Afterword

Author Webpage This book has defended a manipulationist account of explanation and causation: causal and explanatory relationships are relationships that are potentially exploitable for purposes of manipulation and control. The manipulationist theory is a (species of a) counterfactual theory of explanation and causation, but differs in a number of ways from the counterfactual theories presently in the literature. I have tried to show that this theory both captures a number of important features of scientific and ordinary practice in connection with causation and explanation and allows us to avoid the counterexamples and difficulties that infect alternative approaches, from the deductive‐nomological model onward. I have also argued that it provides a basis for criticism of a number of features of explanatory practice, particularly in the social sciences. The sense of “potentially exploitable” to which I have appealed is an idealized one: what matters is not whether human beings can actually carry out manipulations...