isn't this just a debate about the definition of 'causality' — clemogo

I don't think there's need for a debate on "causality". It's just the relation between cause and effect. If we are to debate over such things, we'll never be able to complete any discussion!

As for "transitivity", it refers to specific case. It's a property of logic applied to certain cases. If I am related to you and you are related to a 3d person it does not mean that I am also related to that person. Even if I tell you a joke, which you then tell to that person, I would have only indirectly make that person hear the joke, but it would not be a direct cause & effect, since I have no relation with that person. The real cause for that would be you.

A transitivity or direct/controlled cause & effect would be something like this: I kick a ball and the ball falls on a lamp and breaks it. I would be the cause and responsible for the damage, since it produced by my kicking of the ball, and thus myself.

What's more to say about it?

Hume said there is no proof of causation. Only one thing following another, or one thing appearing after another. No proof that the first thing actually caused the second.

Things appear in consciousness and often one thing appears after another. where do they come from? Do they come from some permanent physical reality that continues to exist without consciousness? Or do they come from something beyond consciousness that has never been seen? or are they just qualia spontaneously generated by consciousness. Or some mix of those options.

It's just the relation between cause and effect. — Alkis Piskas

Great. So give us a working definition. If it's no good, that will become evident. And at least your working definition ought to be able to stand a few questions.

So give us a working definition — tim wood

Why, isn't "the relation between cause and effect" already a workable definition of causality?
What else do you need or look for?

your working definition ought to be able to stand a few questions. — tim wood

What questions, for example?

Causality is complex

1. Necessary cause
2. Sufficient cause
3. Proximate cause
4. Remote cause
5. Contributory cause

That's all I can recall off the top of my head. Don't forget free will.

Why, isn't "the relation between cause and effect" already a workable definition of causality?
What else do you need or look for? — Alkis Piskas

Well to start, you have 1) cause, 2) effect, and now you want a third, 3) the relation between them. How does that work? What is the "relation"?

And cause itself. An example I will now use for about the fifth time, but that no one yet takes on, is the question concerning a man who buys dynamite to blow a tree stump out of the ground. The dynamite explodes: what caused it to explode?

And the real question is what, exactly, your purpose is. If it is to construct informal, non-rigorous models of how parts of the world seem to work, have at it. Cause-and-effect pretty good at that although you will need different models for different circumstances. If on the other hand you want an account of how the world actually works, cause-and-effect isn't a good enough idea. And what said just above - I'm sure his list could be expanded. When dictionaries were on everyone's bookshelf, "cause" took up a lot of column inches.

But let's keep it simple: two questions above: what do you say?

Relevant ideas:

1. Domino Effect

2. Chain Reaction

3. Slippery slope

4. Camel's nose

you have 1) cause, 2) effect, and now you want a third, 3) the relation between them. How does that work? What is the "relation"? — tim wood

The relation between cause & effect can be whatever, millions of things. From the part of either the cause or the effect. You just have to see what both terms mean. Simply put, a cause is something that produces an action, phenomenon, condition, change, etc. An effect is a change produced as a result or consequence of a cause (as described above). Using mathematic combinations you get a pretty huge number! (It would be ridiculous to give an example ...)

Now, if you ask about the "mechanics" of the cause & effect relation, and the level at which this is examined, I believe this is better explained with Physics (on which I'm far from being an expert!)

the question concerning a man who buys dynamite to blow a tree stump out of the ground. The dynamite explodes: what caused it to explode? — tim wood

Ah! I guess you are referring to the actual cause of the event, right? This is more interesting! :smile:
As a short answer to your question, the actual cause of the explosion was the man. The explanation is obvious, but still ... The dynamite was the apparent, direct cause of the explosion, but it could not do that by itself. Someone or something must have triggered it: a fuse, a timer device, a fire started near it, etc. However, whatever is the "direct" cause of the explausion, the actual cause is the man.

Now, on a second level, the action done by the man is itself an "apparent" cause. Because we can go further back in the cause & effect chain, and ask "What made the man do that?" Well, there can be a lot of reasons-causes. And behind every of these causes there can be a lot of reasons-causes ... to infinitum. This is actually the subject of a very interesting topic "A first cause is logically necessary", in which I got involved about a month ago. If you are interested, you can find my conclusion on this subject at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/622168.

