Robert Northcott
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 5969276 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robert Northcott |
| NOMBRES | Robert |
| APELLIDO | Northcott |
| FIRMA | NORTHCOTT R |
| AFILIACIONES | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8791-8364 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 15 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 15 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Historical Necessity
“World War One was inevitable.” What sense can we make of such claims? I use recent work in philosophy of science to define historical necessity in terms of causal sensitivity. This implies that it must be understood in a relativized way, and that it is a property of historical explanations rather than of history itself. I then explore how historical necessity relates to chance and determinism, how it relates to predictability, and how the concep…
Beyond Experiments
It is often claimed that only experiments can support strong causal inferences and therefore they should be privileged in the behavioral sciences. We disagree. Overvaluing experiments results in their overuse both by researchers and decision makers and in an underappreciation of their shortcomings. Neglect of other methods often follows. Experiments can suggest whether X causes Y in a specific experimental setting; however, they often fail to elu…
Pre-emption cases may support, not undermine, the counterfactual theory of causation
Big data and prediction
The Efficiency Question in Economics
Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question : regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research…
The Prisoner's Dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of the most fiercely debated thought experiments in philosophy and the social sciences, presenting the simple insight that when two or more agents interact, the actions that most benefit each individual may not benefit the group. The fact that when you do what is best for you, and I do what is best for me, we end up in a situation that is worse for both of us makes the Prisoner's Dilemma relevant to a broad range of …
Harm and Causation
I propose an analysis of harm in terms of causation: harm is when a subject is caused to be worse off. The pay-off from this lies in the details. In particular, importing influential recent work from the causation literature yields a contrastive-counterfactual account. This enables us to incorporate harm's multiple senses into a unified scheme, and to provide that scheme with theoretical ballast. It also enables us to respond effectively to previ…
Opinion Polling and Election Predictions
Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: (1) Methodology over metaphysics . Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether successful prediction would be possible; instead, the crucial thing was selecting an effective methodology. (2) Which methodology? Success required sophist…
Degree of explanation
Verisimilitude
Partial Explanations in Social Science
How much was the increased murder rate explained by higher unemployment? What was the main cause of the American Civil War? Was it the penetrating offense or the stout defense that was most responsible for the football team’s victory? It is ubiquitous in social science and indeed everyday life that the causes we have identified explain some but not all of an outcome. In such cases, the question of critical interest is to quantify each cause’s con…
Walsh on Causes and Evolution
Denis Walsh has written a striking new defense in this journal of the statisticalist (i.e., noncausalist) position regarding the forces of evolution. I defend the causalist view against his new objections. I argue that the heart of the issue lies in the nature of nonadditive causation. Detailed consideration of that turns out to defuse Walsh's ‘description-dependence’ critique of causalism. Nevertheless, the critique does suggest a basis for reco…
On Lewis, Schaffer and the Non‐Reductive Evaluation of Counterfactuals
Jonathan Schaffer (2004 ) proposes an ingenious amendment to David Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals. This amendment explicitly invokes the notion of causal independence, thus giving up Lewis's ambitions for a reductive counterfactual account of causation. But in return, it rescues Lewis's semantics from extant counterexamples. I present a new counterexample that defeats even Schaffer's amendment. Further, I argue that a better approach would…
Weighted Explanations in History
Weighted explanations , whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more import…
Pearson's Wrong Turning
Standard statistical measures of strength of association, although pioneered by Pearson deliberately to be acausal, nowadays are routinely used to measure causal efficacy. But their acausal origins have left them ill suited to this latter purpose. I distinguish between two different conceptions of causal efficacy, and argue that: (1) Both conceptions can be useful; (2) The statistical measures only attempt to capture the first of them; (3) They a…
Weighted Explanations in History
Weighted explanations , whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more import…
Verisimilitude
Walsh on Causes and Evolution
Denis Walsh has written a striking new defense in this journal of the statisticalist (i.e., noncausalist) position regarding the forces of evolution. I defend the causalist view against his new objections. I argue that the heart of the issue lies in the nature of nonadditive causation. Detailed consideration of that turns out to defuse Walsh's ‘description-dependence’ critique of causalism. Nevertheless, the critique does suggest a basis for reco…
Degree of explanation
Big data and prediction
Opinion Polling and Election Predictions
Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: (1) Methodology over metaphysics . Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether successful prediction would be possible; instead, the crucial thing was selecting an effective methodology. (2) Which methodology? Success required sophist…
Pearson's Wrong Turning
