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As far as I know it remains controversial whether causality is a topic for philosophy or science (ie do any of our most successful physical laws require the con

by nonbel 10y ago

As far as I know it remains controversial whether causality is a topic for philosophy or science (ie do any of our most successful physical laws require the concept of causality, I think not). It irks me to see that term mixed into scientific discussions, because I am sure it will just be assumed that everyone knows what they mean by "casual" and accepts it as a useful scientific concept.

nerdponx 10y ago
It sounds to me like you're arguing that we should never try to prove that anything causes anything because we don't have a good definition of causality. I hope that's not what you're saying, because it's absurd.
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"we should never try to prove that anything causes anything" I don't know about never, but the "c-word" gets thrown around way too freely in my opinion. But yea, I am saying that the most successful science has had little to nothing to do with causality. You see the focus on causality is more common in the less successful endeavors such as the social sciences, perhaps it is time to consider that the causality concept is a red herring (at least when it comes to science). To be sure, I am far from the first to entertain such thoughts: "Causality in physics has had bad press in philosophy at least since Russell’s famous 1913 remark: “The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm” (Russell 1913, p. 1). Recently Norton (2003 and 2006) has launched what would seem to be the definite burial of causality in physics. Norton argues that causation is merely a useful folk concept, and that it fails to hold for some simple systems even in the supposed paradigm case of a causal physical theory – namely Newtonian mechanics." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4690/1/CausalFundam.pdf http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4690/1/CausalFundam.pdf
  - tlarkworthy 10y ago
    Causality is central to hard science. Its why we have concepts like dependent and independent observations. We split observable dimensions into these groups so we can change the independent variable and find out their causal effect on the dependent variables. The whole reason we have "experiments" is so an experimenter can deliberately change the system in a focused way, outside of its normal dynamics, to reveal the causal structure of the system under observation. You can't do this by passively observing the system. This is why we have experiments. This is core to the scientific method.
    - nonbel 10y ago
      I don't think your argument addresses the concerns here. Here is an example: "However short we make the interval t, something may happen during this interval which prevents the expected result. I put my penny in the slot, but before I can draw out my ticket there is an earthquake which upsets the machine and my calculations. In order to be sure of the expected effect, we must know that there is nothing in the environment to interfere with it. But this means that the supposed cause is not, by itself, adequate to insure the effect. And as soon as we include the environment, the probability of repetition is diminished, until at last, when the whole environment is included, the probability of repetition becomes almost nil. In spite of these difficulties, it must, of course, be admitted that many fairly dependable regularities of sequence occur in daily life. It is these regularities that have suggested the supposed law of causality; where they are found to fail, it is thought that a better formulation could have been found which would have never failed. I am far from denying that there may be such sequences which in fact never do fail. Ic may be that there will never be an exception to the rule that when a stone of more than a certain mass, moving with more than a certain velocity, comes in contact with a pane of glass of less than a certain thickness, the glass breaks. I also do not deny that the observation of such regularities, even when they are not without exceptions, is useful in the infancy of a science: the observation that unsupported bodies in air usually fall was a stage on the way to the law of gravitation. What I deny is that science assumes he existence of invariable uniformity of sequence of this kind, or that it aims at discovering them." http://www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf http://www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf
Mathnerd314 10y ago
I recommend Causality by Judea Pearl, he has a pretty good discussion of why science is the study of causal models: https://books.google.com/books?id=LLkhAwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=LLkhAwAAQBAJ Basically, if you do not have a notion of causality, you cannot specify a predictive model, which is a pretty fundamental part of science (although, of course, not all science deals with predictive models; sometimes even finding the correlation is an achievement).
- nonbel 10y ago
  For example, take the observation of a law like PV=nRT. Does pressure cause temperature or does temperature cause pressure? The questions about causality seem to be in the domain of "not even wrong". It just isn't a topic for science. Are you saying the above law isn't science and must have no predictive skill since there is no claim of causality involved?
  - Mathnerd314 10y ago
    No, I'm saying it in fact has tons of predictive value. It makes predictions of the form: R = PV / (nT) P = nRT/V etc.
