Causal Constraints in the Life and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper examines constraints and their role in scientific explanation. Common views in the philosophical literature suggest that constraints are non-causal and that they provide non-causal explanations. While much of this work focuses on examples from physics, this paper explores constraints from other fields, including neuroscience, physiology, and the social sciences. I argue that these cases involve constraints that are causal and that provide a unique type of causal explanation. This paper clarifies what it means for a factor to be a constraint, when such constraints are causal, and how they figure in scientific explanation.