The only way to show that something is intuitive is to look at it and see if your intuition likes it. That's what "intuitive" means.

That being said, look into Aristotle's causality - there are some old, old, old folk-notions of cause that are intuitively plausible. — Pneumenon

By "intuitive" I mean something like 'imaginable' or 'intelligible', but also 'able to be comprehensibly modeled'. I think we can both imagine and comprehensibly model efficient causality in terms of forces. We can imagine formal or final causation, but only in terms of intentionality, I would argue. And we cannot model intentionality without it becoming deterministic, and thus ceasing to be truly (as we understand it in terms of freedom) intentional. I think this inability is one source of the endless free will/ determinism debate.

Why do you assume that I am not familiar with Aristotle's "four causes"?

You keep on telling me what I think and what I'd say. Yet every time you do that, you get it wrong. It might be time to stop making assumptions about what other people think. — andrewk

I mean, if your position is that you have no idea whether or not my pressing these keys has something to do with letters appearing on the screen, then I can't help you. If you told a psychologist that during an evaluation, they'd wonder if you had problems. But we both know you'd never say something like that outside of this discussion. Calling it quits for now.

I mean, if your position is that you have no idea whether or not my pressing these keys has something to do with letters appearing on the screen, then I can't help you. — Pneumenon

That is not my position, and I never said it was.

Again you are ascribing opinions to other people that they have not expressed.

I'll ascribe another one you haven't expressed: you know that you typed those words. My, aren't I presumptuous?

Where do you intend to go with that line of inquiry?

That's a different causal relationship. If we are talking about the letters which appear on the screen as someone types, we aren't just talking about an appearance of any text. We are asking if specific writing will occur.

So, for example, will the writing of Pheumenon's post still appear if he doesn't touch the keyboard? Or does the appearance of those specific letters depend upon him pressing the keys?

So, for example, will the writing of Pheumenon's post still appear if he doesn't touch the keyboard? Or does the appearance of those specific letters depend upon him pressing the keys? — TheWillowOfDarkness

'Will writing from person X appear on their screen if they don't touch the keyboard and [insert a number of constraints to rule out things like using voice-recognition software or getting somebody else to type it]?' Probably not. I thought I'd already given that answer but in case I'm misremembering, there it is.

My approach to all this is the same as that of most other people I've ever had occasion to discuss predictions and explanations with. There is nothing particularly sceptical about it, nor any particular doubt.

The only point of contention seems to be that, if we start with the perfectly concrete and definable concepts of prediction and explanation, the notion of 'causality' adds nothing to our understanding of the world and just confuses discussion of it. It also generates unnecessary arguments and lawsuits, amongst non-philosophers and philosophers alike.

I'm not quite convinced. Do we retreat to predictive talk just because of the difficulty of adequately specifying the ceteris paribus conditions in causal talk?

I expect many people believe that pressing the 'A' key should cause an 'A' to appear on screen, if everything works the way it's supposed to, but they know perfectly well that there are many things that can go wrong between keyboard and screen. Even a typical causal claim might involve a prediction that conditions will be normal, in some sense that may be difficult or even impossible to define.

You could then just absorb the causal claim into the predictive claim, but they are fundamentally different aren't they? Or are they?

The only point of contention seems to be that, if we start with the perfectly concrete and definable concepts of prediction and explanation, the notion of 'causality' adds nothing to our understanding of the world and just confuses discussion of it. It also generates unnecessary arguments and lawsuits, amongst non-philosophers and philosophers alike. — andrewk

I think that some philosophers might raise an eyebrow at your claim that explanation is "perfectly concrete and definable." The voluminous literature on scientific explanation alone would seem to indicate that it is far from settled what constitutes an explanation of some phenomenon or state of affairs.

You could then just absorb the causal claim into the predictive claim, but they are fundamentally different aren't they? Or are they? — Srap Tasmaner

I'd say they are different in that the predictive claim is clear whereas the causal claim is capable of many different interpretations. Just think of how many arguments you've been in or witnessed about whether something was somebody's fault.