    - nonbel 10y ago
      Sure, but all the variables involve cause each other. There is no "causal content" there, I mean there is no concern for that at all. I am sure there is better discussion on this point, but for example: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/275f00/s3.html https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/275f00/s3.html
      - Mathnerd314 10y ago
        There is causal content, although not very much. The model would be something like: experiment setup -> gas dynamics -> observed measurements You would instantiate it like so: (setup apparatus such that P=1 psi T = 289 n=5 mol R=12.2) -> (solve PV=nRT for V, V = ...) -> (V = ..., other values same as in setup) But as I said, it's all discussed in Judea's book. Particularly, there is the epilogue, a reprint of this lecture: http://singapore.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/ http://singapore.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/ Slide 26 is where he brings up Russell's critique of causality. And this quote from slide 47 is Pearl's response: "Let us examine now how the surgery interpretation resolves Russell's enigma: concerning the clash between the directionality of causal relations and the symmetry of physical equations. The equations of physics are indeed symmetrical, but when we compare the phrases "A CAUSES B" vs. "B CAUSES A" we are not talking about a single set of equations. Rather, we are comparing two world models, represented by two different sets of equations; one in which the equation for A is surgically removed, the other where the equation for B is removed. Russell would probably stop us at this point and ask: "How can you talk about TWO world models, when in fact there is only one world model, given by all the equations of physics put together?" The answer is: YES. If you wish to include the entire universe in the model, causality disappears because interventions disappear - the manipulator and the manipulated loose their distinction. However, scientists rarely consider the entirety of the universe as an object of investigation. In most cases the scientist carves a piece from the universe and proclaims that piece: IN namely, the FOCUS of investigation. The rest of the universe is then considered OUT or BACKGROUND, and is summarized by what we call BOUNDARY CONDITIONS. This choice of INs and OUTs creates asymmetry in the way we look at things, and it is this asymmetry that permits us to talk about "outside intervention", hence, causality and cause-effect directionality. " And if you can't read, then here he is presenting it in a recent lecture: https://youtu.be/9YMHqO6Z7AI?t=1731 https://youtu.be/9YMHqO6Z7AI?t=1731
sporkologist 10y ago
Not sure why you are bringing philosophy into this. Science seems to be simply trying to determine cause and effect.
- nonbel 10y ago
  Because causality only seems to be an obsession of "immature" science, the more successful sciences deal with acausal quantitative relationships between different variables. I'm no expert but there is tons of stuff on this if you search: "The goal of this account of causation in science has been to reconcile two apparently incompatible circumstances. On the one hand, causes play no fundamental role in our mature science. Those sciences are not manifestly about causation and they harbor no universally valid principle of causality. On the other, the actual practice of science is thoroughly permeated with causal talk: science is often glossed as the search for causes; and poor science or superstition is condemned because of its supposed failure to conform to a vaguely specified principle of causality. I have argued that we can have causes in the world of science in same way as we can retain the caloric. There is no caloric in the world; heat is not a material substance. However in many circumstances heat behaves just as if it were a material fluid and it can be very useful to think of heat this way. It is the same with cause and effect." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1214/ http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1214/ All I'm saying is that once you start wondering a bit about this causality idea, it is really annoying to see it thrown around like something obvious.
  - sporkologist 10y ago
    Meanwhile, science is trying to determine what thing causes what other thing.
  - tremon 10y ago
    the more successful sciences deal with acausal quantitative relationships between different variables Ironically, you're confusing cause and effect (or rather, observation and result) in how scientific progress is made: the observation of correlation leads to the formulation of cause (i.e. theory), and the manipulation of specific variables leads to the validation of effect (i.e. proof). Without either, fields of science do not mature at all. Now here's the million dollar question: when it comes to complex models (like genetics, neurology or the climate), how do you isolate and manipulate specific variables to validate their effect?
snowwrestler 10y ago
Like many words, causality means different things in different contexts. It's a bug of language that's not worth getting irked about IMO. Causality within the context of scientific research almost always means variable precedence and dependency. Did observation A precede observation B? If I change A, how and when will B change? Or vice versa? That's what scientists are looking at when they study whether something is "causal." They're not trying to figure out if inductive reasoning can discover truth. They just provisionally assume it can and go from there.

