Brad Weslake: Selection, Drift, and Non-Causal Explanation

Brad Weslake (NYU-Shanghai) will be giving a talk entitled “Selection, Drift, and Non-Causal Explanation” on Friday, November 7th. The talk will be held from 4:00-6:00pm in Waverly 566B, 24 Waverly Place** (NYU). The abstract for his talk is below. Hope to see you all there!

“Selection, Drift, and Non-Causal Explanation”
Brad Weslake, NYU-Shanghai 

Marc Lange has recently argued that selection explanations are causal and drift explanations are non-causal. I argue that the reasons Lange gives for the claim that drift explanations are non-causal also entail that a certain class of selection explanations are non-causal. I then evaluate Lange’s account of the distinction between causal and non-causal explanations, and argue that we should recognise a class of explanations that are partly causal and partly non-causal, in a sense I will describe.