Say I run into an oncoming car that turns in front of me to cross my stream of traffic, leaving me no time to avoid collision. A huge argument may ensue as to whether that driver caused my injuries. But not many would contest that, once they have turned their steering wheel, a collision can be confidently predicted.

Or another of my favourites - from the good 'ol NRA:

'Guns don't kill people. People [firing guns] kill people'

[or is it the bullets that kill people? or the wounds?]

Agreed, there are different interpretations around for explanation. Consider 'Why is the sky blue?' An answer to that that may satisfy one person may not satisfy another.

My feeling is that 'explanation' is in the eye of the explainee. That is, it is an explanation if the explainee is satisfied with it. A definition of explanation that currently appeals to me is:

A deduction that starts from premises that the explainee understands and believes, proceeds by steps that they understand and in whose validity they believe, and reaches a conclusion that is the phenomenon for which an explanation was requested.

The thing about causality is it is really outside observation and NOT about prediction at all. We can see this in how a caused event is indistinguishable from a random one in observation.

Consider an instance where letters appearing on a screen is merely a coincidence with pressing keys on a keyboard. It produces the same outcome as if pressing the keys caused the letters to appear.

The difference between causality and coincidence is instead defined in logic, between objects in the context of possible world. To say something is a cause, rather than just coincidence, is specify a logical significance of responsibility of an event.

In the case of typing on a keyboard, to say we cause letters to appear on the screen, is to specify our existence is responsible for the existence of those letters on screen. We are distinguishing if we did not type, those letters would not come to be. Rather than just about what happened, causality itself is about what didn't happen and how that relates to states.

This is why we can only test theories about causal states through falsification. Merely taking any present state following another can't distinguish between causality and coincidence.

The correlation vs causation dichotomy is one that has occupied my mind a fair bit over the last couple of years. I used to think there was a clear distinction between the two, but now I am not so sure.

It was epiphenomenalism that undid my confidence. The standard wisdom is that epiphenomenalism says consciousness is correlated with but not causative of brain activity - that a causal arrow points from activity in certain designated areas of the brain (the 'neural correlates of consciousness') to consciousness but there is no arrow in the reverse direction. But when I reflected as hard and long as I could on what that means, I was unable to find anything of substance.

If consciousness cannot occur without activity in the neural correlates and that activity cannot occur without consciousness arising, it seems to me that we cannot say either is the cause of the other. The two arise co-dependently, to use the Buddhist phrase.

As you say, we need to test theories about states through falsification. I think that process is best described in terms of the nature and persistency of the correlation, rather than getting ourselves muddled up in the philosophical vagueness of causality.

Say we have observed that phenomenon C, which we want to harness and make happen at will, usually follows phenomenon B. We have observed the two to be correlated. What we want to know is whether that correlation will continue if we induce B to happen. So we induce B under various circumstances and observe how often C follows.

The difference between our observations in the first and second phases of the project are that the observations in the first phase are of naturally-occurring, non-induced instances of B, whereas the observations in the second phase are of induced instances.

This is no philosophical nitpicking either. It is often the case in pharmaceutical research that a certain healing phenomenon is observed after ingestion of a certain plant. We isolate a chemical that is in the plant and test whether the healing still occurs if it is ingested. If that works then we test whether ingestion of a synthesised version of the chemical has the same effect. If it does we may then start producing pills with that ingredient, despite the fact that we have no idea why healing usually follows ingestion of the chemical. All we know of is a correlation. But what the laboratory research has done is confirm that the correlation remains at a useful level when ingestion of the chemical occurs in circumstances different from those in which we made the original observations.

Of course, we have greater confidence that the correlation will persist if we have a theory explaining why the healing follows the ingestion. We call that a 'mechanism'. A mechanism gives us an explanation of why the healing occurs and the ability to predict that it probably will occur. But lack of a mechanism doesn't stop us mass-marketing pills. We may lack an explanation, but we still have the prediction based on a persistent correlation, and that's what we care about.

