Thanks for finding that quote. I am clearly wrong, apologies for my misleading earlier statement!

Oh my mistake, I thought the disagreement was about whether it was philosophy or not, not whether it was worthwhile. I know no sane philosopher who claims experimental philosophy is not philosophy.

I reckon if you used the phrase 'harmed profits' to refer to the side-effects of Greenpeace's actions it would be seen as likely intentional, but 'helped profits' it would likely be seen as unintentional. I suspect you disagree?

Practical Ethics by Peter Singer?

I would think that these decisions are subjective and personal, not factual or normative. — Olivier5

I guess our intuitions just differ there! :)

Just trying to find examples of people not in power still giving rise to the Knobe effect. This paper gives a pretty good run down of some newer surveys.
This one is interesting:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03917-2

“ACME Inc. started a new program. When launching the new program, data suggested that the program would help ACME Inc. increase profits, but that it would also [harm/help] the environment. In line with ACME Inc.’s business policies and in the interest of maximizing profits, the new program was implemented. Sure enough, the environment was [harmed/helped].”

This apparently has similar results to the original. They weren’t sure whether intentionality was seen as ‘distributive’ though in such a case i.e. that the intentions were distributed throughout members of ACME, presumably disproportionately to those in power. Anyway it looks like they go on to adjust for that and still find that non-distributive intentionality is suggested but they need further data.

In short, it seems groups can be seen as more intentional based on morals too, rather than just CEOs and generals, well morals or maybe just the words ‘harm’ and ‘help’ for other reasons.

This is an intriguing position. I would have thought it really does matter what philosophers have decided in the last few decades. Especially ABOUT philosophy. And especially to people in a philosophy forum.

Can you explain why it wouldn’t?

Oh I haven’t looked into other versions of the Knobe effect but I suspect they’re not limited to CEOs and people in power. But perhaps you’re onto something?

Popper and Rawls would have to be up there. Gettier, too, in an odd fashion. Maybe Singer and Chalmers. I think there's a bunch that may seem to have made great contributions (Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke, Lewis et al) but will end up looking on the wrong side of history.

I think I agree with something like @neomac’s intuitions here.
Doesn’t it make sense for the farmer’s self report at t1 to be about t1 and for his self report about t2 to be about t2?
Other mental states are like that e.g. at t1 he intended to go to the shops but at t2 he no longer intended to go to the shops. (Not that at t2 he never intended to go to the shops).

Thanks for the advice @Jamal I might leave this convo here. It’s been instructive though, my philosophy education is a bit piecemeal so now I feel better educated on the word ‘implies’. Cheers all!

I wonder if it is more likely you are the only one with a new insight about correlations (that correlation implies causation) or that you are using 'implies' in a non-standard way and actually agree with everybody?

You know as well as I do that you meant by imply, imply - that is, suggest — Bartricks

I'm not sure which of my uses of 'imply' you're referring to, but it doesn't matter as I've been very consistent in using it as a synonym for 'entails'. That's because I / we are talking about correlation implying something. Correlation isn't a person so it can't be said to imply something in the 'suggest' sense of the word, it implies in the formal 'entails' sense.

I can absolutely tell you that correlation does not imply causation because a standard reading of that claim would tell us all correlations are instances of causation. I know you don't believe that, so I must insist you switch to a standard use of the words: suggest for when people imply and entails for when states of affairs imply.

Such a statement about causation would be the formal ‘entail’ sense of the word. One would only really use imply as a synonym for‘suggest’ if a PERSON was doing the implying, not when state of affairs implies something.

I’m pretty sure that the strong ‘entail’ version is PRECISELY what people mean when they say correlation doesn’t imply causation.

Now it’s said so often because it is true. Unarguably true. But I don’t think it’s quite ‘banal’. It’s a point about not being able to draw causation purely from statistics. You need causal models or something else to do thst.

Oh that makes so much sense when you put it like that. I don’t know why I missed that version of implication in my internet search though. Sorry @Bartricks!

