henrietta Szold. One astonishing woman, nine demanding vocations! There was a time when ordinary Sarah Cohen was equivalent to merely three or four souls: a professor of English and the author of several critical volumes, and for most human beings, this would have been enough for a lifetime. But Sarah is an intrepid visionary, and she heard the siren's call: for years she longed to write for the stage—this was, for her, the road not taken—and when finally she dared to attempt it, play after play came flying from her pen, saturated in wit, pathos, passion, and laughter: and then, with her collaborators, the delights of song, sometimes sentimental, sometimes bawdy, but always spilling over with electric joy and dramatic force. What can we next expect? Another play, certainly; an opera perhaps. And all the while Sarah inspires students, delivers papers at scholarly conferences, organizes anthologies, rescues a Russian violinist, arranges benefits for the disabled, travels west, north, south, casts the company, resolves backstage conflicts, and inconceivably [End Page 237] more. She is writer and impresario; serious academic and entertainer: dreamer and achiever. Most of us, contemplating roads not taken, muse and moon and mull and wish and wonder and yearn. But Sarah invents the road, brings it into concrete being, and marches gloriously along it to the destination that began as a small discerning seed in her imagination. She finds in herself the power to Make Things Happen—and when you are in her presence you can feel the wind of her will, and you can almost hear the sirens calling, Sarah! Sarah! You can, you will! And she will astound you yet again. [End Page 238] Cynthia Ozick author of Trust, Trust, The Cannibal Galaxy; The Messiah of Stockholm; The Puttermesser Papers; and Heir to the Glimmering World Cynthia Ozick Cynthia Ozick is the author of several novels, including Trust, The Cannibal Galaxy, The Messiah of Stockholm, The Puttermesser Papers, and Heir to the Glimmering World. In addition, she has written many acclaimed volumes of short stories and essays. She is the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and three first prizes in the O. Henry competition. She was also on the shortlist for the Man Booker International Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award. Copyright © 2010 Purdue University

Comparative and International Education: A Bibliography (2008)

Comparative and International Education: A Bibliography (2008)

Making things happen: mastering project management

In the updated edition of this critically acclaimed and bestselling book, Microsoft project veteran Scott Berkun offers a collection of essays on field-tested philosophies and strategies for defining, leading, and managing projects. Each essay distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice, and the new edition now adds more value for leaders and managers of projects everywhere. Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Internet Explorer, and lead program manager for Windows and MSN, Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. Making Things Happen doesn't cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Topics in this new edition include: * How to make things happen * Making good decisions * Specifications and requirements * Ideas and what to do with them * How not to annoy people * Leadership and trust * The truth about making dates * What to do when things go wrong Complete with a new forward from the author and a discussion guide for forming reading groups/teams, Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm's reach throughout the life of your project. Coming from the rare perspective of someone who fought difficult battles on Microsoft's biggest projects and taught project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, this is valuable advice indeed. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.

‘Making Things Happen’: Literacy and Agency in Housing Struggles in South Africa

While ethnographies of literacy have played an important role in the shift towards understandings of literacy as situated social practice, these understandings have not necessarily impacted on day-to-day development work. This article draws on data collected during two periods of ethnographic work on the literacy practices of participants in grassroots social movements engaging in struggles around housing in South Africa. In this focus on the quotidian tactics of the participants in such projects, mundane everyday texts (like hand-written lists, memos, bank cheques, plans, invoices and so on) were central to the carrying across and projecting of meanings into new contexts and important in the construction of agency for individuals (in the cases reported here, for three individual women). Through the use of multi-site, micro-ethnographic methods, a language of description was developed for identifying, reconstructing and analysing the sequences of events through which people acted to change their living conditions and make things happen. However, recontextualisation and projection of meanings did not require literate individuals, nor did it always require alphabetical texts; it could be accomplished by groups in which literacy was viewed as a distributed capacity or it could be carefully mediated by development workers with a focus on capacities rather than deficits, it could draw on a wider range of mediational means like physical occupations of sites, or building extensions. The research showed that a lack of attention in organisational procedures to the detailed politics of recontextualisation and projection of meanings in such trajectories indicated the reification of literacy and its use as a marker of status and stratification. On the other hand, when careful attention was paid to this detail, literacy became naturalised, as a pragmatics of engagement in textually-mediated practices, less implicated in gate-keeping and conflict. Some studies in the critical discourse tradition in a range of fields have explored ‘chains of discourse’ and make claims that discourse is recontextualised and resemiotised as it travels through contexts, tending towards legitimacy and authority, and this in turn leads to permanence and stability in infrastructures and environments. The article argues that in contexts of extreme poverty, conflict and lack of resources, such uni-directionality cannot be assumed.

