Kate Lynch (Melbourne, Australia), (Human) Genetic Causal Reasoning (Virtual)

Kate E. Lynch is a philosopher of science interested in causation, explanation, and causal reasoning in biology and medicine. Her work focusses on understanding the nature of causal relationships investigated by different research methods; and how causal claims are made and interpreted by scientists, practitioners, media, and the public. Her work has been featured on ABC News, Triple J, Radio National, and the LA Times, and was recently awarded the Australian Association of Philosophy Media Prize (2024).

Video of the talk

Abstract
When asked why something occurred, we tend to present just one, or at most a few, causes as the explanation. This is despite the fact that many phenomena are produced by a complex combination of causes. This is no better illustrated than the pursuit of explanations for human behaviour that cite genetic causes such as the ‘gay gene’, ‘criminal gene’ or ‘genes for intelligence’. Often, genes are given special explanatory status for human behaviour, personality and physiology.
Philosophers have both tried to explain and justify why some causes appear more important than others across contexts. Proposed factors include the specificity and invariance of causal relationships, abnormality of the cause, and the perceived valence of both the cause and the effect. In Psychology and the Social Sciences genetic causation is understood through a framework of causal reasoning biases related to essentialistic thinking.
In this talk I show how the genetic essentialist framework maps to many of the philosophical features proposed to explain causal selection more generally. I will also share some preliminary findings about the extent of genetic essentialist biases in Australian Print media – identified using corpus analysis and machine learning classification.