An explanation is a chain of causal links, where each one is verified under interventions. If I hit you with a sledgehammer, your leg will break, and we know why, and it’s not that my anger causes ‘stress’, and that breaks your leg by magic stress-property, because I’m stressed too, and yet my leg never breaks.
A vague correlation is not an explanation. It’s a sign that you should look for one. Sure if I attacked you with a sledgehammer, you might get depressed. But why?
Sure if I attacked you with a sledgehammer, you might get depressed. But why?
Depression in patients with acute traumatic brain injury :
Major depression occurs in about one-quarter of patients after traumatic brain injury. This is the same frequency as in other major disorders such as stroke. Major depression appears to be provoked by one or more factors that include poor premorbid social functioning and previous psychiatric disorder or injury to certain critical brain locations.
Depression among older adults after traumatic brain injury: a national analysis.: TBI significantly increased the risk of depression among older adults, especially among men and those discharged to a skilled nursing facility. Results from this study will help increase awareness of the risk of depression post-TBI among older adults.
It’s plausible that the trauma kills neurons and thus creates depression. It’s also possible that some fascia tenses up and produces problems. It’s possible that it produces Sensor Motor Amnesia. It’s possible that it creates problematic inflammation.
There are a lot of plausible mechanisms to choose from.
Agreed. Thanks. It was more a sort of philosophical point about the nature of explanation. We might be able to tell which of these counted as an explanation by intervening later on in the proposed causal chain and seeing if the same results obtain.
As far as the philosophy goes, for most successful interventions in health care we don’t really know how they work.
Depression usually comes along with increased inflamation of the gut. Depression medicine that’s intented to target the brain because of chemical imbalance, also hit’s targets in the gut.
Does that mean I’m certain that those drugs fight depression by having positive effect on the gut? No, I’m not certain of that, but it’s an open possibility.
“Explanations” in general aren’t good at predicting outcomes for drugs. That way so many clinical trials fail. The only way that seems to work is to gather empiric evidence for treatments. That way you know whether the treatment works but not why it works.
An explanation is a chain of causal links, where each one is verified under interventions. If I hit you with a sledgehammer, your leg will break, and we know why, and it’s not that my anger causes ‘stress’, and that breaks your leg by magic stress-property, because I’m stressed too, and yet my leg never breaks.
A vague correlation is not an explanation. It’s a sign that you should look for one. Sure if I attacked you with a sledgehammer, you might get depressed. But why?
Depression in patients with acute traumatic brain injury :
Major depression occurs in about one-quarter of patients after traumatic brain injury. This is the same frequency as in other major disorders such as stroke. Major depression appears to be provoked by one or more factors that include poor premorbid social functioning and previous psychiatric disorder or injury to certain critical brain locations.Depression among older adults after traumatic brain injury: a national analysis.:
TBI significantly increased the risk of depression among older adults, especially among men and those discharged to a skilled nursing facility. Results from this study will help increase awareness of the risk of depression post-TBI among older adults.It’s plausible that the trauma kills neurons and thus creates depression. It’s also possible that some fascia tenses up and produces problems. It’s possible that it produces Sensor Motor Amnesia. It’s possible that it creates problematic inflammation.
There are a lot of plausible mechanisms to choose from.
Agreed. Thanks. It was more a sort of philosophical point about the nature of explanation. We might be able to tell which of these counted as an explanation by intervening later on in the proposed causal chain and seeing if the same results obtain.
As far as the philosophy goes, for most successful interventions in health care we don’t really know how they work.
Depression usually comes along with increased inflamation of the gut. Depression medicine that’s intented to target the brain because of chemical imbalance, also hit’s targets in the gut.
Does that mean I’m certain that those drugs fight depression by having positive effect on the gut? No, I’m not certain of that, but it’s an open possibility.
“Explanations” in general aren’t good at predicting outcomes for drugs. That way so many clinical trials fail. The only way that seems to work is to gather empiric evidence for treatments. That way you know whether the treatment works but not why it works.
Trolling or eyerolling? You decide!
X-D