Christopher R. Hitchcock
Professor of Philosophy
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Office: 210 Dabney Hall Email: cricky@hss.caltech.edu Tel: 626-395-3602 |
Mailing Address: California Institute of Technology Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences MC 101-40 Pasadena, CA 91125 |
Research interests
Philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of linguistics, metaphysics.
Research Statement
Most of my current research focuses on the concept of causation. This work falls into several categories:
Actual Causation: Inter-disciplinary work has led to development of new causal modeling techniques. This work has largely ignored the notion of 'actual causation,' which is central to moral and legal responsibility. I have been working on accounts of actual causation from within the causal modeling framework.
Causal and Moral Judgment: There is evidence suggesting that our moral evaluations can influence our causal judgments. But parallel effects occur in cases that do not have any moral component. I am exploring the consequences of these finding for our understanding of causation.
Causal Learning: I am currently involved in an interdisciplinary collaborative project, sponsored by the McDonnell foundation, exploring the nature of causal learning.
In addition to my work on causation, I have been working off and on and a number of other projects in the philosophy of science.
Historical Linguistics: I have been examining the logic of certain probabilistic methods for inferring common ancestry among languages.
Epistemic Probability: I have been addressing a number of puzzles that arise from the use of probability to model partial beliefs.
Model Selection: I have been studying the connection between the statistical problem of model selection and other problems in philosophy of science, particularly the role of prediction in theory confirmation.
Publications
Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. (Editor)
"Of Humean Bondage," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (2003): 1 - 25.
"The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs," Journal of Philosophy 98 (2001): 273 - 299.
"A Tale of Two Effects," The Philosophical Review 110 (2001): 361 - 396.
"The Common Cause Principle in Historical Linguistics," Philosophy of Science 65 (1998): 425 - 447.
"The Role of Contrast in Causal and Explanatory Claims," Synthese 107 (1996): 395 - 419.
"Salmon on Explanatory Relevance," Philosophy of Science 62 (1995): 304 - 320.
"The Mishap at Reichenbach Fall: Singular vs. General Causation," Philosophical Studies 78 (1995): 257 - 291.
"A Generalized Probabilistic Theory of Causal Relevance," Synthese 97 (1993): 335 - 64.