Abstract

In recent years, Hempel has questioned the universal applicability of the deductive model of causal explanation, and suggested supplementing it with a probability model.' When we explain the fact that one child got the measles by the suggestion that he caught it from another child, we are not using the deductive model, he says, since catching measles is a matter of mere probability and not of strict causality: playing with an infected child is not a sufficient condition for infection.