PHL 552 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Science Advances, Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill, Shadow Play
14 Sep 2017
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Example: flag pale casts a shadow of certain length. ^good explanation according to the covering law model. ^good explanation but intuitively, explaining why the flagpole is height h based on its shadow"s length doesn"t seem right. Intuitively, it runs only in one direction - from pole to shadow. So it seems like the problem is causation. So the covering model seems to be missing causation. So good explanations not only include inductive and deductive things, but they should also contain causal agents. Hempel: acknowledges that the shadow didn"t bring about the pole. Seems like causation is involved but we actually don"t know what causation means. We don"t have a clear idea of one event bringing out another event. Specify factors that are statistically relevant to the explanandum. Specify factors that are causally relevant to the explanandum i. ii. Stronger than covering law model bc it includes causation (>< hempel)