I have to say that those who say ‘correlation doesn’t imply causation’ are using the formal sense as far as I can tell!

I’ve obviously upset you but when I google I am not bringing up the same information that you are. I’m not trying to be difficult I’m just curious where you’re getting your information. I suspect it might be wrong.

I ask because a cursory search appears to confirm my intuition.

Do you have a source for this? I would use entails and implies as synonyms.

Well now I’m not sure if either it is you or I that has a non-standard understanding of ‘implies’.

I am using ‘implies’ to mean that something necessarily follows from something else. But I think you are using ‘entails’ to say the same.

You seem to be using ‘implies’ to mean something like ‘gives some evidence for’ which doesn’t seem strong enough.

Just my two cents: correlation does not imply causation, but it doesn’t imply NO causation either.

Nope I don’t think I know Karlen, but if he’s been mistaken for me he must be very handsome ;)

EDIT - I think I’ve made an error here. Please disregard.

So this is why quantum weirdness is not that weird: if we have three verbs in a sentence (a noun form as the subject, then a transitive verb, then another verb as the object) and the first action is necessary for the third it seems that it is proper to say that the action that is the first causes the action that is the third.

So for example:

If <the kicking of the ball> <forces> <the ball to go to a particular place> = the kicking of the ball <causes> the ball to go to a particular place.

If <the dropping of a vase> <helps> <the flowers to go everywhere> = the dropping of a vase <causes> the flowers to go everywhere

If <the of waving your hands> <provokes> <me to kill a man> = the waving of your hands <causes> me to kill a man

If <the eating of ice cream> <allows> <me to be happy> = the eating of ice cream causes me to be happy

Then it stands to reason that:

If <the detection of the particle> <reveals> <the particle to be at a certain place> = the detection of the particle causes the particle to be at a certain place

Is it that in any possible world, if event A happens then even B also happens - we say A causes B? — Banno

No that’s not my claim.

It’s actually more simple than that. There can be all sorts of reasons that one thing is necessary for another. In the case of the reply your post is necessary so that I can know how and when to reply.

A spark might be necessary for a fire because fires require heat to start. The dropping of a vase might be necessary for a vase to break because it needs momentum when it hits the ground, that sort of thing.

But to be clear, it’s not being necessary that makes something a cause, it’s the fact that one thing is necessary for another and that they are both particular things.

No sorry, I meant to correct myself. I would like to retract the ‘necessity between particular things’ bit.

Think I misspoke.

The claim is simply that a cause is a particular thing that is necessary for another particular thing.

It seems to me any counter example can be explained by the fact that either the proposed cause is not necessary for the effect, or that the proposed cause or effect are general things rather than particular things.

Sorry, perhaps I was unclear. I don’t mean necessary in the sense that things necessarily happen (as you say possible worlds seems to imply that very few things necessarily happen).

I mean necessary in the sense that the cause is necessary for the effect, with the added condition that both cause and effect are particular things rather than general things.

Your particular post was necessary for my particular reply therefore the post caused the reply.

I wonder if we need the rather unsatisfying and untidy family resemblance idea when my idea works perfectly well and appears more parsimonious?

Can you think of a case where my idea doesn’t hold?

Perhaps I mean necessity in a special sense, where x is necessary for y.

In that sense your post is necessary for me to to reply to it!

I still haven’t seen a convincing argument against my idea of causation!

A cause is necessity between particular things.

We need, though, to explain what I am referring to by ‘particular’ things.

A lot of words can have both a general and a particular ense. ‘A spark’ can refer to a bit of flammable material at a particular time and place. But ‘a spark’ can also refer to ANY thing that is a spark, not just a particular one.

When we say ‘a spark causes a fire’ we mean that a particular spark is necessary for a particular fire.

The classic argument against necessity as causation is that things like oxygen and fuel are necessary for the fire too, yet we wouldn’t say oxygen caused the fire, or fuel caused the fire.

