The Higgs discovery as a diagnostic causal inference

Wüthrich, Adrian (2015) The Higgs discovery as a diagnostic causal inference. Synthese. ISSN 0039-7857

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Abstract

I reconstruct the discovery of the Higgs boson by the ATLAS collaboration at CERN as the application of a series of inferences from effects to causes. I show to what extent such diagnostic causal inferences can be based on well established knowledge gained in previous experiments. To this extent, causal reasoning can be used to infer the existence of entities, rather than just causal relationships between them. The resulting account relies on the principle of causality, attributes only a heuristic role to the theory’s predictions, and shows how, and to what extent, data selection can be used to exclude alternative causes, even “unconceived” ones.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://link.springer.com/journal/11229
Additional Information:	© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) Q Science > Q Science (General)
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2016 14:55
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2024 22:48
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/65376

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