Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond

Abstract

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes—and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples.