Much of my work is in what I would describe as general philosophy of science—a subject which is regarded as unfashionable in some circles but which (properly understood) needs revival. I think of much of my work as having to do with the methodology of the various sciences. (See “Methodology, Ontology, and Interventionism” and “Sketch of Some Themes for a Pragmatic Philosophy of Science” for defenses of this idea.) It is general in the sense that it involves the exploration of concepts and strategies of explanation and inference that recur across many different areas of scientific investigation. However, I attempt to do this with a due regard to the details of the various particular sciences in which these concepts and strategies live—so that the result is (I hope) not general in the sense of being about (what Mark Wilson calls) Theory T.
In addition to work in general philosophy of science, I also maintain a strong interest in philosophy of psychology, philosophy of neurobiology, and philosophy of the social sciences. I have also been involved in collaborative empirical work in psychology and neurobiology -- see “Causal Responsibility and Robust Causation”, "Just do it? Investigating the Gap between Prediction and Action in Toddlers' Causal Inferences”, "Emotional and Utilitarian Appraisals of Moral Dilemmas are encoded in separate areas and integrated in Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex"
Causation and Explanation
My work in general philosophy of science includes investigations of notions of causation and explanation and patterns of inductive inference employed in the various sciences. I am a defender of what is sometimes called an interventionist or manipulationist approach to causation and explanation. The general idea is that causal and explanatory claims can be elucidated and clarified by being associated with hypothetical experiments. Details can be found in my book Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation, winner of the 2005 Lakatos award in philosophy of science, and in a number of my papers.
In more recent work I have attempted to develop and extend this interventionist framework in various ways. First, I have attempted to apply it to issues having to do with understanding explanatory structures in psychology, neurobiology, and other areas of biology (e.g., "Mental Causation and Neural Mechanisms", Cause and Explanation in Psychiatry: An Interventionist Perspective”, "Causation in Biology: Stability, Specificity, and the Choice of Levels of Explanation”, Koch's Koch’s Postulates: An Interventionist Interpretation” "Explanation in Neurobiology: An Interventionist Perspective”,). Second, I have attempted to integrate my more philosophical interests in causation with the results of empirical psychological studies of causal learning and reasoning (e.g., "Causation, Interactions Between Philosophical Theories and Psychological Research”, "Empirical Investigations of Human Causal Judgment”, "Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology in Understanding Causal Reasoning: The Role of Interventions and Invariance, Causal Cognition: Physical Connections, Proportionality, and the Role of Normative Theory” Causal Judgment: What Can Philosophy Learn from Experiment? What Can It Contribute to Experiment?” and my 2021 book, Causation with a Human Face.) Here a guiding theme is that normative/philosophical theorizing and descriptive investigation can be mutually illuminating. Third, I have attempted to use the interventionist framework to illuminate various additional features of causal reasoning. These include what I call stability and specificity— some details can be found here ("Causation in Biology: Stability, Specificity, and the Choice of Levels of Explanation", “Explanatory Autonomy: The Role of Proportionality, Stability, and Conditional Irrelevance” and in Causation with a Human Face). Still more recent work, joint with Naftali Weinberger and Porter Williams (Forthcoming), explores what we call the worldly infrastructure of causation-- those generic features that need to be present in a system if causal analysis is to be usefully applicable to it.
Data, Phenomena, and Inference
I have written a series of papers, some with James Bogen and some independently, on the distinction between data and phenomena and on inferences from the former to the latter. Some other papers exploring themes having to do with inference and evidence in science include “Some Varieties of Robustness” and “Reciprocity: Empirical Evidence and Normative Implications”.
PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY/PSYCHIATRY/MIND/ NEUROBIOLOGY
I have long maintained an interest in these areas. I wrote an early paper with Terry Horgan defending folk psychology ("Folk Psychology is Here to Stay") More recent work on the structure of psychological and neuro-biological explanation includes the papers cited above. I have also written several papers on causal explanation in psychiatry and related themes, including "Reflections on Some Strategies for Causal Inference in Psychiatry”.
Philosophy of Social Science and Economics
I have written a number of papers on the interpretation of causal modeling techniques used in the social and behavioral sciences and on conceptions of causation in econometrics ("Causality and Explanation in Econometrics, Causal Independence and Faithfulness, "Causal Interpretation in Systems of Equations"). I’ve also worked on some issues arising out of experimental economics (Social Preferences in Experimental Economics”, “Experimental Investigations of Social Preferences”, “Why Do People Cooperate as Much as They Do” ).
Empirical Ethics and Political Philosophy
Although this is not my primary area of research, I have always been interested in ethics and political philosophy. My meager early publications in this area (e.g., ."Why the Numbers Count," ."Paternalism and Justification, "The Non-Identity Problem,", Liberalism and Migration.") were not empirically oriented, but more recently I have become interested in how empirical information about the psychology and neurobiology of moral judgment and decision-making and empirical information about behavior of the sort explored in experimental economics might inform and constrain normative theorizing in ethics and political philosophy. This interest has led to several papers on the neural underpinnings of moral decision-making and on the relevance of empirical information about human cooperation to normative theorizing about justice and reciprocity (“Moral Intuition: Its Neural Substrates and Normative Significance”, “What are Moral Intuitions and Why Should We Care About Them? A Neurobiological Perspective”, "Emotion versus Cognition in Moral Decision-Making: A Dubious Dichotomy”, “Reciprocity: Empirical Evidence and Normative Implications”, “Justice and Reciprocity: The Case for Non-Ideal Theory” ). As a general rule I think that research in normative ethics and political philosophy is most fruitful when it is constrained by empirical information about how human beings actually behave and the conditions under which they flourish. Moral theories that may work well given highly unrealistic assumptions about human motivation (so-called ideal theory) may make fail disastrously given more empirically realistic assumptions.