Undependable, become reinterpreted as experimental artifacts, or prove to be laden with the dominant focal theory under attack and

disappear once it has been replaced. But the great bulk of factual base is not so, and remains dependable. In some areas of psychology, the difficulties of replicating experimental result are so great that this emphasis will seem inappropriate. Perhaps such area should put more emphasis on achieving such stubborn facts and less emphasis on elaborate theorization until there are indeed dependable factual puzzles worthy of the theoretical effort. Poppers work relates to epistemology of causal inferences in particular. However, his work is totally germane to the logic of drawing casual inferences. Indeed, it implies (1) a logical stress on falsifying causal proposition and on giving the status of not yet disproven to data patterns that corroborate a particular causal hypotheses but do not rule out all plausible alternative causal hypotheses; (2) a need to collect data which will confort the causal proposition under test, recognizing that convincing data-based refutations require multiple disconfirmations from a variety of strong tests and that data from any one refutation test are not objective in the sense of being free of all theoretical assumption; and (3) a need to collect data which confronts causal proposition by putting them in competition with other plausible causal proposition, so that a winnowing of the weaker causal hypothesis can take place and a smaller number of hypotheses remains. But whereas Popper is concerned with differentiating between alternative grand theories, the perspective we shall adopt in differentiating among causal hypotheses that, say, school desegregation, or is an artifact of how white flight is measured, and so on. Such alternatives are threats to the validity of causal inferences but are hardly alternative theories as that term is generally used. Rather, they are more in the nature of theoretical nuisance factors. Yet these are they alternatives most often confronting practicing researches who attempt to probe causal relationship by to rule out alternative explanation for an observed change, particularly when this change conforms to an expected data pattern suggesting that it could be due to the presumed causal aspect whose influence is being tested. The Activity Theory of Causation Many philosophers of science (e.g., Collingwood, 1940; Gasking, 1955; Suppes, 1970; von Wright, 1971; Harre and Madden, 1975; and Whiteback, 1977) have pointed out that in every day language the concept of cause implies manipulation. Causes are what we can manipulate to make something happen the switch is thrown and the light goes on, the edges of the curtains are pulled and the curtains move across the windows, the motorist stopped by a police officer says he is on the way to the hospital and the officer decides not to give him a ticket, the teacher gives an F on the first quiz and the student drops the course, the Federal Reserve Board increases the money supply and inflation increases, the Supreme Court passes the Bakke verdict and some professional schools change their admission policies. None of the manipulations in these examples invariably produce the intended effect, and the probability of obtaining the effect decreases the more social the examples become and the more delayed the response. This everyday sense of cause has been the starting point for philosophical analyses of what is now often called the activity theory of cause. Perhaps the earliest clear exposition of the theory is given by Collingwood (1940). He distinguishes between there sense in which the term cause is used. The first is as follows: That which is cause is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent,

and causing him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it (p. 285). To illustrate this sense, Collingwood uses examples from history and refers to question of the from: What cause the Boston Tea Party? What caused Napoleon to invade Russia? These illustrations highlight that both the presumed cause and effect are human activities, with motives and intention heavily involved. Collingwoods second sense, expressed in rather severe English, is this: That which is caused is an event in nature, and its cause is an event or state of things by product or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be (p.285). Collingwood exemplifies this sense of cause by referring to the manipulation of a switch which causes an electric bulb to give out light. He might also have referred to an vaccine which, when administered, prevent the incidence of some disease. Collingwood is explicit that this sense of the world cause is bound up with the idea of a practical science which inform us about the consequences of performing particular acts. Engineering and medicine are disciplines that, in his day, Collingwood considered to be implicitly adopting this sense of cause. Collingwood presumably makes a distinction between these two sense of cause to avoid confusing human intentions with physical manipulations. As previously stated, we are less inclined to make a distinction between causes that reflect intention and cause that do not. In each case, an act or series of acts are involved that, when carried out, are aimed at producing or preventing some effect or event. We find the similarity between Collingwoods first and second sense more useful than the distinction between them. His third sense of cause is close to the essentialists. he writes that cause is involved when that which is caused is an event or state of things, and its cause is another event or state of things, standing or it in a one-to-one relation of causal priority: i.e., a relation of such a kind that (a) if the cause happens or exists the effect also must happen or exist, event if no further conditions are fulfilled, (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exist, (c) in some sense which remains to be defined, the cause or prior to the effect; for with you such priority there is no telling which id which (pp. 285-86). Collingwoods third sense of cause is the one which in the late 1930s he saw being used in basic research where the aim was to explain a phenomenon so fully that we arrive at the inevitable cause of some unique event. Collingwood carefully points out that the ability to control B through manipulating A does not presume a full explanation of why this causal relationship exists. Few children, for instance, can explain why a light goes on when they flick a