This article provides an overview of causal thinking by characterizing four approaches to
causal inference. It also describes the INUS model. It specifically presents a user-friendly …

Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish the so-
called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from noncausal relationships. We …

In Making Things Happen, James Woodward develops a new and ambitious comprehensive
theory of causation and explanation that draws on literature from a variety of disciplines and …

This paper offers four main arguments about the nature of causation in the social sciences.
First, contrary to most recent work, I argue that there is a unitary conception of causation: a …

In this book, Reiss argues in favor of a tight fit between evidence, concept and purpose in
our causal investigations in the sciences. There is no doubt that the sciences employ a vast …

All univocal analyses of causation face counterexamples. An attractive response to this
situation is to become a pluralist about causal relationships.“Causal pluralism” is itself …

Explanation is at the center of scientific research, and explanation almost always involves
the discovery of causal relations among factors, conditions, or events. This is true in the …

This chapter presents a set of approaches to systematic explanation of specific empirical
political and social phenomena. These approaches strive to create theoretical …

Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Many believe that the causal relation is not
directly observable, but that we nevertheless can somehow detect its presence in the world …

The topic of non-causalexplanation is very much invogue in contemporary philosophy of
science, as evidenced both by this volume and by many other recent books and papers …