Causality and History
Causality and History
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因果关系与历史
DOI：
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发表时间：
1976
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Macintyre
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Macintyre
无论我们的文化受到什么样的折磨，在过去的四百年里，我们已经大大提高了我们对自然界运作的认识;我们对自然界的认识是这样的，我们对特定自然原因的认识和我们对某些定律般的物理或化学概括的真理的认识经常是密切相关的。如果我确实知道，在给定的场合下，引起给定体积的特定气体所施加的压力变化的是其温度的变化，那么我这样做的部分原因是，我还知道气体定律方程的真实性，也许还知道构成动力学理论的某些进一步的类似定律的概括。如果我确实知道几何光学的普遍化是正确的，那是因为我和其他人已经能够在特定的场合通过使用它们来产生特定的视觉效果。那么，如果哲学家们倾向于对因果关系的概念作出解释，把它以概念上最密切的方式与一种类似于定律的概括联系起来，有些人甚至把“因”和“果”这两个词及其同源词和翻译的意义的一部分说成，一个因及其果总是由某种类似于定律的概括联系起来的类的成员，那么我们为什么要感到惊讶呢？
Whatever else may have afflicted our culture, we have in the past four hundred years greatly improved our knowledge of the workings of nature; and our knowledge of nature is such that our knowledge of particular natural causes and our knowledge of the truth of certain law-like physical or chemical generalisations are very often closely connected. If I do in fact know that on a given occasion what caused the change in the pressure exerted by a given volume of a particular gas was a change in its temperature, I do so partly in virtue of also knowing the truth of the gas law equations and perhaps also of some of the further law-like generalisations that comprise the kinetic theory. If I do in fact know the generalisations of geometrical optics to be true, it is because I and others have been able to produce specific visual effects on given occasions by making use of them. Why then should we be surprised if philosophers have tended to offer accounts of the notion of causality which link it in the most conceptually intimate ways to that of a law-like generalisation, some going so far as to make it part of the meaning of the words ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ and its cognates and translations that a cause and its effect are always members of classes which are linked by some law-like generalisation?