he best swipe I have at it right now is to say that causation is a tension between those properties of a thing that (more or less) depend on its present context, and those properties of a thing that are (more or less) independent of its present context. — Pneumenon

I think I'd modify this a bit to recognize that there is never not a context to begin with, so that it's no longer a question of 'independence', but of what variety of context is in play. The term I prefer a bit better would be that of conditioning (insofar as one cannot separate a thing from it's conditions). Causality - or at least efficient causality - is always conditioned by the environment (or 'system') in which any causal event takes place: change the conditions, and the 'cause' might act entirely differently (to the point where it may not act to cause anything at all).

Perhaps another nice way to think about efficient causality is not as something inexorable (Cause A will always necessarily give rise to Effect B), but as a trigger that is effective only in the right conditions (so efficient causality can look inexorable when conditions are stable). Mario Bunge gives the example of an arrow released from a bow, which requires the interplay between both cause and process for any effect to take hold: "The act of releasing the bow is usually regarded as the cause of the arrow’s motion, or, better, of its acceleration; but the arrow will not start moving unless a certain amount of (potential elastic) energy has been previously stored in the bow by bending it; the cause (releasing the bow) triggers the process but does not determine it entirely. In general, efficient causes are effective solely to the extent to which they trigger, enhance, or dampen inner processes; in short, extrinsic (efficient) causes act, so to say, by riding on inner processes." (Causality and Modern Science, p. 195).

I think once you start thinking of causes as embedded in larger contexts, systems, or processes which in turn condition efficient causality, you can start to rethink alot of the ways in which classical problems of causality are generally posed. For example, questions around infinite 'causal chains' (and the 'free will' vs. 'determinism' baggage that it carries in it's wake) can come to be seen as particularly naive, insofar as it no longer becomes an issue of unbreakable 'chains' of causality but the complex interplay of processes and causes which can overlap, interfere, condition and change one other (causality becomes 3D instead of 2D, or even multi-dimensional across different scales). The point would not be to 'dismiss' efficient causality - as if one could ever do so - but to instead situate its instances and recognize the contingencies and necessities which always condition it's operation.

(Y)

I agree with most of this, but I am somewhat leery of over-emphasizing context. There is never not a context, I grant you. There's also never not individual entities. Chicken or egg.

More precisely, there is such a thing as independence, simply because not every change in context obliterates a given particular. But independence is not absolute, and neither is context. That's why I prefer to see causation as a process of the world working-through the tension between particulars and their contexts.

To clarify a bit: there's a chicken-or-egg thing going on with particulars and their contexts. You don't solve the chicken-or-egg problem to figure out causality. Causality just is the chicken-or-egg problem.

My thoughts are always drawn back to time when it comes to understanding causality. It's the explanation which makes sense of change over time. We have events, encounters, and actions, all of which imply a variety of entities. In making sense of these we create stories. And some of these stories -- we might say the more reliable kind, perhaps, or the de-personified stories -- are causal stories, where the plot is fixed.

So I think, rather than defining causality in a metaphysical way I'd take a stab at saying it is more a feature of our knowledge, how we create knowledge, and what counts as a satisfying explanation of change over time. I think, then, that the question of understanding causality becomes one of characterizing time.

Causality is a form of analysis. We take the clock apart to understand it.

A sign of this is that conceptually, cause and effect are interdependent just as subject and object are.

I think, then, that the question of understanding causality becomes one of characterizing time. — Moliere

This was one of the catalysts for the OP. I'm thinking of the tension between "eternal" laws (e.g. math, physics) and events embedded in time. Becoming, on this view, isn't a "falling away" from Being. It's rather the tension between the ontic and the ontological, to use Heidegger's terminology. Particular vs. universal, general vs. specific. I think of causality as one way that this tension unfolds, the constant working-through and tug back and forth between individual and context. Causality is not a creature of becoming opposed to being, but is the tension between them - or, to shy away from a strict definition, is one way in which that tension "shows up" for us.

Causal processes take time to happen, of course, so they're clearly related. Time is a constitutive world-feature, inasmuch as you can't have a world without it, or at least, not a world like this one. I think time is something that characterizes our lived experience as creatures subject to becoming, and here I'm talking about felt time, the feeling you have right now of time "passing."

