James Woodward, "Causation with a Human Face: Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology" (Oxford UP, 2021)
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What is the focus of the episode and the new book on causation?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talis, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with James Woodward, who is distinguished professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His new book, Causation with a human face, Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology is just out from Oxford University Press. How do we reason about causal relationships?
How do we determine what the causal relationships in nature are? And how are these two things causal cognition and causation connected? In his new book, Jim Woodward synthesizes the normative and the descriptive aspects of reasoning about causation. In a way that combines a minimal realism about causal relations with the ways in which creatures like us think about and investigate these relations. While the descriptive how we do reason and the normative how we ought to reason are distinct Woodward argues that normativity is built into our theories of causation. And that armchair philosophical analysis experimental philosophy. And cognitive psychology all provide different kinds of information about our causal reasoning.
And that worldly infrastructure that enables causal interventions based on that reasoning to be successful. Let's turn to the interview. Hi, James Woodward. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Well, thank you very much. Oh thank you for having me.
Yeah, no, it's really exciting to be talking to one of our leading theorists about causation and causal reasoning. Um, before we get to the book itself, Causation with a human face, normative theory. And descriptive psychology. Uh, I think it'd be interesting to find out a little bit about about James Woodward, right? Um, how did you Become a philosopher, get interested, decide on a career. And how did you come to write this book?
Okay. Um I I guess I should say that I always think of myself as Jim Woodward rather than James Woodward unless I'm signing a legal document or something. Oh yeah, so my story uh I guess goes something like this. Um I was a a mathematics major uh as a at an un as an undergraduate at uh Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Um I took um a bunch of philosophy courses there and uh found them uh kind of interesting, although the kind of philosophy that was done there uh focused very much on uh process philosophy, uh Whitehead and uh
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the focus of the episode and the new book on causation?
0:00–10:53
2
How did James Woodward become interested in philosophy and causal cognition?
10:53–23:07
3
What inspired the development of *Causation with a Human Face*?
23:07–37:19
4
How does Woodward connect normative theory with descriptive psychology of causation?
37:19–1:00:12
5
What are the roles of armchair philosophy, experimental philosophy, and cognitive psychology in studying causal reasoning?
1:00:12–1:06:57
Speakers
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