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Funny enough, reductions of the causal relation to a counterfactual one is a common theme in philosophy (and adjacently in statistical sciences - see Pearl). Mo

Funny enough, reductions of the causal relation to a counterfactual one is a common theme in philosophy (and adjacently in statistical sciences - see Pearl). Most philosophers would contend that a true counterfactual can be sufficient condition for causation, but not a necessary one. From that seed there are quite a few different accounts (David Lewis' being the most famous) that attempt to reduce cauation to counterfactual relations + something else: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/ Its still a somewhat live debate in contemporary philosophy. The medicine saved the patient's life is true if the patient would have died had the medicine not been administered. How do we determine the truth of such a counterfactual? In practice we do large scale randomised trails to attempt to simulate a counterfactual to test the causal powers of the the medince - but its probably beyond our powers to know for certain that the counterfactual is true in the singular case. Philosophers are interested in what makes a counterfactual truth or false, and whether understanding a counterfactual presupposes causation or whether a causation can be understood in terms of counterfactuals. Nobody doubts that counterfactuals and causation are releated, and few doubt that counterfactuals can be reduced to their logical or epistemic counsins.

jfengel 5y ago
The counterfactual has never seemed epistemologically satisfying to me, because of the way the influence spreads. If I had in fact flicked the light switch, what is taking up the empty space where my body would have been? What happens at the power plant which is now generating a bit more current than it was before? Implicitly there's this idea that every counterfactual can be contained and localized, but that runs counter to my understanding. Change one thing and you change the entire universe. That's true even classically -- even before you bring in quantum physics and its problems with counterfactuals. Perhaps counterfactuals are a good model of the psychology of causation. And in fact, I suspect that psychology is as deep as causation runs; it doesn't in fact have a direct physical or epistemic analogue. All of which is fine and important, but I feel like it diminishes the value of the effort put into it. It's not studying VLTIMATE TRVTH, just a quirk of how brains think about stuff. And that would mean you need to use a very different toolset to work on it.

jfengel 5y ago

The counterfactual has never seemed epistemologically satisfying to me, because of the way the influence spreads. If I had in fact flicked the light switch, what is taking up the empty space where my body would have been? What happens at the power plant which is now generating a bit more current than it was before? Implicitly there's this idea that every counterfactual can be contained and localized, but that runs counter to my understanding. Change one thing and you change the entire universe. That's true even classically -- even before you bring in quantum physics and its problems with counterfactuals. Perhaps counterfactuals are a good model of the psychology of causation. And in fact, I suspect that psychology is as deep as causation runs; it doesn't in fact have a direct physical or epistemic analogue. All of which is fine and important, but I feel like it diminishes the value of the effort put into it. It's not studying VLTIMATE TRVTH, just a quirk of how brains think about stuff. And that would mean you need to use a very different toolset to work on it.