Yet we have a handy answer for this: no particular oxygen is necessary for the fire (it can be any oxygen), and no particular fuel is necessary for the fire (it can be any fuel).

Note that the question of ‘what sorts of things are causes’ leaves us with a broad conception: events, actions, things can all be actions. It is necessity that is the common factor.

I'm actually well versed on these as it happens.

The fact is it is still an open question about what causation is. My ideas are closest to Mackie's INUS conditions, but I think this improves on them. He thought the conditions didn't work for general cases, but I'm saying 'cigarettes cause cancer' is NOT a general case (in some sense).

I was previously using sufficient / insufficient and words to frame causation, but now I wonder if it is better framed in terms of specific and general.

It seems that a lot of words have a specific and also a general use. ‘A spark’ can refer to a specific spark and a spark more generally, for instance.

I think an (efficient) 'cause’ is simply when something specific is necessary for something else specific. I know this sounds far too simple but have a think about it.

If we want to say that a specific spark is necessary for a specific fire to exist we say: ‘a spark caused a fire’. This distinguishes from the claim that ‘a spark’ in general is necessary for ‘a fire’ in general (which appears not to be true).

The fuel and the oxygen are also necessary for the fire, so why aren't they causes? Well fuel in GENERAL is necessary for fire in GENERAL (you don't need any particular fuel, any will do, same for oxygen, and both these are needed for any fire).

We know smoking causes cancer - but here not just any smoking is necessary for any cancer. ‘Causes’ is simply the plural of the case where specific smoking (from one person) triggers specific cancer (in the person smoking).

So 'cause' is really performing a grammar role here rather than talking about a relationship between two things.

Is it people's intuitions that the Gettier problem is solved if we are relativists regarding what is true?

What I mean by that is that while I think we converge on what 'truth' is (stuff to do with the objective world out there and so on) we don't necessarily converge on what is 'true' is. It seems to me that 'true' smuggles in the fact that the speaker might be wrong in a way that 'truth' doesn't.
I think that is relevant for the idea that knowledge is JTB. That stands for 'justified true belief' not 'justified truth belief' after all!

Is the cost of this sort of idea too high? I wouldn't want to be accused of a certain sort of relativism where there is no truth for instance.

Well there’s a long tradition about whether physics needs causation at all for instance. Arguments that we can seemingly do physics pretty well without causation might add credence to the idea that causation is not real in the sense of being a folk, or loose, way of talking about things that’s not really referring to anything useful.
You can read about some of that here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-physics/

But in general I’m finding it hard to understand what your claims are. You seem to take it for granted that there is causation - and yes I know you don’t mean a thing with spatiotemporal location - and gesture at processes. But you seemingly don’t seem to want to engage in the philosophy surrounding causation.

Now maybe you’re just unaware of the literature out there, but I can assure you that it’s a very open question about what causation is. Even those who draw up successful causal models will often tell you they don’t actually claim to know what causation is.

Now perhaps you might say ‘well it’s a process’. But what kind? How does it differ from other processes? How do I recognize that it is happening? For example people struggled for years to tell us that cigarettes cause cancer. In some ways it’s still a little mysterious and some will tell you that that statement is shorthand for ‘smoking cigarettes sometimes causes cancer’.

How would you verify when causation happens? After all it is often confused with mere correlation.

The OP asks if causation is just a word (belief) with no referent in reality — Gnomon

I fear that my ideas are being lost in translation! (In particular I’m not sure what the word ‘belief’ is doing here!)

I’m not sure I would completely sign off on ‘no referent in reality’. If I have said this I misspoke (sorry!).

Causation is still referring to a relationship between the cause and the effect but in a surprising way.

Most verbs, I would say, refer to a relationship between the subject and object of the sentence in a pretty simple way . ‘Bill kicked the ball’ tells us about the relationship between Bill, a physical thing in the world, and the ball, also a physical thing in the world.