by nonbel 10y ago

nerdponx 10y ago

It sounds to me like you're arguing that we should never try to prove that anything causes anything because we don't have a good definition of causality. I hope that's not what you're saying, because it's absurd.

nonbel 10y ago
>"we should never try to prove that anything causes anything" I don't know about never, but the "c-word" gets thrown around way too freely in my opinion. But yea, I am saying that the most successful science has had little to nothing to do with causality. You see the focus on causality is more common in the less successful endeavors such as the social sciences, perhaps it is time to consider that the causality concept is a red herring (at least when it comes to science). To be sure, I am far from the first to entertain such thoughts: "Causality in physics has had bad press in philosophy at least since Russell’s famous 1913 remark: “The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm” (Russell 1913, p. 1). Recently Norton (2003 and 2006) has launched what would seem to be the definite burial of causality in physics. Norton argues that causation is merely a useful folk concept, and that it fails to hold for some simple systems even in the supposed paradigm case of a causal physical theory – namely Newtonian mechanics." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4690/1/CausalFundam.pdf http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4690/1/CausalFundam.pdf
- tlarkworthy 10y ago
  Causality is central to hard science. Its why we have concepts like dependent and independent observations. We split observable dimensions into these groups so we can change the independent variable and find out their causal effect on the dependent variables. The whole reason we have "experiments" is so an experimenter can deliberately change the system in a focused way, outside of its normal dynamics, to reveal the causal structure of the system under observation. You can't do this by passively observing the system. This is why we have experiments. This is core to the scientific method.
  - nonbel 10y ago
    I don't think your argument addresses the concerns here. Here is an example: "However short we make the interval t, something may happen during this interval which prevents the expected result. I put my penny in the slot, but before I can draw out my ticket there is an earthquake which upsets the machine and my calculations. In order to be sure of the expected effect, we must know that there is nothing in the environment to interfere with it. But this means that the supposed cause is not, by itself, adequate to insure the effect. And as soon as we include the environment, the probability of repetition is diminished, until at last, when the whole environment is included, the probability of repetition becomes almost nil. In spite of these difficulties, it must, of course, be admitted that many fairly dependable regularities of sequence occur in daily life. It is these regularities that have suggested the supposed law of causality; where they are found to fail, it is thought that a better formulation could have been found which would have never failed. I am far from denying that there may be such sequences which in fact never do fail. Ic may be that there will never be an exception to the rule that when a stone of more than a certain mass, moving with more than a certain velocity, comes in contact with a pane of glass of less than a certain thickness, the glass breaks. I also do not deny that the observation of such regularities, even when they are not without exceptions, is useful in the infancy of a science: the observation that unsupported bodies in air usually fall was a stage on the way to the law of gravitation. What I deny is that science assumes he existence of invariable uniformity of sequence of this kind, or that it aims at discovering them." http://www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf http://www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf

Mathnerd314 10y ago

I recommend Causality by Judea Pearl, he has a pretty good discussion of why science is the study of causal models: https://books.google.com/books?id=LLkhAwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=LLkhAwAAQBAJ Basically, if you do not have a notion of causality, you cannot specify a predictive model, which is a pretty fundamental part of science (although, of course, not all science deals with predictive models; sometimes even finding the correlation is an achievement).

