Janet Stemwedel
San Jose State University
In
this essay I examine the influence science has on our everyday causal talk.
Scientific information shapes commonsense judgments of causation by
teaching us new paradigm causal relations, types of primitive causings we learn
to recognize within a rudimentary scientific framework. Scientific
information can also lead us to abandon certain relations we once thought of us
basically causal. Moreover, we
learn to recognize causings whose underlying stories are chains of paradigm
causal relations worked out by science, chains that common sense on its own
would not have the resources to work out or even identify.
But while common sense takes on some scientific resources and adverts to
scientific authority with regard to many physical causings, it retains a large
measure of independence. In
particular, in everyday life we resist the reduction of causings in the mental
and spiritual realms to scientific stories.