Causality Attribution Law Philosophy Aristotle Nihilism And

The Differentia (distinguishing properties/characteristics) of Causality which all causal relations have in common:

But this definition is somewhat circular; what does it then really mean to say that A is a reason that B occurs? An important question in philosophy and other fields is to clarify the relationship between causes and effects, as well as how (and even if!) causes can bring about effects.

While the perceived observance of causality is quite possibly the most basic pattern in human experience, David Hume held that causes and effects are not real (or at least not knowable), but imagined by our mind to make sense of the observation that A often occurs together with or slightly before B. All we can observe are correlations, not causations.

See also Categorical imperitive; Causality loopA temporal causality loop is a theoretical phenomenon, which is said to occur when a chain of cause-effect events is circular. For instance, if event A causes event B, and event B causes event C, and event C causes event A, then these events are said to b; ChanceChance can be used in any of the following contexts: Probability Luck Randomness Chance is also a 2002 movie starring Amber Benson.; Chaos theoryChaos theory in mathematics and physics, deals with the behaviour of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that (under certain conditions) exhibit the phenomenon known as chaos most famously characterised by sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly; ConsequentialismConsequentialism is the belief that what ultimately matters in evaluating actions or policies of action are the consequences that result from choosing one action or policy rather than the alternative. Defining consequentialism Consequentialism is sometime; DependencyIn project management, a dependency is a link amongst a project's terminal elements. There are four kinds of dependencies with respect to ordering terminal elements (in order of decreasing frequency of use): # Finish to start (FS) # A FS B B doesn't start; DeterminismPhilosophy of science Metaphysics Determinism is the philosophical doctrine which claims that every physical event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. The principal consequences of this; Free willFree will is the philosophical doctrine that our choices are, ultimately, "up to us. Consequently, an unfree action must be somehow "up to" something else. The phrase "up to us" is vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretat; Global warming controversy; Initiative; Interaction; Linear regression; Logic; post hoc ergo propter hoc; Randomness; Synchronicity;

1 Attribution

Attribution Theory is the theory concerning how people explain individual occurances of causation. Attribution can be external (assigning causality to an outside agent or force - claiming that some outside thing motivated the event) or internal (assigning causality to factors within the person - taking personal responsibility or accountability for one's actions and claiming that the person was directly responsible for the event). Taking causation one step further, the type of attribution a person provides influences their future behavior.

The intention behind the cause or the effect can be covered by the subject of action (philosophy). See also Accident; Blame; Intent; Responsibility;

2 Law

According to law and jurisprudence, legal cause must be demonstrated in order to hold a defendant liable for a crime or a tort (ie. a civil wrong such as negligence or trespass). It must be proven that causality, or a 'sufficient causal link' relates the defendant's actions to the criminal event or damage in question.

3 Philosophy

In a strict reading, if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In this sense, sex does not cause pregnancy, nor does smoking cause cancer. In everyday usage, we therefore often take "A causes B" to mean "A causes an increase in the probability of B".

The establishing of cause and effect, even with this relaxed reading, is notoriously difficult, expressed by the widely accepted statement " correlation does not imply causation". For instance, the observation that smokers have a dramatically increased lung cancer rate does not establish that smoking must be a cause of that increased cancer rate: maybe there exists a certain genetic defect which both causes cancer and a yearning for nicotine.

Alternatively, A may be:

one of many possible causes of B,
a single step along a causal chain (sex often leads to release of sperm, which can lead to the combination of sperm and egg, and the combination sperm and egg leads to pregnancy)
one of many factors which, when combined, lead to B

Another complication is typified by the example of the moon's gravity. It isn't accurate to say, "the moon exerts a gravitic pull and then the tides rise." Gravity, rather, is a law expressing a constant observable relationship among masses, and the movement of the tides is an example of that relationships. There are no discrete events, "pulls" that can be said to precede those other events, high tides!

3.1 Aristotle

Aristotle suggested four types of cause for a thing which exists: Material, Efficient, Final and Formal.

Consider the OSI Model as it applies to viewing this page on your machine. The thing which exists is the page on the machine. The four causes are:

The material cause is the substance from which something is made, e.g. the material cause of HTTP message on your screen is the disk drives, routers, the network wiring, the detail of every microchip between server and client, and the phosphors or LCDs on your screen.

The efficient cause goes from bottom to top, and is the force or agent that produces a change or a result, e.g. HTTP messages on your screen are exchanges via a TCP connection. The TCP connection is established via IP packets. The way that IP packets are transmitted is via (for instance) ethernet. So the TPC connection, the IP packet, and the ethernet connection are all efficient causes.

