2021/01/01 by Isaac Wilhelm · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Philosophy and History of Science #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
paper · doi:10.5840/jphil202111826
Many explanations rely on identity facts. In this paper, I propose an account of how identity facts explain: roughly, the fact that A is identical to B explains another fact whenever that other fact depends, counterfactually, on A being identical to B. As I show, this account has many virtues. It avoids several problems facing accounts of explanatory identities, and when precisified using structural equations, it can be used to defend interventionist accounts of causation against an objection.