There is never not a context, I grant you. There's also never not individual entities — Pneumenon

Agreed, but the point is rather that the specific phenomenon of efficient causality is what takes place precisely at the intersection or the meeting point between the two: efficient causality just is cause + system. It's not chicken or egg: it's chicken and egg, to mess up the metaphor. The temporarily involved is not linear but contemporaneous. Or, to paraphrase Kant, causes without conditions are impotent, conditions without causes are ineffectual. Perhaps part of the problem is grammatical, insofar as it's too easy to speak of 'cause' as an independent entity, whereas the formula ought to be, in set theoretic terms: efficient causality={cause, condition}.

The question is whether contexts themselves consist in nothing more than networks of efficient causal interactions. Is the whole really something more than the sum of all the parts and their efficiently causal interactions or does it merely appear to be so due to the limitations of our understanding?

I think we agree here, although our terminologies have minor diifferences.

That being said - and this is coming from someone with an analytic background - I think it's a waste of time to try and "do causality" with FOPL. You can do specific instances of causality and understand certain laws using math (physics!), but FOPL will get you nowhere. People have tried that for a long time, and it runs into an intractable tangle as soon as things get complex (again, Mackie's work and those who responded to him). I think that, if we want a general understanding and perspective (not "theory") on causality, we need something vague enough to make various causal processes "show up for us" as causal, but specific enough to throw some light on them. That's a delicate dance.

Perhaps part of the problem is grammatical, insofar as it's too easy to speak of 'cause' as an independent entity, whereas the formula ought to be, in set theoretic terms: efficient causality={cause, condition}. — StreetlightX

In addition to grammar, one big problem is that everyday paradigmatic instances of causation that are readily visible to us fit the "billiard ball" image quite well: rock hits window, window breaks. How about evolutionary biology or something like that? A notion of causality derived from the former will break down when applied to the latter, as we've both observed in this thread.

Efficient causation, I think, is basically a heuristic. An object interacts with its environing system and change happens. We observe this interaction and parse out a relevant characteristic of the object/system interaction that we're interested in (usually something we want to control). This characteristic is then sedimented, in our minds at least, as the efficient cause.

This goes back to a debate you and I had on the old board about causation. I posited that any event is the result of a vast history of changes that eventually led to that event in a manner reminscent of light cones in physics. You stated that there was nothing in my account that qualified as "causation." I think I agree with you that there was no efficient causation in it, but I don't think that efficient causation is a paradigm of cause - at most, it's a special case that we happen to be familiar with because of the kinds of organisms we are. The problem with my old account was that I was taking a FOPL-esque approach, which, as I said above is not useful in this context.

I think this falls into the same trap I mentioned in the OP. "Is the system more than the sum of its parts?" is like asking "Is any single part something besides a component in a system?" The system does what it does based on isolated interactions; the isolated interactions are the way they are because of the system. Trying to decipher this to get at causality doesn't work, because this tension between local and global is causality.

what is a way of approaching causality that enables us to understand diverse varieties of cause in a unifying way? — Pneumenon

Maybe one approach would be to ask, instead of the cause of why something happens, ask for the reason that it happens. They're sometimes the same, but they're sometimes not. One example that might draw out the difference it the two possible responses to the question 'why is the water boiling?' One answer is: water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and it's being heated by an electric current. Another answer is: I am boiling the water because I intend to make tea. It's a trivial example but nevertheless makes a distinction between efficient and formal causation in a pragmatic way.

The first kind of causation is generally more specific and is often the subject of scientific analysis - what causes this malady; why do continents move; why do planetary orbits have the form they do. I think that's the source of a lot of your 'bottom-up billiard ball theorising'.

Whereas contemplation of the 'principle of sufficient reason' is obviously going to be a lot more speculative, because you might encounter questions of the kind 'why is there something rather than nothing' or 'why did intelligent life evolve', and other such questions which are generally in the province of metaphysics and philosophy rather than science.

I think it's a waste of time to try and "do causality" with FOPL. — Pneumenon

Heh, you wouldn't catch me dead doing almost anything with FOPL, so I'm on board with you on this one.

In addition to grammar, one big problem is that everyday paradigmatic instances of causation that are readily visible to us fit the "billiard ball" image quite well: rock hits window, window breaks. How about evolutionary biology or something like that? A notion of causality derived from the former will break down when applied to the latter, as we've both observed in this thread. — Pneumenon

To follow through on this - along with your intuition that efficient causation is a 'heuristic' - I would put it that these 'readily visible' instances of causation are such precisely because they take place against a stable 'background' of no-less-causal factors that are bracketed out for the sake of our analysis. Aristotle's fourfold catalog of causality - formal, efficient, final and material - was meant to get precisely at this point: yes, the billiard ball hit the other billiard ball and 'causes' it to move, but causally significant too is say, the material integrity of the ball such that it doesn't shatter when hit, the tactile qualities of the table surface which enables the balls to move smoothly across it, the temperature of the room - not situated on the sun - so that the whole set-up doesn't simply melt.

