Ned Lebow : KCL – Lecture 17: Thick Understandings of Cause

Thick approaches direct their attention to the mechanisms that link causes to their alleged effects and in doing so explain why some event or phenomena occurs. I identify different kinds of mechanisms and the functions they are expected to perform for different epistemologies. Positivists are attracted to thin mechanisms, as they are to thin conceptions of cause. They often take the form of searching for regularities to explain other regularities. Interpretivists gravitate to thick mechanisms that entail unobservables. I suggest that we must theorize our mechanisms in a convincing manner before using them, and stipulate relevant criteria toward this end.