Epistemic Causality and its Application to the Social and Cognitive Sciences

The epistemic theory of causality views causality as a tool that helps us to predict, explain, and control our world, rather than as a relation that exists independently of our epistemic practices. In this chapter, the authors first provide an introduction to the epistemic theory of causality. They then outline four considerations that motivate the epistemic theory: the failure of standard theories of causality; parsimony; the epistemology of causality; and neutrality. These four considerations are illustrated in the contexts of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. The authors argue that the epistemic theory provides a very natural account of causality across these contexts.