nonbel 10y ago
For example, take the observation of a law like PV=nRT. Does pressure cause temperature or does temperature cause pressure? The questions about causality seem to be in the domain of "not even wrong". It just isn't a topic for science. Are you saying the above law isn't science and must have no predictive skill since there is no claim of causality involved?
- Mathnerd314 10y ago
  No, I'm saying it in fact has tons of predictive value. It makes predictions of the form: R = PV / (nT) P = nRT/V etc.
  - nonbel 10y ago
    Sure, but all the variables involve cause each other. There is no "causal content" there, I mean there is no concern for that at all. I am sure there is better discussion on this point, but for example: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/275f00/s3.html https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/275f00/s3.html
    - Mathnerd314 10y ago
      There is causal content, although not very much. The model would be something like: experiment setup -> gas dynamics -> observed measurements You would instantiate it like so: (setup apparatus such that P=1 psi T = 289 n=5 mol R=12.2) -> (solve PV=nRT for V, V = ...) -> (V = ..., other values same as in setup) But as I said, it's all discussed in Judea's book. Particularly, there is the epilogue, a reprint of this lecture: http://singapore.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/ http://singapore.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/ Slide 26 is where he brings up Russell's critique of causality. And this quote from slide 47 is Pearl's response: "Let us examine now how the surgery interpretation resolves Russell's enigma: concerning the clash between the directionality of causal relations and the symmetry of physical equations. The equations of physics are indeed symmetrical, but when we compare the phrases "A CAUSES B" vs. "B CAUSES A" we are not talking about a single set of equations. Rather, we are comparing two world models, represented by two different sets of equations; one in which the equation for A is surgically removed, the other where the equation for B is removed. Russell would probably stop us at this point and ask: "How can you talk about TWO world models, when in fact there is only one world model, given by all the equations of physics put together?" The answer is: YES. If you wish to include the entire universe in the model, causality disappears because interventions disappear - the manipulator and the manipulated loose their distinction. However, scientists rarely consider the entirety of the universe as an object of investigation. In most cases the scientist carves a piece from the universe and proclaims that piece: IN namely, the FOCUS of investigation. The rest of the universe is then considered OUT or BACKGROUND, and is summarized by what we call BOUNDARY CONDITIONS. This choice of INs and OUTs creates asymmetry in the way we look at things, and it is this asymmetry that permits us to talk about "outside intervention", hence, causality and cause-effect directionality. " And if you can't read, then here he is presenting it in a recent lecture: https://youtu.be/9YMHqO6Z7AI?t=1731 https://youtu.be/9YMHqO6Z7AI?t=1731

sporkologist 10y ago

Not sure why you are bringing philosophy into this. Science seems to be simply trying to determine cause and effect.

nonbel 10y ago
Because causality only seems to be an obsession of "immature" science, the more successful sciences deal with acausal quantitative relationships between different variables. I'm no expert but there is tons of stuff on this if you search: "The goal of this account of causation in science has been to reconcile two apparently incompatible circumstances. On the one hand, causes play no fundamental role in our mature science. Those sciences are not manifestly about causation and they harbor no universally valid principle of causality. On the other, the actual practice of science is thoroughly permeated with causal talk: science is often glossed as the search for causes; and poor science or superstition is condemned because of its supposed failure to conform to a vaguely specified principle of causality. I have argued that we can have causes in the world of science in same way as we can retain the caloric. There is no caloric in the world; heat is not a material substance. However in many circumstances heat behaves just as if it were a material fluid and it can be very useful to think of heat this way. It is the same with cause and effect." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1214/ http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1214/ All I'm saying is that once you start wondering a bit about this causality idea, it is really annoying to see it thrown around like something obvious.
- sporkologist 10y ago
  Meanwhile, science is trying to determine what thing causes what other thing.
- tremon 10y ago
  the more successful sciences deal with acausal quantitative relationships between different variables Ironically, you're confusing cause and effect (or rather, observation and result) in how scientific progress is made: the observation of correlation leads to the formulation of cause (i.e. theory), and the manipulation of specific variables leads to the validation of effect (i.e. proof). Without either, fields of science do not mature at all. Now here's the million dollar question: when it comes to complex models (like genetics, neurology or the climate), how do you isolate and manipulate specific variables to validate their effect?

snowwrestler 10y ago

Like many words, causality means different things in different contexts. It's a bug of language that's not worth getting irked about IMO. Causality within the context of scientific research almost always means variable precedence and dependency. Did observation A precede observation B? If I change A, how and when will B change? Or vice versa? That's what scientists are looking at when they study whether something is "causal." They're not trying to figure out if inductive reasoning can discover truth. They just provisionally assume it can and go from there.