Holistic social causation and explanation

Raimo Tuomela

pp. 305-318

in: Dennis Dieks, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel, Marcel Weber, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (eds), Explanation, prediction, and confirmation, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

It has been regarded as a problem whether there can be genuine, irreducible causation in the social sciences. By such causation I mean causation that does not reduce to individual level causation. There is a parallel and related problem concerning psychological causation: Is there genuine, irreducible mental causation or is all causation purely physical in its nature? In this paper I will focus on holistic social causation.