Then we observe that nowhere in this decision process did we need to use a concept of 'cause'.

The 'correlation vs causation' distinction is able to be concretely expressed as simply whether the originally-observed correlation will continue to be observed in artificial circumstances of our making.

So two examples: consciousness and pharmaceuticals.

As for the second, I would have guessed that if you asked most researchers, they assume there is always some definite mechanism at work, but we just don't know it is. There are practical challenges to figuring out what those mechanisms are (the complexity of the systems at work, the limits of our current technology, etc.) but does anyone think there's just nothing there to know? That correlation, and that at a pretty coarse level, is the best we'll ever be able to do?

I've got nothing for you on consciousness, but I wonder if you should give it so much weight. Consciousness is some pretty weird shit, as the natural world goes, isn't it? Hard cases make bad law.

The correlation vs causation dichotomy is one that has occupied my mind a fair bit over the last couple of years. I used to think there was a clear distinction between the two, but now I am not so sure. — andrewk

OK, so mental and physical events seems to be correlated. If they are two totally different kinds of things, then it would seem to follow that there can be no causality operating between them. If they are really one thing seen under two different kinds of perspectives, and if our ways of understanding causality in each kind of perspectival context is different to the other: causes as reasons in the mental connection and causes as forces in the physical, say, then it would seem to follow that it would be to indulge in a category error to start speaking of causation from the physical to the mental and vice versa.

That said, within both contexts, the physical and the mental, there are clearly, in different ways, logical distinctions between correlation and causation; which you seem to be ignoring, or wanting to dissolve.

That said, within both contexts, the physical and the mental, there are clearly, in different ways, logical distinctions between correlation and causation; which you seem to be ignoring, or wanting to dissolve. — John

Certainly not ignoring.

I went looking for them, quite determinedly, and was surprised that I could not find them. My presupposition was that they were there waiting to be found.

If you think you have found some distinctions that go beyond the above-mentioned one of whether or not we have identified a theory/mechanism, that's great news. Let's get them out on the dissecting table and inspect them.

does anyone think there's just nothing there to know? That correlation, and that at a pretty coarse level, is the best we'll ever be able to do? — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe somebody else thinks that, but not me. If we have identified a mechanism, we have a richer understanding and a more confident basis on which to make predictions.

That's a major achievement!

My point is that we don't need a notion of causality to obtain that understanding. Of course we can label the mechanism 'causality' if we want. But that does nothing other than add a superfluous label to a concept that was already perfectly clear.

If you think you have found some distinctions that go beyond the above-mentioned one of whether or not we have a theory that describes a mechanism, that's great news. — andrewk

The distinctions are very basic.

In the physical context an efficient cause is something that acts on something else to produce a change in the latter. So, for example, the force of striking a nail with a hammer causes a nail to be driven into timber. and thus we understand the striking to be the cause. The striking of nails with hammers (or some other instrument) is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is not considered to be a mere correlation. The sound of striking is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is considered to be a mere correlation, and not a cause, of the nail entering the timber, because the sound exerts no force on the nail sufficient to drive it into the timber.

In the mental context; I might have a thought that I need to pick up food supplies for the week, a thought which causes me to go to the shopping mall. I might also have a hundred other correlated thoughts, that I might buy an ice cream, or a coffee, that I might meet someone I know, wondering what time the shops will close, whether there will be any sales, and so on, all of which thoughts are correlated with my thought of needing to pick up weekly food supplies, and hence with my going to the mall; but which are merely correlated with, and do not cause me to go to, the mall.

In the physical context an efficient cause is something that acts on something else to produce a change in the latter. So, for example, the force of striking a nail with a hammer causes a nail to be driven into timber. and thus we understand the striking to be the cause. The striking of nails with hammers (or some other instrument) is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is not considered to be a mere correlation. The sound of striking is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is considered to be a mere correlation, and not a cause, of the nail entering the timber, because the sound exerts no force on the nail sufficient to drive it into the timber. — John

I'm afraid I can't see what this account gives us that we don't already have with a simple physical theory that describes a scenario in which a hammer strikes the head of a nail, with a certain configuration of hammer, nail and wood, and predicts that the nail will enter the wood. Who needs a cause when we have a mechanism?

