CPS Lunch Forum: Gry Oftedal

Gry Oftedal, Senior Lecturer and Head of Centre for Philosophy and the Sciences, will present on "Choosing the best level of explanation".

Forehead, eyes, nose, lips, hair

Welcome to CPS Lunch Forum. It will be a hybrid meeting taking place at Blindern, and it will also be possible to follow the lecture through Zoom. To receive the zoom-link, send an e-mail to ingvihar@uio.no. The meeting is open for everyone! 

When giving a causal scientific explanation, how do we make sure to provide an explanation at the appropriate causal level? In the philosophy of causation, choosing the relevant level of explanation is sometimes suggested to be a matter of proportionality (Yablo 1992; Woodward 2010). A proportional causal explanation is neither too broad nor too narrow, it neither provides irrelevant detail nor excludes significant information. But to what extent does the idea of proportionality help us with level choice? I will show how the idea of proportionality in the literature is applied to several different types of level hierarchies (e.g. levels of abstraction and levels of organisation). I will discuss the significance of the multitude of “level types” in causal explanation and some other complications in choosing level of explanation.

Published Feb. 7, 2022 3:39 PM - Last modified Jan. 7, 2023 12:58 AM