The Problems With Causality in Medicine

In medicine causality is a central concept and in the 19th century it was interpreted in a deterministic sense. In 20th century medicine we move to a situation in which we have causes but they're not determable, they're indeterministic. So if you smoke you won't necessarily get lung cancer but the probability of your getting lung cancer goes up something like 10 times. We're talking here of a probabilistic notion. And this is very much connected with Poppa's idea of propensity because he thought that propensity is his new interpretation of probabilities.

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