Open AccessCausal Inference, Moral Intuition, and Modeling in a Pandemic
Author(s) -
Stephanie Harvard,
Eric Winsberg
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
philosophy of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2692-3963
DOI - 10.5195/philmed.2021.70
Subject(s) - pandemic , intuition , causal inference , inference , covid-19 , context (archaeology) , epistemology , psychology , sociology , cognitive science , economics , history , infectious disease (medical specialty) , medicine , philosophy , econometrics , disease , archaeology , pathology
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been eager to learn what factors, and especially what public health policies, cause infection rates to wax and wane. But figuring out conclusively what causes what is difficult in complex systems with nonlinear dynamics, such as pandemics. We review some of the challenges that scientists have faced in answering quantitative causal questions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and suggest that these challenges are a reason to augment the moral dimension of conversations about causal inference. We take a lesson from Martha Nussbaum—who cautions us not to think we have just one question on our hands when we have at least two—and apply it to modeling for causal inference in the context of cost-benefit analysis.