Causal Argument

Hahn, Ulrike; Bluhm, Roland; Zenker, Frank

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.26

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Previous studies on argumentation have focused on producing taxonomies of arguments but these categories are schemes taken out of their context or informed by philosophical discussions (Hahn et al 2017). The present study also contributes to the field of argumentation theory by studying scientific arguments in their context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Analysis of causal argumentation in social-ecological systems research

Peña,

Schlüter,

Hertz

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Social-ecological systems (SES) research is a field in which interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary to understand the causal complexity of phenomena such as biodiversity loss and climate change. However, interdisciplinarity poses challenges for evaluation of evidence and causal claims, which is a crucial for generating and integrating knowledge, prediction and informing policy. A single hierarchy of evidence is not possible when research approaches confront different practical and theoretical challenges. We argue that a way forward to evaluate claims is an analysis of causal argumentation, which is an understudied aspect of causation in SES research. Analysis of causal argumentation traces the reasoning linking data and causal claims, discloses assumptions, and makes explicit the support of robustness and generality that qualify claims. We demonstrate this approach by surveying a selection of the field’s most cited papers from the last ten years to analyse the justificatory strategies used to make causal claims. We found that claims in this small corpus are diverse and arguments rely on combinations of reasoning patterns, like inference to the best explanation, mechanism-based thinking, and Mill’s method of difference. There is no causal claim that has a general scope, high strength, and captures causal complexity. Arguments that better captured causal complexity supplemented the argument with causal models that are visually represented. Triangulation of multiple evidence produced claims about more aspects of causal configurations, and achieved more specificity, and stronger claims. Studies that dealt with smaller and simpler causal configurations were able to triangulate evidence more easily. Most of the studies could benefit from considering alternative explanations. We conclude that analysing causal argumentation helps to recognise the limitations of our strategies, make our arguments sharper, and decide what information is useful for decision making.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Analysis of causal argumentation in social-ecological systems research

Peña,

Schlüter,

Hertz

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…While the use of corpus methods in philosophy dates back to at least the 1970's-e.g., Meuiner et al (1976), McKinnon (1970); thanks to Louis Chartrand for making me aware of this work-their use has expanded in recent years. A non-exhaustive list of recent, English-language work in philosophy employing or discussing corpus methods broadly construed includes: Ludlow (2005), Meunier et al (2005), de Villiers et al (2007), Knobe and Prinz (2008), Wright and Bartsch (2008), Reuter (2011), Sainte-Marie et al (2011), Slingerland and Chudek (2011), Herbelot et al (2012), Bluhm (2013Bluhm ( , 2016, Nagel (2013Nagel ( , 2021, Overton (2013), Tallant (2013), Vetter (2014), Andow (2015aAndow ( , 2015b, Fischer et al (2015, forthcoming), Liao et al (2016), Nichols et al (2016), Wright et al (2016), Pence (2016, forthcoming), Ramsey and Pence (2016), Allen et al (2017), Fischer and Engelhardt (2017), Hahn et al (2017), Murdock et al (2017), Schwitzgebel and Dicey Jennings (2017), Sytsma and Reuter (2017), Alfano et al (2018), Nichols and Pinillos (2018), van Wierst et al (2018), Pence and Ramsey (2018), Alfano and Cheong (2019), Betti et al (2019), …”

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confidence: 99%

Ordinary Meaning and Consilience of Evidence

Sytsma¹

2023

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Law

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In this chapter I note two recent trends, one in experimental jurisprudence and one in experimental philosophy. First, some work in experimental jurisprudence has pushed for moving beyond textual sources, including the use of linguistic corpora, and toward questionnaire methods in analyzing ordinary meaning. Second, some work in experimental philosophy has urged that we should look to move beyond the use of questionnaire methods and toward the use of linguistic corpora in analyzing ordinary concepts. There is a methodological tension here that suggests further investigation. I do so by considering the legal hypothetical of a prohibition on vehicles in a park that has featured prominently in the back-and-forth over the use of corpus methods in legal interpretation. Taking a closer look at this example, including extending previous corpus analyses, I argue that corpus and questionnaire methods in fact paint a remarkably similar picture of the ordinary use of "vehicle." I hold that this highlights how these methods can compliment each other, and conclude that when it comes to difficult empirical questions-such as those that arise in assessing ordinary meaning and ordinary concepts-we should aim to employ multiple sources of information to arrive at a consilience of evidence.Both philosophy and legal interpretation are often concerned with assessing the ordinary meaning of important terms or phrases (or with the concepts beings expressed by those terms when used with their ordinary meaning). 2 And researchers in both areas have begun to urge that ordinary meaning is an empirical question. Interestingly, some recent work in these areas suggests seemingly opposed views about the use of one source of empirical evidence in investigating ordinary meaning-the tools of corpus linguistics. Some work in experimental jurisprudence has pushed for moving beyond textual sources, including the use of linguistic corpora, and toward survey methods in legal interpretation (Tobia 2020, Klapper et al. forthcoming). In fact, Klapper et al. seem to suggest that we should prefer survey methods over 1 Forthcoming in Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Law edited by Stefan Magen and Karolina Prochownik. I want to thank Eugen Fischer, Kevin Tobia, and Pascale Willemsen for their extremely helpful suggestions. 2 This is not to say that researchers in these areas are after exactly the same thing, and indeed legal interpretation typically focuses on the ordinary or public meaning of a term given the context of some legal text, while philosophers tend to focus on analyzing ordinary concepts more generally, even if this is sometimes restricted to certain contexts (such as that provided by a given thought experiment).

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Causal Argument

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Analysis of causal argumentation in social-ecological systems research

Analysis of causal argumentation in social-ecological systems research

Ordinary Meaning and Consilience of Evidence

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