PHL145H5 Study Guide - Final Guide: Necessity And Sufficiency, If And Only If
Document Summary
Chapter 9&11: causation and generalization, necessary condition, sufficient condition, g is necessary for f=f is suf cient for g. Causal generalization: causal claims often rest on a special kind of generalization. It has predictive power and can be presented as generalization (e. g. all ps are. We need to identify the cause of a phenomenon when we would like to reverse, reproduce or understand something better. X"s being g is a necessary condition for x"s being f iff all f"s are g. X"s being f is a sufficient condition for x"s being g iff ll f"s are g. Note that some relationship of necessity/sufficiency are non-causal, but causal generalizations usually involve sufficient conditions. If feature f is present when feature g is absent, then we know that f is not sufficient for g. Condition 4 relies heavily on background knowledge: the necessary condition test (nct)