Seen from this angle, there isn't anything that isn't causally significant in this scenario, and the point of analysis is to make a decision as to what factors we want to hold stable - what we want to background in order to bring out a foreground - such that we may make a conclusion about something or another. Hence the qualification of scientific experiments that results are always derived ceteris paribus - 'all other things held equal'. This 'holding stable of a background' is what Apo consistently calls an 'epistemic cut', and it marks our own imbrication in our objects of analysis. Susan Oyama, writing specifically in the context of evolutionary biology in fact (her question not being that of efficient causality per se, but on causality tout court), makes this point very nicely:

"To gain information we need to specify a context and a set of possibilities. It is in this sense that organisms generate information and it is in much the same sense that scientists do. Events do not carry already existing information about their effects from one place to the next, the way we used to think copies of objects had to travel to our minds for us to perceive them. They are given meaning by what they distinguish. Thus we find that a gene has different effects in different tissues and at different times, a stimulus calls out different responses, including no response, at different times or in different creatures, and an observation that is meaningless or anomalous at one stage of an investigation or to one person becomes definitive under other circumstances. A difference that makes a difference at one level of analysis, furthermore, may or may not make a difference at another." (The Ontogeny of Information, p. 185)

Importantly, this need to specify context does not mean that efficient causation is a mere (human?) heuristic; as Oyama notes, this selectivity is something that nature already does: "For coherent integration to be accomplished, an investigator must do by will and wit what the developing organism does by emerging nature: sort out levels and functions and keep sources, interactive effects, and processes straight." The affective capacities of 'natural' things already carry out a selection, as it were, of what are and are not causally significant, in a way that human analysis merely extends upon or harnesses for our own (scientific/investigative) reasons. We just happen to have a greater creative scope with respect to how we go about making those selections: devising apparatuses of experiment and observation, etc, in a way that natural organisms are not always able to do.

Oyama once more: "This is not to say that selection of variables must be random or that analysis is impossible. It is to suggest that guidance is more likely to come from the system under investigation than from some more abstract assumption about genetic or environmental influences. Fine investigators have always been guided by good intuitions about what their phenomenon is "paying attention" to ... Scientific talent is partially a knack for reading one's particular system productively."

Good stuff, SX. I am, overall, suspicious of much discussion about causation held over the past few hundred years because it seems to take for granted that everything reduces to efficient cause in the final analysis, which is just not true. I strongly suspect that this is the root of goofy reductionist theories that claim that causation only happens between fundamental particles or whatever - a dogmatic reduction of every instance of causation to efficient cause.

In regards to the last remark quoted from Oyama, I think that a good analysis of causation in a system depends on two things. First, you need a good "nose" for the level of invariance in the relevant background conditions - that is, when you use a ceteris paribus, you have to have a good estimate of how likely it is that everything else really will be held the same. Second, you have to be sensitive to scope. Anything that posits an effect on a particular scale has to take into account causes/conditions on that scale. If I claim that a riot in a small town will spread across a nation, I have to take into account conditions in the rest of the nation, for example.

One place where this really irks me is getting causation backward and, more importantly, confusing one's mode of knowing with the thing known. There is a difference between knowing that there is fire because you see smoke and assuming that smoke causes fire (or, indeed, that fire causes smoke). The post hoc ergo propter hoc is a more insidious and subtle fallacy than you might think - it's not just about people taking statistics the wrong way.

For an example of how it can be insidious (that relates to our discussion of causality), consider this statement: "Every time I've seen A, I also see B." Some smartass tells you that this is just "anecdotal evidence." The correct reply (which people always seem to miss) is this: "What are the odds that I would always see A and B together if one did not cause the other?" That is how you know when a anecdote comprises a data point, I think.

(Sorry if this is all a little vague - I am somewhat sleep-deprived right now)

Your quest to reconceptualize causation is a little misguided, I think, in that the concept you are looking for is just explanation. Explanation is a general concept, and it takes different forms and uses different techniques. Cause is often used synonymously with reason, explanation. But, in physical sciences especially, it is also used in a more narrow sense - which is what you dismissively refer to as "billiard-ball causation" (or, less dismissively, as efficient causation).