The final cause goes from top to bottom, and is the end, design, or object for which a thing is done (or exists): the reason that the TCP connection contains what it does is becuse the HTTP session needs it that way. The 'reason' that that IP packet looks like that is because the TCP protocol requires it. The final cause for HTTP messages is transmission of information to a user.

The formal cause is the sum of all elements in a conception that make the thing conceieved to be that which it is, i.e. each separate protocol for the various layers above that give existence to the HTTP message.

Note that cause does not imply a temporal relation between the cause and the effect. See supervenience.

3.2 Nihilism and Causality

Also see, Causality and Structuralist Theory

Nihilists subscribe to a world-view in which the universe is nothing but a chain of meaningless events following one after another according to the law of cause and effect. According to this worldview there is no such thing as " free will", and therefore, no such thing as morality of a moral God. Learning to bear the burden of a meaningless universe, and justify one's own existence, is the first step toward becoming the "overman" that Nietzsche speaks of extensively in his philosophical writings.

As an appropriate "response" to the meaningless causality of the universe, nihilists recommend: courage and disillusion. Nietzsche's life provides an object lesson for those who are wary of nihilism, who maintain that such lives end quite typically in madness and chaos.

4 Programming

The classic IF/THEN statement in most programming languages is a perfect example of simplified causality: If A is true, then B will occur. This can be expanded using Boolean algebra: If A and B are both true, then C will occur; If either A or B is true, then C will occur.

5 Religion and Theology

5.1 The existence of God

One of the classic arguments for the existence of God is known as the " Cosmological argument" or " First cause" argument. It works from the premise that every natural event is the effect of a cause. If this is so, then the events that caused today's events must have had causes themselves, which must have had causes, and so forth. If the chain never ends, then one must uphold the hypothesis of an "actual infinite," which is often regarded as problematic, see Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel. If the chain does end, it must end with a non-natural or supernatural cause at the start of the natural world -- e.g. a creation by God.

Sometimes the argument is made in non-temporal terms. The chain doesn't go back in time, it goes downward into the ever-more enduring facts, and thus toward the timeless.

Two questions that can help to focus the argument are:

1) What is an event without cause?

2) How does an event without a cause occur?

5.2 Karma

Karma is the belief held by some major religions that a person's actions cause certain effects in future incarnations, positively or negatively.

5.3 Reversed causality

Some modern religious movements have postulated along the lines of philosophical idealism that causality is actually reversed from the direction normally presumed. According to these groups, causality does not proceed inward, from external random causes toward effects on a perceiving individual, but rather outward, from a perceiving individual's causative mental requests toward responsive external physical effects that only seem to be independent causes. These groups have accordingly developed new causality principles such as the doctrine of responsibility assumption.

6 Science

Using the Scientific method, scientists set up experiments to determine causality in the physical world. Certain elemental forces such as gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism are said to be the causes of all other actions in the universe.

See also Conditioning; Placebo; Placebo Effect ;

6.1 Physics

For a discussion of how causality resonates in the field of physics, see causality (physics)

7 Statistics

In statistics, it is generally accepted that observational studies (like counting cancer cases among smokers) can give hints, but can never establish cause and effect. The gold standard for causation here is the randomized experiment: take a large number of randomly selected people, divide them into two groups, force one group to smoke and prohibit the other group from smoking (ideally in a double-blind setup), then determine whether one group develops a significantly higher lung cancer rate. Obviously, for ethical reasons this experiment cannot be performed, but the method is widely applicable for less damaging experiments.

That said, under certain assumptions, parts of the causal structure among several variables can be learned from full covariance or case data by the techniques of Path analysis and more generally, Bayesian networks. Generally these inference algorithm s search through the many possible causal structures among the variables, and remove ones which are strongly incompatible with the observed correlations. In general this leaves a set of possible causal relation s, which should then be tested by designing appropriate experiments. If experimental data is already available, the algorithms can take advantage of that as well.

8 Symbolism and Causality

While the names we give objects often refer to their appearance, they can also refer to an object's causal powers - what that object can do, the effects it has on other objects or people. David Sobel and Alison Gopnik from the Psychology Department of UC Berkeley designed a device known as the blicket detector which suggests that "when causal property and perceptual features are equally evident, children are equally as likely to use causal powers as they are to use perceptual properties when naming objects". More Info

9 External links

9.1 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

9.2 General

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Causation
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Causation in Law
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Causation in History

10 References

Judea Pearl: Causality, Cambridge University Press, BooksEnthsiast.com
Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour and Richard Scheines: Causation, Prediction, and Search, MIT Press, BooksEnthsiast.com

Epistemology Fundamental Academia Academic disciplines Humanities and art Philosophy Metaphysics Epistemology Relationship Causation/Causality

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