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Proximate And Ultimate Causation
A proximate cause is an event which is ''closest'' to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the "real" reason something occurred. The concept is used in many fields of research and analysis, including data science and ethology. * ''Example:'' Why did the ship sink? ** Proximate cause: Because it was holed beneath the waterline, water entered the hull and the ship became denser than the water which supported it, so it could not stay afloat. ** Ultimate cause: Because the ship hit a rock which tore open the hole in the ship's hull. In most situations, an ultimate cause may itself be a proximate cause in comparison to a further ultimate cause. Hence we can continue the above example as follows: * ''Example:'' Why did the ship hit the rock? ** Proximate cause: Because the ship failed to change course to avoid it. ** Ultimate cause: Because the ship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quinque Viae
The ''Quinque viæ'' (Latin for "Five Ways") (sometimes called "five proofs") are five logical arguments for the existence of God summarized by the 13th-century Catholic Church, Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas in his book ''Summa Theologica''. They are: #the cosmological argument, argument from "first mover"; #the argument from universal causation; #the Cosmological argument#Argument from contingency, argument from contingency; #the argument from degree; #the teleological argument, argument from final cause or ends ("teleology, teleological argument"). Aquinas expands the first of these – God as the "unmoved mover" – in his ''Summa Contra Gentiles''. Background Need for demonstration of the existence of God Aquinas thought the finite human mind could not know what God is directly, therefore God's existence is not self-evident to us, although it is self-evident in itself.''ST'', I, Q 2, A 1Latinan On the other hand, he also rejected the idea that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verstehen
''Verstehen'' (, ), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of social phenomena. The term is closely associated with the work of the German sociologist Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action. In anthropology, ''Verstehen'' has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others. ''Verstehen'' is now seen as a concept and a method central to a rejection of positivist social science (although Weber appeared to think that the two could be united). ''Verstehen'' refers to understanding the meaning of action from the actor's point of view. It is entering into the shoes of the other, and adopting this resear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychological Distance
Psychological distance is the degree to which people feel removed from a phenomenon. Distance in this case is not limited to the physical surroundings, rather it could also be abstract. Distance can be defined as the separation between the self and other instances like persons, events, knowledge, or time. Psychological distance was first defined in Trope and Liberman's Construal Level Theory (CLT). However, Trope and Liberman only identified temporal distance as a separator. This has since been revised to include four categories of distance: spatial, social, hypothetical, and informational distances. Further studies have concluded that all four are strongly and systemically correlated with each other. At a basic level, psychological distance in Construal Level Theory notes that distance plays a pivotal role in the relationship between an event and a person. The distance factor will help determine the outcome of whether or not a person places value on a specific topic. The relationsh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teleology
Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 3 May 2020. – via '' New Advent'', transcribed by D. J. Potter is a branch of causality giving the reason or an explanation for something as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to as a function of its cause. James Wood, in his '' Nuttall Encyclopaedia'', explained the meaning of ''teleology'' as "the doctrine of final causes, particularly the argument for the being and character of God from the being and character of His works; that the end reveals His purpose from the beginning, the end being regarded as the thought of God at the beginning, or the universe viewed as the realisation of Him and His eternal purpose." A purpose that is imposed by human use, such as the purpose of a fork to hold ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pathology
Pathology is the study of disease. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area that includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue (biology), tissue and human cell samples. Idiomatically, "a pathology" may also refer to the predicted or actual progression of particular diseases (as in the statement "the many different forms of cancer have diverse pathologies", in which case a more proper choice of word would be "Pathophysiology, pathophysiologies"). The suffix ''pathy'' is sometimes used to indicate a state of disease in cases of both physical ailment (as in cardiomyopathy) and psych ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Occam's Razor
In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; ) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (). Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as , which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes paraphrased as "of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred." This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions, and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Whys
Five whys (or 5 whys) is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the question "why?" five times, each time directing the current "why" to the answer of the previous "why". The method asserts that the answer to the fifth "why" asked in this manner should reveal the root cause of the problem. The technique was described by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota Motor Corporation. Others at Toyota and elsewhere have criticized the five whys technique for being too basic and having an arbitrarily shallow depth as a root cause analysis tool (see ). Example An example of a problem is: bolts are cross-threading in the engine block on the production line. #''Why?'' – The threads aren't cut cleanly. #''Why?'' – The cutting tool on the lathe wasn't changed today. #''Why?'' – The replacement cutting tool bin was empty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manner Of Death
In many legal jurisdictions, the manner of death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinction is made between the cause of death, which is a specific disease or injury, such as a gunshot wound or cancer, versus manner of death, which is primarily a legal determination, versus the mechanism of death (also called the mode of death), which does not explain why the person died or the underlying cause of death and is usually not specific to the cause or manner of death, such as asphyxiation, arrhythmia or exsanguination. Different categories are used in different jurisdictions, but manner of death determinations include everything from very broad categories like "natural" and "homicide" to specific manners like "traffic accident" or "gunshot wound". In some cases an autopsy is performed, either due to general legal requirements, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cause Of Death
In law, medicine, and statistics, cause of death is an official determination of the conditions resulting in a human's death, which may be recorded on a death certificate. A cause of death is determined by a medical examiner. In rare cases, an autopsy needs to be performed by a pathologist. The cause of death is a specific disease or injury, in contrast to the manner of death, which is a small number of categories like "natural", "accident", "suicide", and "homicide", each with different legal implications. International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes can be used to record manner and cause of death in a systematic way that makes it easy to compile statistics and more feasible to compare events across jurisdictions.National Center for Health Statistics �Classification of Death and Injury Resulting from Terrorism – How are external cause of injury codes assigned? Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. retrieved July 7 2019 Accuracy concerns A study published i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal Model
In metaphysics, a causal model (or structural causal model) is a conceptual model that describes the causal mechanisms of a system. Several types of causal notation may be used in the development of a causal model. Causal models can improve study designs by providing clear rules for deciding which independent variables need to be included/controlled for. They can allow some questions to be answered from existing observational data without the need for an interventional study such as a randomized controlled trial. Some interventional studies are inappropriate for ethical or practical reasons, meaning that without a causal model, some hypotheses cannot be tested. Causal models can help with the question of ''external validity'' (whether results from one study apply to unstudied populations). Causal models can allow data from multiple studies to be merged (in certain circumstances) to answer questions that cannot be answered by any individual data set. Causal models have found ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causality
Causality is an influence by which one Event (philosophy), event, process, state, or Object (philosophy), object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is at least partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is at least partly dependent on the cause. The cause of something may also be described as the reason for the event or process. In general, a process can have multiple causes,Compare: which are also said to be ''causal factors'' for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysics , metaphysically prior to notions of time and space. Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses. As such it is a basic concept; it is more apt to be an explanation of other concepts of progression than something to be explained by other more fun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abductive Reasoning
Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,For example: abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference that seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from a set of observations. It was formulated and advanced by American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the latter half of the 19th century. Abductive reasoning, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not definitively verify it. Abductive conclusions do not eliminate uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in terms such as "best available" or "most likely". While inductive reasoning draws general conclusions that apply to many situations, abductive conclusions are confined to the particular observations in question. In the 1990s, as computing power grew, the fields of law, computer science, and artificial intelligence researchFor examples, see "", John R. Josephson, Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research, Ohio State University, and ''Abduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