‘To cause’ is doing something quite special I think.

It’s talking about the relationship between the WORD for the subject and the object (itself) as well as the WORD for the object and the subject (itself).

So that’s my idea, that causation is a special sort of word. Please ask more I’d be delighted to show precisely what this relationship is and how it’s parsimonious and echoes Aristotle etc, but that’s the gist.

Causality is just an abstract noun, a label of a specific quality where a process forces an effect or an other process to initiate. — Nickolasgaspar

First up, I meant causation was a thing in a very broad sense such that qualities, ideas and states can be things too, but no matter.

I’m just trying to get a sense of where your ideas map onto other thinkers and traditions.

Do you know the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy well? Might be worth checking out their entry on causation, or even this one https://iep.utm.edu/causation/

I wouldn’t disagree with most of your intuitions. There are processes, when causation happens a new process starts, that’s all perfectly fine.

I’m sure we agree on most examples of causation too. The cue ball hits a pool ball and it causes another ball to roll into a particular direction. Of course, no problem with that.

Yet philosophy is not settled on what causation IS at bottom (see that link). It might not exist at all for instance, we might not need the notion. It might have something to do with counterfactuals (which might in turn mean thoughts about possible worlds). You might think it’s about raising probabilities (after all not all instances of smoking result in cancer). You might think that’s there nothing over and above causes and effects just being adjacent in some sense. You might think it’s a pattern of one sort of thing being followed by a thing of another sort.

I’m just finding it a little hard to see which ideas you support. Do you have a thinker or a theory which resonates with you? Or is this, as with my ideas, a novel theory?

Would you not then say that elections and other particles are not real since they do not concern our day to day lives? Or have I misunderstood?

Thanks for the reply.

I think you have diagnosed the problem accurately. ‘Causation’ is indeed a noun, presumably because it refers to a thing of some sort.

The attributes of physical processes I take you to mean things like the cancer that smoking gives rise to, or the damage to the cells that then give rise to cancer or something like that?

The problem with that is that attributes of the processes of those sort I think we call the EFFECTS of causation, not causation itself. Now of course the effects of causation are very real and can go on to cause more effects as you say, but we’re no closer to saying what causation itself is.

Perhaps you mean to say something like causation occurs when a process leads to an effect? I suppose that’s true as far as things go but then we still need to explain what ‘leading to’ means, does it just mean we often see things of that type go together for instance? Does it mean the process raises the probability of the effect somehow?

Perhaps I’m simply getting hung up on the choice of words but I think the fact you’re putting things in parentheses is showing us that causation is not a quality of a process.

Right at the start you even say that qualities that are possessed by things. This means that to be a quality of a process the process should ‘have’ that quality.

But that’s not how we talk about causation, processes don’t ‘have’ causation.

You say ‘the properties of a process have the quality (attributes) to cause additional processes’.

But this doesn’t support the idea that causation is a quality. For one you’re now talking about the ‘properties’ of the process having a quality rather than the process itself. Any even then you all but admit that ‘attributes’ is the word you’re searching for rather that ‘the quality’. And even THEN the attribute IS what is doing the causing rather than being causation itself.

I’m not trying to be obtuse but I don’t think ‘quality’ is the word you’re looking for to tell us what causation is. Unless I’m missing something!

I suppose if you’re going to say causation is a quality of physical processes the question is what IS this quality of physical processes?

For some (all?) things we say a thing HAS such and such quality, say the ball has the quality of redness or something like that.

But is causation really a quality in that way?

For example, let’s assume that cigarettes cause cancer. Are you saying causation is a quality of the cancer? So in some sense the cancer HAS causation? That doesn’t seem quite right.

Is causation the quality of the cigarettes being smoked? Does this mean the smoking of the cigarettes has the quality of causation? That doesn’t right either.

I’m just looking up superdeterminism and trying to get my mind around it. Does the idea imply that causes somehow change things from one thing to another?