If on the other hand you want an account of how the world actually works, cause-and-effect isn't a good enough idea. — tim wood

I agree. Maybe this is related to the "mechanics" of the cause & effect relation that I mentioned above ... But whatever is the case, cause-and-effect is always there. You can't escape it! :smile: Besides, this is the subject of the topic! :grin:

As a short answer to your question, the actual cause of the explosion was the man. — Alkis Piskas

And here I wonder if we have a language difference. By cause I understand, usually, that which as you say actually makes something happen. But in the present case the man didn't. Or we might ask if he did, how did he? Certainly not by merely being a man. The question is specific and the sort a scientist might ask. What caused - made - the dynamite explode?

If you only have in mind certain kinds of intentionality and want to call it - although it seems that in every case there must be many - the cause of the explosion, you are free to do so. But that seems to create more problems than it solves, or at least requires a good bit of qualification to be coherent.

The discussion above demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about... our definition of causality seems completely arbitrary. That's why I asked 'can we just decide the definition and stick with it?' In other words, do we make up the criteria for causality, or do we discover it?

(And by 'definition of causation' I don't mean the literal dictionary definition or scientific definition. I'm referring to whether or not causation is transitive... can we just decide whether or not it is? Or is it something that needs to be discovered somehow?)

And here I wonder if we have a language difference — tim wood

I explained to you the difference between "direct" case and "actual" cause. Maybe the word "actual" is the problem. But from the example(s) I gave it should be very clear. I could mabe use the word "real" or even better, "source", meaning the origination of the evenf (explosion).

When a person pays an executioner to kill someone, he is the responsible, the source, the actual murderer. It doesn't matter how the victim was killed. The executioner is just an instrument. The killing would not have occurred if the person had not ordered it. I think all this is plain enough.

As for your compalint about "I will now use for about the fifth time, but that no one yet takes on", well I took it on. You should at least acknowledge that. I assume that this, your lack of undesranding and your problem of passing your point through to people, are the reasons you have to try multiple times. With me at least, this is the case, and it is very clear.

If human activity on the planet causes the temperature to increase, which causes the sea-level to rise and storms and fires to increase both in quantity and force, then human activity is the cause for a lot of misery.

My question is: isn't this just a debate about the definition of 'causality'? Does it really matter which definition we accept? Can't we simply decide the definition? — clemogo

And by 'definition of causation' I don't mean the literal dictionary definition or scientific definition. I'm referring to whether or not causation is transitive... can we just decide whether or not it is? Or is it something that needs to be discovered somehow? — clemogo

Your question is odd. Surely, if causality is more than an idle fantasy that we are making up here on the spot, then the question of whether causality is transitive is not independent of what we believe causality to be?

Simply put, a cause is something that produces an action, phenomenon, condition, change, etc. — Alkis Piskas

The man caused the explosion. How did he do that? That is, what is the without-which-not that caused the explosion?

The man caused the explosion. How did he do that? — tim wood

Using dynamite.

The study of transitive relations is otherwise known as Order Theory. A model of Causation without transitivity would essentially amount to a set of unorderable events without a notion of implication.

You just made a very stupid and ignorant joke about your own topic. I gather that for you, you could say that the flap of a butterfly's wing sometime during the Chinese Tang dynasty caused the explosion. But it still would remain for the causative chain to be established, or discovered. As it sits, that chain seems not to interest you, nor its significance. I suspect you do not really have any sort of grasp of what cause means, even though it is not a simple word. That, or you do not really care about your topic.

Transitive maybe, but if it's cause that's transitive, then the meaning of the word cause will have to shift as what is taken for a cause changes. If, for example Oppenheimer is the cause of fat man and little boy, then what part does U-235 play?

Oppeheimer would be the distal cause of the explosion, as described by transitivity. And the role of U-235 might also be relegated to that of a distal cause in a sufficiently fine-grained model of the explosion.

But not all descriptions of a process obey transitivity, in which case such descriptions aren't causal descriptions. For example, take the SEP's example in the metaphysics of causality article that purportedly refutes causal transitivity :

A large boulder roles down hill (A) causing a hiker to jump out of the way (B). The hiker's jump (B) "causes" him to survive (C). Therefore by transitivity the boulder rolling (A) causes the hiker's survival (C), which is a false conclusion.

