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A PLEA FOR PSEUDO‐PROCESSES
Author(s) -
Sober Elliott
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0114.1985.tb00255.x
Subject(s) - plea , citation , library science , foundation (evidence) , law , computer science , political science
Is ALL EXPLANATION causal explanation? Puzzles abut barometer readings "explaining" storms and shadow lengths "explaining" flagpole heights make it attractive to think so. Wesley Salmon [1984] has endorsed this causal thesis. Not content to take the concept of cause as primitive, he has tried to provide a noncircular account of the difference between causal processes and what he calls "pseudo-processes." My interest here is not in the adequacy of his theory (on which see Sober 1986), but in the phenomenon he seeks to explicate. One way to test the causal thesis is to assess the explanatory import of pseudo-processes. Consider two of Salmon's examples. A beacon on the floor of the Astrodome produces a circle of light on the ceiling. As the beacon is rotated, the circle of light traverses the ceiling. The moving circle on the ceiling is a pseudo-process. A car moves along a road and casts a shadow on the shoulder. The moving shadow is a pseudo-process. Salmon's two examples have this in common: the stages of a pseudoprocess are not related to each other as cause to effect, but are each effects of causes found elsewhere. The structure is as follows (arrows represent causal connections):