A far as I can see, all this description does is introduce confusion into an otherwise clear situation. for instance:

• we have the phrase 'acts on' which appears to be either undefined or a loose synonym for 'causes' and hence ties up in circularity the attempt to impart meaning to 'cause'
• why is the striking the cause and not the motions of the carpenter's arms, or the carpenter's decision to hammer in the nail, or the softness of the wood, or the manufacture of the nail or any of a thousand other things?

Looking for causes is like looking for the 'source' of a river. Most rivers come from the flowing together of many, many tributaries, starting as little trickles, which join, then join some more and keep joining until we end up with something like the Nile delta. I remember, long before I became interested in philosophy, reading about the legendary search for the Source of the Nile, and thinking what a bizarre notion that was, since in all likelihood it will have many sources, not just one. As far as I can see, the search for a cause is just as empty. We can describe the mechanism of how all the tributaries flow into one another to end up at the Nile Delta. What is there of value that can be added to that?

A far as I can see, all this description does is introduce confusion into an otherwise clear situation. for instance:

1. we have the phrase 'acts on' which appears to be either undefined or a loose synonym for 'causes' and hence ties up in circularity the attempt to impart meaning to 'cause'
2. why is the striking the cause and not the motions of the carpenter's arms, or the carpenter's decision to hammer in the nail, or the softness of the wood, or the manufacture of the nail or any of a thousand other things? — andrewk

I cannot see any force in your objections. I think they, if taken seriously, would introduced confusion where previously there was logical clarity.

1."Acts on" is a phrase we understand perfectly well. We feel our own bodies acting on and being acted upon. 'Acting on' is not a "loose synonym" for 'cause', but captures precisely the logical difference between cause (in the efficient sense, at least) and correlation.

2. The mere motion of the carpenter's arms will obviously not cause the nail to be driven, and nor will the carpenter;'s decision unless it results in the hammer striking the nail. The softness of the wood, the manufacture of the nail and "a thousand other things" are conditions, perhaps necessary, perhaps not, they are not causes in the sense that we are discussing the idea of 'cause' here. They might qualify as examples of Aristotle's 'material cause', but they do not qualify as efficient causes. The word 'efficient' expresses the idea that precisely relevant and necessary work is being done.

We can describe the mechanism of how all the tributaries flow into one another to end up at the Nile Delta. — andrewk

Seems like causation is inherent to the concept of mechanism. Why does it rain? Because the heat from the sun evaporates water into the atmosphere. Then we can go into the mechanism of how that all works with sun's radiation, water molecules, cloud formation, etc. Every single step will have inherent to it B happening because A, even if it's some A radiation and some B H20.

The overall picture is that the sun causes the Earth to heat up, which includes bodies of water, and some of that water evaporates as a result, and the moisture in the air eventually forms rain clouds.

There is no doubt that the sun is heating the earth, and if it stopped shining somehow, the Earth's temperature would drop dramatically, and the rain cycle would come to an end once the Earth's temperature had dropped to the point that evaporation no longer occurred.

That last paragraph looks like a prediction, but it's a counterfactual, because the sun has enough nuclear fuel to burn for a long time, so we can never test the actual scenario.

I don't agree with either of those points, but the key seems to be that we have different notions of clarity. Some philosophers like Aristotle's writing about causes. I find them akin to his writing about physics. For me, Aristotle is brilliant on ethics and logic, and the rest is of purely historical interest, like phlogiston.

That's OK. We can differ on that.

OK, seems as if we're done then...

How is it that you can acquire knowledge of some cause by observing it's effect? Andrewk seems to say that we never possess knowledge of some cause, just some explanation. Is he conflating knowledge with explanations?

Every single step will have inherent to it B happening because A, even if it's some A radiation and some B H20. — Marchesk

In a climate model it's going to be more like

- at step 4,983, approximately 500 million things happen
- at step 4.984, approximately 500 million different things happen, that are related to what happened in the previous step by a large, complicated system of simultaneous equations....

and so on.