But this isn't a valid argument, because although A --> B can be considered a true implication in the example, survival isn't definable in terms of acts of jumping alone, and so we don't have the implication B --> C, therefore we cannot use transitivity to derive A --> C.

What this example actually demonstrates is the situation (A and B) --> C.

Do you have a clear idea of what the purpose of the labor over "cause" is? It seems that cause itself is a word that seems to have a meaning, but that disappears when looked at closely, making it a word for informal use, or one to be defined as a term of art by its several users - a lawyer's delight. That is, it's not a one but a many, and most of those incompatible. So I'm baffled why anyone bothers with it - and I read that scientists use it only informally if at all; that is, not a concept in science.

And it may be altogether in the eye of the beholder. An example from a book: a car rolls in a turn; what caused it? Driving too fast, according to the police. Bad suspension, per the automotive engineer. Off-camber road, according to the road builder. And here we get contributory causes, which is to say that no cause is a cause!

Or the explosion of the dynamite from above. What exactly is an explosion? A bunch of things that happen very fast - not in itself one thing. And the cause? On analysis of the time between cause and effect, it becomes clear there can be no time between cause and effect. It would seem, then, that cause itself is an illusion and a fiction, however useful and convenient in many cases.

Do you have a clear idea of what the purpose of the labor over "cause" is? It seems that cause itself is a word that seems to have a meaning, but that disappears when looked at closely, making it a word for informal use, or one to be defined as a term of art by its several users - a lawyer's delight. That is, it's not a one but a many, and most of those incompatible. So I'm baffled why anyone bothers with it - and I read that scientists use it only informally if at all; that is, not a concept in science. — tim wood

That's understandable, due to historical disagreements and confusion in science as to how to formulate the notion, but things have rapidly changed in recent years as causal semantics has been steadily formalized, most notably in the structural equation modelling approach of Judea Pearl; the structure of a multi-variate probability distribution is factored into a set of conditional probability distributions, a subset of which are interpreted axiomatically as denoting known causal relations. With respect to these causal assumptions, the remaining correlations of the model can then be tested for the property of "cause and effect" through analytic methods and through additional interventional studies in cases where additional real-world data is required. However, the statistical quality of these non-deterministic models obscures the underlying logic of causality they employ, which is explicated more succinctly in Linear Logic, process algebras, and related semantics such as Petri Nets, monoidal categories and string diagrams

And it may be altogether in the eye of the beholder. An example from a book: a car rolls in a turn; what caused it? Driving too fast, according to the police. Bad suspension, per the automotive engineer. Off-camber road, according to the road builder. And here we get contributory causes, which is to say that no cause is a cause! — tim wood

And yet their perspectives are compatible, no? Each actor is expressing the existence of a different marginal distribution conditioned upon their favourite independent variable, which are hopefully mutually consistent and can be added together into a combined model.

a subset of which are interpreted axiomatically as denoting known causal relations. — sime

Known because denoted or denoted because known? If the latter, an example, please?

the statistical quality of these non-deterministic models obscures the underlying logic of causality they employ, — sime

Thank you for making me laugh out loud!

And yet their perspectives are compatible, no? — sime

Maybe, but the message is that if all contribute to the efficient cause, then no one by itself causes anything - hence the usual "contributing cause."

It appears that "cause" in your references is a term of art. What exactly does it mean? And what do you say caused the dynamite to explode? Or might you say that depends entirely on the who and why of the asking. And if this, then it must seem that there is no cause by itself - or even a clear understanding of the event itself!

My argument here, such as it is, simply that in informal use most folks usually know what is meant by the word "cause" in context. But I think any claim that the word itself denotes any particular anything or has any central univocal meaning is untenable.

Sure. Another arbitrary factor is what we take as a single event. Is the evolution of the dinosaurs one event or lots of events?

Known because denoted or denoted because known? If the latter, an example, please? — tim wood

A good introduction is Judea Pearl's "Introduction to Causal Inference". The lesson is that causal implications cannot be derived from a statistical model without some initial causal assumptions.
Garbage causal assumptions in, garbage causal inferences out.

It appears that "cause" in your references is a term of art. What exactly does it mean? And what do you say caused the dynamite to explode? Or might you say that depends entirely on the who and why of the asking. And if this, then it must seem that there is no cause by itself - or even a clear understanding of the event itself!

