Nancy Cartwright, millian and/or aristotelian

Abstract: Nancy Cartwright understands scientific explanation in terms of stable causes which she calls “capacities” or “natures”. She has been criticized for her interpretation of Mill’s tendencies, for her stress on individual causes, for the contrast between her empiricism and her metaphysical approach, and for her “local realism”. This paper will analyze those criticisms and will argue that a greater reliance on Aristotle might help to answer them and consolidate her proposals. Note that Cartwright is more skeptical about the possibilities of causal explanation in the social realm than about its possibilities in natural science. The paper thus also examines Aristotelian social capacities and provides some Aristotelian arguments for Cartwright’s skepticism about our knowledge of them and our using them to arrive at social scientific explanations.