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Lauren Ross is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studies and writes about causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science, including distinctions among causal structures. Throughout her work, Lauren employs Jame's Woodward's interventionist approach to causation, which Jim and I discussed in episode 145. In this episode, we discuss Jim's lasting impact on the philosophy of causation, the current dominance of mechanistic explanation and its relation to causation, and various causal structures of explanation, including pathways, cascades, topology, and constraints.



Lauren's website.Twitter: @ProfLaurenRossRelated papersA call for more clarity around causality in neuroscience.The explanatory nature of constraints: Law-based, mathematical, and causal.Causal Concepts in Biology: How Pathways Differ from Mechanisms and Why It Matters.Distinguishing topological and causal explanation.Multiple Realizability from a Causal Perspective.Cascade versus mechanism: The diversity of causal structure in science.



0:00 - Intro
2:46 - Lauren's background
10:14 - Jim Woodward legacy
15:37 - Golden era of causality
18:56 - Mechanistic explanation
28:51 - Pathways
31:41 - Cascades
36:25 - Topology
41:17 - Constraint
50:44 - Hierarchy of explanations
53:18 - Structure and function
57:49 - Brain and mind
1:01:28 - Reductionism
1:07:58 - Constraint again
1:14:38 - Multiple realizability