Domino cascade
During Michaelmas (Autumn) Term 2016 I gave a series of lectures on causation. This is a fascinating subject. Causation is one of the most fundamental relationship most of us ever deal with. We have myriad causal beliefs, so fundamental we are not even aware of them (unless they go wrong). So we believe that flipping the switch will cause the light to go on, that posting a letter will result in its receipt by the one to whom it was written…..
If you click on the link for each week you’ll find the podcasts. If you click on the ‘lecture notes’ link the notes should download immediately.
Week one: Regularity Theory
Lecture notes for lecture one: Lecture one
Causation versus Correlation
Week two: The Counterfactual Theory of Causation
Lecture notes for Lecture two:
Week three: The Necessary Connection Analysis of Causation
Lecture notes for Lecture three:
Week four: The Singularist Theory of Causation
Lecture notes for Lecture four
Week five: Time and Causation
David Hume
Lecture notes for Lecture Five
Week six: Mental Causation
Lecture notes for Lecture Six:
There is a difference between a ’cause’ and a ‘condition’. A seed of plant has a program in its DNA which causes its growth, provided that conducive soil conditions are met. The same seed, having a potential to become the cause for a future tree – is not sufficient for the event. The event is cause-condition-dependant. The troika of Cause-Condition-Effect is one occurrence characterising what we call an “event”.
Dear Safwan,
I am aware (of course) of the differences between causes and conditions, and discuss them in my podcasts.
Marianne
The existence of a seed is an INUS condition.
(I am asserting this to check my understanding.)
You have to say WHAT it is an INUS condition for……
The existence of a seed is an INUS condition for the future existence of a tree. Water, soil, sunglight, etc form a part of the total causes.
Hi Vijay, you have been working hard! Yes, you are correct. The seed is an insufficient but necessary part of a condition that is itself not necessary but sufficient for the tree to grow.
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Can you please paraphrase the following sentence which states how trumping problem is problematic for Lewis’s first theory of causation:
“There is no chain of counterfactual dependencies, furthermore, that leads back from the soldiers’ advancing to the major’s order that isn’t precisely matched by a chain of counterfactual dependencies leading back from the soldiers’ advancing to the sergeant’s order.”
Hi Vijay, I am not sure how to paraphrase it in a way that doesn’t repeat it! The idea is that when both the major and the sergeant shout ‘advance’, the soldiers advance But was the cause of their advancing the major’s order or the sergeant’s? Well, military law says that soldiers should always obey the superior officer, so it was the major’s order that caused their advance. But it is nevertheless true that had the major not shouted ‘advance’ the soldiers would nevertheless have advanced because the sergeant shouted ‘advance’.
So this is a cause of ‘pre-emptive trumping’ and the situation described is a problem for the counterfactual theory of causation. You can read more about it here: Schaffer, J., 2000a. “Trumping Preemption”, Journal of Philosophy, 9: 165–81
In your fourth lesson, you also talk about the concept of causality in science and in the case of folk.
Because I have been dealing with entomology all my life, the question of the concept of causality in determining certain species of butterflies is important to me. In my opinion, the concept of the science of causality is like a fog, the concept of folk causality is then clear, certain.
The concept of causality is then for me interested thing when people tell me that I came just in time. I’m having fun with it.