Abstract
Imagine a psychologist who has formulated a theory of how people understand various interactions among physical stuff, that is, an account of the implicit folk theory of physics. His model incorporates parameters for characterizing contingent conditions like a value for how dense an object is represented as being or an implicit estimate of how quickly a certain object will return to rest after being set in motion. It includes hypotheses about variances among people and performance limitations that affect how people’s understanding is applied in practice. Suppose all the psychologist’s work is methodologically unimpeachable and that the model is stunningly successful given the criteria psychologists use for evaluating theories, for example, making precise and accurate predictions of people’s responses to questions about physics and predictions about how they will behave when confronted with practical problems that test what they know about physics.
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© 2010 Douglas Kutach
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Kutach, D. (2010). Empirical Analyses of Causation. In: Hazlett, A. (eds) New Waves in Metaphysics. New Waves in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297425_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297425_8
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