Needs as Causes

Abstract

Facts about need play some role in our causal understanding of the world. We understand, for example, that people have basic needs for food, water, and shelter, and that people come to be harmed because those needs go unmet. But what are needs? How do explanations in terms of need fit into our broader causal understanding of the world? This paper provides an account of need attribution, their contribution to causal explanations, and their relation to disposition attribution.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Shaw, A. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7559-3224
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords:	need, necessity, causal explanation, dispositions
Dates:	Published (online): 12 December 2024 Accepted: 21 November 2024
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number Leverhulme Trust ECF-2022-600
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	13 Dec 2024 11:28
Last Modified:	13 Dec 2024 11:28
Published Version:	https://academic.oup.com/pq/advance-article/doi/10...
Status:	Published online
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Identification Number:	10.1093/pq/pqae146
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220795

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