Causal Pluralism (vs Causal Monism)

Two axes on which one can be monist or pluralist about concepts/causation: the ontological axis (how many kinds of causation exist) and the methodological axis (how many methods are needed to detect causation).

Positions

Causal monism — causation is one single thing. Often paired with causal primitivism: causation cannot be analysed into anything more fundamental (correlation, counterfactual dependence, probability raising, manipulation).
Causal pluralism — causation is not one thing but many; perhaps a family-resemblance concept or a disjunction (e.g. difference-making or influence). Different cases of causation may be different kinds of causation.
concepts/methodological-pluralism — even if causation is ontologically one, multiple methods are needed epistemically because causation has multiple symptoms (difference-making, regularity, manipulability, probability-raising, energy transference) — and none of them mark causation perfectly.

The course's position

Anjum & Rocca defend ontological monism + methodological pluralism (sources/2023-anjum-rocca-phi403-lecture-20-plural-methods-one-causation): causation is one thing (a real property of the world, often grounded in dispositions), but because no single symptom is reliable, science needs plural methods — statistical, experimental, mechanistic, singular-case — to triangulate it. This generalises Feyerabend's and Longino's concepts/methodological-pluralism.

Implications

Rejects the strict evidence hierarchy of EBM that privileges RCTs over all else.
When methods disagree, an evidence-ranking scheme is needed rather than automatic dismissal of the lower-ranked method.
Qualitative and quantitative methods answer different causal questions and neither is inherently better.

concepts/causation · concepts/methodological-pluralism · concepts/evidence-hierarchy · concepts/dispositionalism