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    The principle of nondistinct sustaining causes fails to a... — Carmelics
    Home/Bioethics
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    The principle of nondistinct sustaining causes fails to adequately capture intuitions about causes of disease

    Bioethics
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.The INUS condition framework (Mackie 1974) requires causes to be insufficient but necessary parts of sufficient conditions, not mere background sustainers.
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    • 2.Sustaining causes that are non-distinct fail to meet the INUS criterion because they are not identifiable as discrete insufficient-but-necessary parts.
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    • 3.A causal principle that cannot identify discrete causal contributors cannot distinguish pathological from normal biological states, undermining disease classification.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Broadbent's epidemiological account of causation requires that disease causes be contrastively specifiable against a reference population baseline.
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    • 2.Non-distinct sustaining causes, by definition, lack the contrastive specificity needed to explain why one individual develops disease while another does not.
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    • 3.Without contrastive explanatory power, a causal principle cannot ground the counterfactual dependency relationships that Hart and Honoré identify as essential to medical causation.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
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    • 1.A counterexample exists in which the principle does not align with intuitions about disease causation
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    • 2.A good causal condition must align with intuitions about what causes disease
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    Topics

    BioethicsCausation

    Related

    A causal principle that cannot identify discrete causal contributors cannot dist...A counterexample exists in which the principle does not align with intuitions ab...A good causal condition must align with intuitions about what causes diseaseBroadbent's epidemiological account of causation requires that disease causes be...
    +4 moreShow less
    Non-distinct sustaining causes, by definition, lack the contrastive specificity ...Sustaining causes that are non-distinct fail to meet the INUS criterion because ...The INUS condition framework (Mackie 1974) requires causes to be insufficient bu...Without contrastive explanatory power, a causal principle cannot ground the coun...

    Similar

    A nondistinct sustaining cause is one that is either difficult to remo...85%A counterexample exists in which the principle does not align with int...83%A good causal condition must align with intuitions about what causes d...80%Galen holds that understanding preceding and antecedent causes constit...78%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: health-disease
    View source passageHide passage
    This counterexample is instructive, however, since there are two ways of amending the proposal in the light of it. First, perhaps the principle of nondistinct sustaining causes fails to capture our intuitions about causes of disease. A second possibility is that the principle is a good causal condition, but that the account of evils is too broad, and needs to be restricted to a more intuitively medical set of evils, rather than the broader class of impediments to well-being. The section on healt
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit