%0 Generic %D 2010 %T Disentangling Causal Pluralism %A De Vreese, Leen %E Vanderbeeken, Robrecht %E D'Hooghe, Bart %X

Causal pluralism is increasingly gaining interest as a promising alternative for monistic approaches toward causation. However, although the debate is scarcely out of the egg, the term ‘causal pluralism’ already covers diverse meanings. This creates confusion, and to remedy that confusion, it is necessary to discern different kinds of pluralistic approaches to causation and different possible positions within them. In this paper, I argue for a general distinction between conceptual causal pluralism, metaphysical causal pluralism and epistemological-methodological causal pluralism. I mainly focus on metaphysical approaches to causation and discern herein four possible positions: metaphysical causal constructivism, metaphysical causal monism, weak metaphysical causal pluralism, and strong metaphysical causal pluralism. Each of these positions are further related to their most obvious conceptual counterpart, specifically conceptual causal monism or conceptual causal pluralism.

%B Worldviews, Science and Us. Studies of Analytical Metaphysics. %I World Scientific Publishing Company %P 207–223 %@ 981-4295-81-7 %G eng %0 Generic %D 2008 %T Dispositions pace Armstrong. %A Vanderbeeken, Robrecht %E De Mey, Tim %E Keinänen, Markku %B Problems from Armstrong %I Acta Philosophica Fennica %V 84 %P 127–154 %@ 9789519264660 %G eng %0 Journal Article %J Behavior and Philosophy %D 2002 %T Dispositional Explanations of Behavior. %A Vanderbeeken, Robrecht %A Weber, Erik %X

If dispositions are conceived as properties of systems that refer to possiblecausal relations, dispositions can be used in singular causal explanations. By means of these dispositional explanations, we can explain behavior B of a system x by (i) referring toa situation of type S that triggered B, given that x has a disposition D to do B in S, or (ii) byreferring to a disposition D of x to do B in S, given that x is in a situation of type S.Dispositional explanations are adequate and indispensable explanations: they can explain behavior B without explicitly referring to the underlying causal basis in x that constitutes adisposition to do B. Radical Behaviorist explanations are a sort of dispositionalexplanations, but the dispositional model is not restricted to these explanations. Thedispositional model is compatible with, or can be applied to, several research programs

%B Behavior and Philosophy %V 30 %P 43–59 %G eng