It's hard to imagine something much closer to the Buddhist (and quantum mechanical) paradigm of 'everything depends on everything else' and further from the Aristotelean paradigm of 'this single localised phenomenon is caused by that single, localised phenomenon'.

If we want to say that the state of the entire system at time t was the cause of the state of the entire system at time t+1 then I'd be happy to agree, but I doubt Aristotle would like it.

My point is that we don't need a notion of causality to obtain that understanding. Of course we can label the mechanism 'causality' if we want. But that does nothing other than add a superfluous label to a concept that was already perfectly clear. — andrewk

One use of the concept, though, is to help us weed out spurious correlations.

I'm with Andrewk on this. He's not merely being pedantic. I believe he has something coherent in mind, a perspective from which the concept is a distraction that just doesn't lend itself well to effective communication. That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself.

The correlation vs causation dichotomy is one that has occupied my mind a fair bit over the last couple of years. I used to think there was a clear distinction between the two, but now I am not so sure. — andrewk

Consider me part of the camp that finds this line of thought confusing. The distinction between correlation and causation seems pretty clear to me. For instance, the symptoms of a particular illness can be said to be statistically correlated with one another, but that does not mean that they are in a relationship of causality. In actually, they are both said to be shared by a common cause, the illness itself. Although causation necessarily implies correlation, correlation does not imply causation. The former is merely the subset of the latter.

You've probably responded to this line of thought already, but I just want to get something to chew on.

That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself. — Roke

Do you doubt that the sun heats the heart? Is there anyway this is mere correlation (outside speculative metaphysics and matrix/God scenarios)?

If we want to say that the state of the entire system at time t was the cause of the state of the entire system at time t+1 then I'd be happy to agree, but I doubt Aristotle would like it. — andrewk

Some causation involves a very complex system such that we can't exactly identify what causes what, except at a high level, such as the sun warming the Earth resulting in water evaporation which leads to rain clouds.

But other events, like throwing a brick through a window, are very straight forward Aristotelian causation, unless one wants to engage in speculative metaphysics where something else, like the code in the Matrix, actually causes the glass to shatter.

So really the issue is that Aristotelian causation doesn't scale up to complex phenomena, not that causation itself is the issue.

I don't doubt for a second that weather has causes, I just doubt our ability to accurately identify all of them at any given time.

Are there non-speculative metaphysics? In a nutshell, I just don't see the distinction between cause and correlation as crisply as I used to.

I have trouble explaining myself because 1) I'm not good with words and 2) I'm coming to believe that the verbal quest for truth culminates in a tip-of-the-tongue experience. The world is utterly strange and literally beyond words. I can feel that I'm making progress in understanding, but whenever I attempt to pin it down, something seems to dissipate. To say the attempt causes it to dissipate would be yet another such attempt. Thinking in terms of 'causes' is a good example of that sort of activity.

Real truth can only be held very gently. Or so it seems to me lately..

I'm with Andrewk on this. He's not merely being pedantic. I believe he has something coherent in mind, a perspective from which the concept is a distraction that just doesn't lend itself well to effective communication. That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself. — Roke

I, for one, have not been meaning to imply that the existence of everything, in the ontological or metaphysical sense, can be explained in terms of efficient causation. But I do think that efficient causation is the only 'kind' of causation we have any kind of coherent intuitive 'grasp' of in the physical context; and I believe that is because we feel our own bodies acting upon other bodies and being acted upon by other bodies and forces such as wind, water and heat. I'm only interested in clarifying the logical difference between causation and correlation, not in blurring it.

Of course, as in the 'hammer and nail' example there are countless other conditions that must be in place to make it possible for the hammer to drive the nail, but that does not change the fact that it is the hammer that drives the nail.

I should add that I think we also find the notions of formal and final causation intuitively coherent, but only in contexts where the free purposive actions of agents that are thought as being not utterly constrained by efficient causation are posited.