Explanation in sciences takes the form of theories. A theory is wholistic, it does not come down to isolated causes and effects. Theories that describe a system's dynamics are often - but not always - causal (and not all theories are dynamical). Their causal character may owe something to our preference for a certain kind of historical narrative, as suggests, but it can't be just that: reality is not so flexible as to accommodate any mode of description for which we might have a preference. And where did this preference come from in the first place? The causal character of a lot of physical theories has to do with the causal character of interactions that occur in our universe: there is an arrow of time; interactions are local; and influences propagate at a finite speed. As a result, we can show how events are shaped by proximate events in their past.

(Quantum physics complicates this idea of causal interactions, but does not necessarily destroy it. It prompts us to think more carefully about locality, interactions, and influences.)

Efficient causation, I think, is basically a heuristic. — Pneumenon

Yes, in the sense in which we tend to talk about causation, focusing attention on the most relevant events (from our point of view) and bracketing out others. But, as I think is also saying, this is no accident, no mere whim. The world is such that, while being wholistic, it is quite non-uniform. Just as its material fabric tends to cluster into things, atoms, its interactions also often lend themselves to such heuristic analyses in terms of prevailing causes.

Out of curiosity, do you have any way to avoid this type of reductionism?

Strongly suspect that this is the root of goofy reductionist theories that claim that causation only happens between fundamental particles or whatever - a dogmatic reduction of every instance of causation to efficient cause.

Because it seems like once we make this reduction - into the particle world - then all Aristotelian causes begin to fall apart? Particles causation doesn't seem to make sense of certain formal, material, or final causes?

I'm also a little wary of an explanation of causality being explainable on a particle level? Because these mechanical explanations could just keep going ad-infintum if we go through this bottom-up route. And bottom-up causality seems to be a bit spooky.

Maybe one approach would be to ask, instead of the cause of why something happens, ask for the reason that it happens. They're sometimes the same, but they're sometimes not. One example that might draw out the difference it the two possible responses to the question 'why is the water boiling?' One answer is: water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and it's being heated by an electric current. Another answer is: I am boiling the water because I intend to make tea. It's a trivial example but nevertheless makes a distinction between efficient and formal causation in a pragmatic way.

The first kind of causation is generally more specific and is often the subject of scientific analysis - what causes this malady; why do continents move; why do planetary orbits have the form they do. I think that's the source of a lot of your 'bottom-up billiard ball theorising'. — Wayfarer

Asking "why", or "how" is the same as asking the "reason" something happens. I still don't see a difference between "efficient" cause and any other cause. Your intent preceded all these other causes that end up leading to the effect of making tea. Your intent still had to move your body to the kitchen, get out the pot, fill it with water, put it on the stove, turn the stove on, put the tea in the water, etc. If just one of these things don't get done, then you won't have tea. The tea doesn't make itself. The tea in the future doesn't bring all these causes to fruition. After all, we may fail to make tea as something may interrupt us and cancel our tea-making. In other words, intent doesn't always bring what is projected into view. Actually, intent is the only cause that often fails in producing the intended effect. That doesn't seem to happen with the other kinds of causes we observe in nature. This is because intent is really just a prediction.

I think this falls into the same trap I mentioned in the OP. "Is the system more than the sum of its parts?" is like asking "Is any single part something besides a component in a system?" The system does what it does based on isolated interactions; the isolated interactions are the way they are because of the system. Trying to decipher this to get at causality doesn't work, because this tension between local and global is causality. — Pneumenon

The problem is that we never know the whole system. An enormous part of it is always inferred from what we do 'know'. Causation itself is inferential. We can think of causation at any scale; the parts aggregate into wholes, into what are themselves micro-contexts; but when it comes to trying to understand how such aggregations are formed, it is always (insofar as we can understand it at all) in terms of efficient causation. Efficient causation is the understanding of bodies exerting influence upon one another via energy exchange. we kind of get that because we directly experience our own bodies as interactively affecting other bodies and forces and affected by them. Do we have any other intelligible model of causation?

I think the only idea we have of any form of causation beyond the efficient is the idea of lawful action, or 'final' causation, and I don't believe we have a really clear understanding of that at all. So I would say the only causation we can model, on every scale, is efficient causation. That is not to say that our models represent exactly what is being modeled, though. This is glaringly obvious in that we can model nature in such a way as to be intelligible to us only as deterministic, but modern physics seems to suggest that it is "really" indeterministic.

Explanation is only different from causation when you are explaining what something is. When you're explaining why something is a certain way, the lines become very blurry.

The mistake is thinking we need to know the whole system to know what's happening. It's flawed to think of a cause as a origin point which made everything.

