Causal reasoning plays a central role in biology and many of the more philosophically oriented disputes in biology, such as disputes about the levels of selection or disagreements about gene determination, are best framed in explicitly causal terms. Most philosophical accounts of causation have been developed on the assumption that the analysis of causes in simple systems will automatically (or "in principle") apply to complex causal systems as well. Many philosophers of biology tend to assume the opposite: they are skeptical that philosophical analysis of highly idealized simple systems can provide a basis for elucidating causality in kinds of complex systems investigated by biologists. This workshop will open up inquiry by exploring the possibility that abstract accounts of causation can help inform analysis of causation in complex systems and that analyzing causation in complex systems can help inform philosophers' understanding of causation more generally.
This collaborative project will bring together biologists investigating complex causal systems, philosophers of biology analyzing causal models and experimentation in biology, and philosophers of causation who have developed abstract theories aimed at elucidating the nature of causation and causal reasoning. Given the overlap of interests, one might expect that these researchers would already be in conversation. But the exchange of ideas among these groups is limited, even between philosophers of biology and philosophers of causation. Participants will meet for two workshops, the first of which will is organized to initiate collaborative investigations into the nature of causation in biological systems, new analyses of the causal reasoning underlying the scientific investigation and explanation of the behavior of these systems, and models of how to understand causation in complex systems more generally. The results of these collaborative investigations will be discussed at the second workshop and for publication in Minnesota Studies for Philosophy of Science.
Recent findings across biological sciences ranging from genomics to community ecology reveal bewildering causal complexities that raise a number of perplexing issues about the nature of causation in biological systems and how scientists can reach causal conclusions amidst such complexities. The primary aim of this project was to identify in clear and rigorous ways the causal issues raised by recent biological findings and to draw upon a century of abstract philosophical research on causation to explore how these issues might be addressed. This project brought together, in two workshops held at the University of Minnesota, distinguished scientists whose research raises fundamental questions about causation in biological systems and leading philosophers whose research focuses on biology and/or abstract issues of causation. The first workshop atriculated causal issues raised by recent biological findings. Participants subsequently wrote articles that drew upon philosophical work to address these issues. These articles were discussed at the second workshop. Revisions of the articles will be published in Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science. The findings of this project advanced scientific knowledge about phenomena such as gene causation in organisms and chanciness in ecological systems. It also advanced philosophical knowledge about the limitation of abstract ideas of causation and produced models of how philosophical understanding of causation can be improved by analyzing abstract concepts in the context of causal complexities revealed in contemporary biology. The clarification of the causal issues produced by this project also provide the basis for improving education and public knowledge about the complexities revealed by contemporary science, complexities which should be incorporated in public and scientific policy analyses.
