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Dr. Alexander Gebharter (MCMP, LMU Munich): Unification and Explanation: A Causal Perspective

Research Seminar Theoretical Philosophy Forschungsseminar

Abstract:

We discuss two influential views of unification: mutual information unification (MIU) and common origin unification (COU). We propose a simple probabilistic measure for COU and compare it with Myrvold’s (2003, 2017) probabilistic measure for MIU. We then take a causal perspective and investigate how the two measures perform in different causal structures and shed new light on the relation between unification and explanation. The upshot of this will be that causal structure is crucial for how the measures perform and relate to explanatory power. To account for these findings we finally add a causal constraint to our measure for COU and compare it to a measure for MIU that has been modified similarly.

Speaker:

Alexander is principal investigator of the DFG funded research project Interventions and Mechanistic Hierarchies (441311834) at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Before, he was a postdoc at the Department of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Groningen, Netherlands and at the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His research interests lie in philosophy of science and its intersection with metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He is especially interested in causation and related topics. For more information, see Alexander's personal website:

www.alexandergebharter.com

Details

08.06.2021, 18:30 Uhr - 20:15 Uhr
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