Is any cause an origin which destined everything? If we stop to think about this, it's pretty obviously absurd. Consider God at the beginning of the universe. God lets off the Big Bang. Is this enough to define all future events of the world? Can everything state of our world be described by those initial states of the universe triggered by God?

No, they can't. To define everything that happens, many more states are required, many more causes (which are not God's act of creation) need to occur. Before the present, many causes need to act, to form the present world.

If I'm to make the post, millions upon million of people have made specific choices, restricted others in certain ways, to cause this state. Change many of them, I wouldn't be here at all. Causality is not singular. Our world is a sum of countless causes, which are constantly emerging and triggering new states (some of which we don't expect).

So what is a cause? If it's not the origin of everything, what is it? Clearly, causes are about forming one state rather than another. We point out casualty to identify responsibility for the existence of one state rather than another. How much to we need to know to be aware of a cause? What does it take, for example, hitting someone face will cause them pain?

Hardly anything. No-one needs to understand the origin of the universe to know hitting someone causes pain. It only takes awareness of the cause (hitting someone in the face with your first) and the resulting effect (the victim feels pain). All that's required is definition of an individual state (cause) which results in another (effect). "The whole" doesn't matter. It's is irrelevant. In any case, it's individual states that do the work of causality, not "the whole."

In causality, there is no aggregation of how it is all formed. There are only individual causes and effect, each responsible for themselves. Causality is "deterministic," as is required for states to set other in motion.

But, contrary to the classical understanding, causality is also indeterministic. Since any casual relationship is a matter of an individual causal state and an individual effect state, there is no "whole" or rule that sets out what must be caused. At any time, the causality may zig rather than zag (as we expected), for each emerging causal relationship has no dependence on what happened in the past.

Out of curiosity, do you have any way to avoid this type of reductionism? — Marty

I haven't heard any convincing arguments for it. The ones I hear can easily be flipped around: "Everything your body does boils down to the interaction of its fundamental particles." Flip it around: "Any fundamental particle in my body does what it does as a result of its interactions with the particles around it."

Any attempt to boil this stuff down to fundamental particles can be bounced back up to a higher scale in analogous manner. There's just no reason to be that kind of reductionist.

Well. This would be the set of all fundamental particles. Not a aggerate within a certain area. What then?

Explanation is only different from causation when you are explaining what something is. When you're explaining why something is a certain way, the lines become very blurry. — Pneumenon

I don't understand the distinction.

That is not to say that our models represent exactly what is being modeled, though. This is glaringly obvious in that we can model nature in such a way as to be intelligible to us only as deterministic, but modern physics seems to suggest that it is "really" indeterministic. — John

Physics constructs intelligible models (what else?), and some of these models happen to be probabilistic (stochastic). Quantum physics is not the first or the last physical theory to have stochastic elements - before that there was (and still is) statistical thermodynamics. Stochasticity is fairly common in applied physics and engineering. It is intelligible and manageable.

I'm not sure how to take this. You don't understand the difference between saying what something is and saying why it's that way?

I'm not sure how to take this. You don't understand the difference between saying what something is and saying why it's that way? — Pneumenon

Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. Also, I am not sure whether you think you are explicating preexisting meanings or inventing your own.

I haven't heard any convincing arguments for it. The ones I hear can easily be flipped around: "Everything your body does boils down to the interaction of its fundamental particles." Flip it around: "Any fundamental particle in my body does what it does as a result of its interactions with the particles around it."

Any attempt to boil this stuff down to fundamental particles can be bounced back up to a higher scale in analogous manner. There's just no reason to be that kind of reductionist. — Pneumenon

Talk of "fundamental particles" and of "higher scales" is really just talk about different perspectives of the same thing. Different perspectives can be in different locations of the same size scale, or from the from different size scales. Your argument is derived from the idea that any "view" can only be a anthropomorphic one - one that only exists on our time and size scale, with the tiniest things that we can observe (tiny compared to us) being "fundamental" while the large things (large compared to us) are "higher scale".

Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. Also, I am not sure whether you think you are explicating preexisting meanings or inventing your own. — SophistiCat

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what to say. "What" and "why" are two different English words. That's all.

Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. — SophistiCat

We can ask why stochastic models work for certain physical phenomenon. Does the indeterminism of QM represent our ignorance, or something fundamental about the world?

People, including physicists, have asked this sort of question, and debated the proposed answers.

It seems to me that you would have an incomplete explanation as to what something is without the why it is that way.