Manchester Online Seminars on Evidential Pluralism: Evidence for mechanisms and the challenge of mechanism individuation
| Dates: | 17 March 2026 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 16:30 |
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| What is it: | Talk |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Caterina Marchionni |
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(Joint work with Till Grüne-Yanoff.) Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely used to inform policy decisions in the social and behavioral sciences. Yet both philosophers and scientists have raised doubts about the of effect-size evidence from RCTs when it comes to policy extrapolation. A common view is that such evidence should be complemented with mechanistic evidence—that is, evidence about how an intervention brings about its effects. While we agree that mechanistic evidence is often essential for extrapolative purposes, we argue that existing literature overlooks a key problem: the challenge of mechanism individuation, namely, determining the appropriate level of abstraction and detail at which to represent a mechanism for a given policy purpose. In this talk, we clarify the nature of this challenge and propose strategies for addressing it.
All welcome! Please register for a meeting link from the MOSEP webpage (under More Information).
Speaker
Caterina Marchionni
Organisation: University of Milan
Travel and Contact Information