My argument here, such as it is, simply that in informal use most folks usually know what is meant by the word "cause" in context. But I think any claim that the word itself denotes any particular anything or has any central univocal meaning is untenable. — tim wood

Sure, and to make matters worse, intuition is often wrong with respect to logical and statistical inference. Hence the reason why formal definitions and theorem provers are useful whereby informal causal intuition is reduced to axiomatic systems, even though philosophical dilemmas remain e.g with regard to counterfactual reasoning.

I see the PDF here:
https://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r354-corrected-reprint.pdf

It starts, "Most studies in the health, social and behavioral sciences aim to answer causal
rather than associative – questions."

And from this and what follows it's clear that causation is an absolute presupposition (AP) of her thinking and the thinking of the sciences referenced. This clarified two paragraphs later, "Section 5 relates these tools to those used in the potential-outcome framework, and offers a formal mapping between the two frameworks and a symbiosis (Section 5.3) that exploits the best features of both. Finally, the benefit of this symbiosis is demonstrated in Section 6, in which the structure-based logic of counterfactuals is harnessed to estimate causal quantities that cannot be defined within the paradigm of controlled randomized experiments. These include direct and indirect effects, the effect of treatment on the treated, and questions of attribution, i.e., whether one event can be deemed “responsible” for another."

That is, she does not question the AP itself - nor should she; APs only to be presupposed - but she is refining and making a better tool of the idea of it for the sciences for which it is an AP. Which of course does not say that cause (and effect) have any meaning outside of that context. In short, she would - should - dismiss the question of the dynamite as being unanswerable and unintelligible in her usage and context.

What critiques would you have for these definitions (all leading up to those of “cause” and “causation”):

• A given (n.): a term serving as generalized placeholder for any conceivable entity, process, event, situation, or indefinite state of being (e.g., generalized existence or inexistence)
• Effect (n.): an outcome; a result; can consist of one or more givens
• Effect (v.): to bring about; to generate; to produce
• Cause (n.): a source - consisting of one or more givens - to an effect; that which effects a result
• Cause (v.): a process in which a specified cause effects, or brings about, an effect.
• Causation (n.): a generalized process in which one or more unspecified causes bring about effects

Here keeping things as simple as possible but no simpler, I’m hoping.

If the dynamite stick was hit by lightning, then it is safe to say that the lightning caused (was the source of) the dynamite’s explosion (as outcome, aka effect). If the dynamite stick had a fuse that was lit by a human, then it is safe to conclude that the human caused (was the source of) the dynamite’s explosion (as outcome). And so forth, depending on scenario.

Yes, there is the conceivable metaphysical possibility that no causation – as here defined – occurs. To be brief, living by upholding this metaphysical possibility to be reality in non-hypocritical manners would quickly lead to death. That (what we cognize as) outcomes have (what we cognize to be) sources is indispensable to life as we know it. Hence, if we desire to live, we will assume, if not know, that causation occurs in the world.

As to probabilistic causality, I find that it shares many merits, as well as many logical detriments, with the Buddhist notion of dependent origination. But this likely furthers the subject from the OP. Interesting topic to me though.



To my mind, this is fully contingent on the types of causes that are being contemplated. Not merely on definitions but on the type or reality we deem ourselves to live in.

In a system of causal (hard) determinism, all causes will by default be transitive without exception. In the murky realms of what nowadays gets the blanket label of causal indeterminism, things can logically vary a lot more in terms of types of causes but, in short, not all causes here will be transitive (depending on indeterministic system assumed, if any).

Still, I'll argue that regardless of further conceptualization, all causes, regardless of system, will be sources to outcomes, i.e. to effects.

How many people are actually being killed by Covid-19?

Many emergency and law enforcement personnel are being taken out of commission so to speak by this virus. Spikes in crime, fire, accident and non-Covid disease-related deaths should be part of the overall pandemic syndrome (caused by collapse of basic services that lead to indirect death/injury).

Yes, we can decide on a definition and courts do it all the time. For an actor to be held responsible for something he or she negligently "causes," they must be what is called the proximate or foreseeable cause. Who defines proximate cause? most of the time a jury has to decide if something was reasonably foreseeable. From a strictly logical point of view, if there are no other intervening factors and if B has no free will, then A caused C because A caused B.