Review of "Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World" by Wesley Salmon.

Citation: Fetzer, J. H. (1987) Review of "Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World" by Wesley Salmon.. Philosophy of Science 54(4): 597-610. (RSS)
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Summary

In this paper, Fetzer briefly overviews the statistical relevance proposed by Salmon, examines the difference of conception for explanation between Hempel’s covering law and Salmon’s statistical relevance, and discusses some problems of Salmon’s model and how Salmon solve this problem by suggesting causal mechanism. Fetzer thinks that the distinction between epistemic and ontic approach can be viewed as the difference between “what is taken to be the case” and “what is the case”. For Hempel’s model, event can be expected based on significance for probabilistic, however, salmon proposed that the explanation is to explain why an event has occurred rather than how the event to be expected.

For Hempel, explanations are like arguments, but for Salmon, explanations refer to causation. Moreover, Salmon states that explanations without causation cannot be called explanations. However, Salmon revised his argument later, and suggested that there might be noncausal explanations in the quantum domain. Fetzer thinks the revision of Salmon’s account shows the “two tiered” approach, which means two stages for explanation. First stage is to explain the statistical relevance relations, and the second stage is to explain the causal relevance relations. In addition, causal relationships are underdetermined by statistical relevance relationship.

Later, Salmon thinks S-R model is no longer a complete model. In order to distinguish his previous approach and elaborate the conception of explanation, Salmon abandoned statistical relevance account and proposed causal processes and causal mechanism. This perspective suggested the fundamental role of causal relevance and the statistical relevance relations are secondary. Another arguments Salmon proposed to extend this previous model is the causal processes and causal interaction which involve in both deterministic and indeterministic causal mechanisms.