Social scientists appeal to various “structures” in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that social structure can be explanatory in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique characteristics. A novel causal framework is provided for understanding these explanations–this framework addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it the main explanatory (and causally responsible) factor for various outcomes.

中文翻译：

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什么是社会结构解释？因果账户

社会科学家在解释中诉诸各种“结构”，包括公共政策、经济体系和社会等级制度。围绕这些因素与健康、行为和经济模式等各种结果的解释相关性存在着重大争论。本文提供了由哈斯兰格（Haslanger，2016）推动的社会结构解释的因果解释。这种解释表明，社会结构可以通过作为因果约束来解释，这是一个具有独特特征的因果因素。为理解这些解释提供了一个新颖的因果框架——该框架解决了有关社会结构神秘的因果影响、如何理解其与个人选择的关系以及是什么使其成为各种结果的主要解释（和因果责任）因素的难题。