Response to Strevens*

I am very grateful to the editors of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research for giving me this opportunity to respond to Michael Strevens' review of Making Things Happen (MTH). I believe that many of the positions that Strevens attributes to me and which serve as a basis for his criticisms rest on misinterpretations of MTH. One reason for this is that Strevens reads me with the preoccupations of a metaphysician; another is that he relies heavily, in reporting what he takes to be my views, on restatements of those views within his own terminology and system of concepts rather than on what I actually say. I will cite examples below, but I am also mindful that (for very good reasons) readers of this journal are not going to be interested in a long and tedious list of I-never-saidthat's. For this reason and because I lack the space to respond to everything in Strevens' review, I would encourage readers of this exchange to read MTH and to form their own assessment of its contents.

Comments on Woodward, Making Things Happen

I welcome the chance to revisit my review of Making Things Happen and the book itself (Woodward 2003; Strevens 2007) in the light of Woodward’s response to the review (henceforth “Woodward’s reply”). In what follows I hope to provide a surer footing for some of the claims made in the original review, to address the new definition of unrelativized causation proposed in Woodward’s reply, and to expand my own appreciation of the manifold aims of the book, while expressing some doubt as to whether they can be realized by a single system of definitions. I have more to say than I can reasonably fit into this piece; I hope that my silence on some matters will not be interpreted as a concession. (In particular, I am fairly sure that what Woodward has to say about explanation implicitly commits him to what he calls “potentialism”.)

Working relationships: using emotional intelligence to enhance your effectiveness with others

Emotional Intelligence and Relationships at Work Working Together Why Sheer Brainpower Doesn't Guarantee Success The Personal Challenges of Working Relationships Working with Friends and Colleagues The Challenge of Conflict When Behavior Falls Short of Good Intentions When You Are Your Own Worst Enemy Taking the Mystery out of Team Development Building Teams and Professionalizing Conflict Participating in Decision Making Developing Influence and Making Things Happen Emotional Intelligence: Putting It All Together Preparing for Challenging Conversations Managing the Conversation for Raising Issues Work, Life, and Personal Fulfillment Living Up to Your Aspirations Deepening Your Relationships.

Review of Woodward, Making Things Happen*

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 74, Issue 1 p. 233-249 Review of Woodward, Making Things Happen* MICHAEL STREVENS, MICHAEL STREVENS New York UniversitySearch for more papers by this author MICHAEL STREVENS, MICHAEL STREVENS New York UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 March 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00012.xCitations: 46 * James Woodward, Making Things Happen. A Theory of Causal Explanation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume74, Issue1January 2007Pages 233-249 RelatedInformation

It's Time to Make Things Happen

It's Time to Make Things Happen

Conversation with Cees Goos

Conversation with Cees Goos

Commentary: The attainability of causal knowledge of genetic effects in complex human traits

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James Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal. Oxford, 2003, 418pp, $65.00 (hbk). ISBN: 0195155270.

Previous articleNext article No AccessCritical NoticeJames Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal. Oxford, 2003, 418pp, $65.00 (hbk). ISBN: 0195155270.Clark GlymourClark GlymourCarnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 55, Number 4December 2004 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 18Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Views: 18Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/55.4.779 Views: 18Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Wolfgang Spohn Reply to Jim Woodward’s Comments on Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief, Philosophy of Science 86, no.44 (Sep 2019): 773–784.https://doi.org/10.1086/704982