Standard statistical measures of strength of association, although pioneered by Pearson deliberately to be acausal, nowadays are routinely used to measure causal efficacy. But their acausal origins have left them ill suited to this latter purpose. I distinguish between two different conceptions of causal efficacy, and argue that: (1) Both conceptions can be useful; (2) The statistical measures only attempt to capture the first of them; (3) They a…
The Efficiency Question in Economics
Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question : regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research…
Harm and Causation
I propose an analysis of harm in terms of causation: harm is when a subject is caused to be worse off. The pay-off from this lies in the details. In particular, importing influential recent work from the causation literature yields a contrastive-counterfactual account. This enables us to incorporate harm's multiple senses into a unified scheme, and to provide that scheme with theoretical ballast. It also enables us to respond effectively to previ…
Pearson's Wrong Turning
Standard statistical measures of strength of association, although pioneered by Pearson deliberately to be acausal, nowadays are routinely used to measure causal efficacy. But their acausal origins have left them ill suited to this latter purpose. I distinguish between two different conceptions of causal efficacy, and argue that: (1) Both conceptions can be useful; (2) The statistical measures only attempt to capture the first of them; (3) They a…
Weighted Explanations in History
Weighted explanations , whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more import…
On Lewis, Schaffer and the Non‐Reductive Evaluation of Counterfactuals
Jonathan Schaffer (2004 ) proposes an ingenious amendment to David Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals. This amendment explicitly invokes the notion of causal independence, thus giving up Lewis's ambitions for a reductive counterfactual account of causation. But in return, it rescues Lewis's semantics from extant counterexamples. I present a new counterexample that defeats even Schaffer's amendment. Further, I argue that a better approach would…
Walsh on Causes and Evolution
Denis Walsh has written a striking new defense in this journal of the statisticalist (i.e., noncausalist) position regarding the forces of evolution. I defend the causalist view against his new objections. I argue that the heart of the issue lies in the nature of nonadditive causation. Detailed consideration of that turns out to defuse Walsh's ‘description-dependence’ critique of causalism. Nevertheless, the critique does suggest a basis for reco…
Partial Explanations in Social Science
How much was the increased murder rate explained by higher unemployment? What was the main cause of the American Civil War? Was it the penetrating offense or the stout defense that was most responsible for the football team’s victory? It is ubiquitous in social science and indeed everyday life that the causes we have identified explain some but not all of an outcome. In such cases, the question of critical interest is to quantify each cause’s con…
Degree of explanation
Verisimilitude
The Prisoner's Dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of the most fiercely debated thought experiments in philosophy and the social sciences, presenting the simple insight that when two or more agents interact, the actions that most benefit each individual may not benefit the group. The fact that when you do what is best for you, and I do what is best for me, we end up in a situation that is worse for both of us makes the Prisoner's Dilemma relevant to a broad range of …
Harm and Causation
I propose an analysis of harm in terms of causation: harm is when a subject is caused to be worse off. The pay-off from this lies in the details. In particular, importing influential recent work from the causation literature yields a contrastive-counterfactual account. This enables us to incorporate harm's multiple senses into a unified scheme, and to provide that scheme with theoretical ballast. It also enables us to respond effectively to previ…
Opinion Polling and Election Predictions
Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: (1) Methodology over metaphysics . Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether successful prediction would be possible; instead, the crucial thing was selecting an effective methodology. (2) Which methodology? Success required sophist…
The Efficiency Question in Economics
Much philosophical attention has been devoted to whether economic models explain and more generally to how scientific models represent. Yet there is an issue more practically important to economics than either of these, which I label the efficiency question : regardless of how exactly models represent, or of whether their role is explanatory or something else, is current modeling practice an efficient way to achieve these goals or should research…
Big data and prediction
Pre-emption cases may support, not undermine, the counterfactual theory of causation
Beyond Experiments
It is often claimed that only experiments can support strong causal inferences and therefore they should be privileged in the behavioral sciences. We disagree. Overvaluing experiments results in their overuse both by researchers and decision makers and in an underappreciation of their shortcomings. Neglect of other methods often follows. Experiments can suggest whether X causes Y in a specific experimental setting; however, they often fail to elu…
Historical Necessity
“World War One was inevitable.” What sense can we make of such claims? I use recent work in philosophy of science to define historical necessity in terms of causal sensitivity. This implies that it must be understood in a relativized way, and that it is a property of historical explanations rather than of history itself. I then explore how historical necessity relates to chance and determinism, how it relates to predictability, and how the concep…
Epistemology (13 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · Economics (10 obras) · Philosophy and History of Science (10 obras) · Computer Science (9 obras) · Causation (8 obras) · Positive economics (8 obras) · Psychology (7 obras) · Philosophy of science (5 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (4 obras)