Experiments on Causal Exclusion

Jan 1, 2022·
Thomas Blanchard
Thomas Blanchard
,
Dylan Murray
,
Tania Lombrozo
· 0 min read
Abstract
Intuitions play an important role in the debate on the causal status of high-level properties. For instance, Kim has claimed that his ’exclusion argument’ relies on ‘a perfectly intuitive understanding of the causal relation’. We report the results of three experiments examining whether laypeople really have the relevant intuitions. We find little support for Kim’s view and the principles on which it relies.
Type
Publication
Mind and Language, 37(5), 1067-1089
publication
Thomas Blanchard
Authors
Maître de Conférences en Philosophie

I am Associate Professor in the philosophy department at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy and psychology in the Concepts and Cognition Lab at UC-Berkeley for the Varieties of Understanding Project, an Assistant Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and an Akademischer Rat (roughly equivalent to assistant professor) at the University of Cologne. I received my Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2014.

My research is in the philosophy of science, and focuses mainly on causation, causal modeling and causal explanation. I am interested in a wide variety of issues concerning causation including causal asymmetries, levels of causal explanation, the causal exclusion problem, the epistemology of causal inference, causal cognition, and causal decision theory. My work also investigates the use of certain causal concepts and assumptions in particular sciences such as biology, epidemiology and medicine.