Check your truth conditions! Clarifying the relationship between theories of causation and social science methods for causal inference

Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish so called
truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from non-causal relationships. We argue that
social scientists should be aware of truth conditions of causal claims because they imply which
method of causal inference can establish whether a specific claim holds true. A survey of social
scientists shows that this is worth emphasizing because many respondents have unclear concepts
of causation and link methods to philosophical criteria in an incoherent way. We link five major
theories of causation to major small and large-n methods of causal inference to provide clear
guidelines to researchers and improve dialogue across methods. While most theories can be
linked to more than one method, we argue that structural counterfactual theories are most useful
for the social sciences since they require neither social and natural laws nor physical processes to
assess causal claims.