Re: causation in theory

["Harry Veeder" <veed0001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan Halvorson wrote:


>A few responses.
>
>David wrote that the "Post-modern" critique of science asserts that
>"there is no scientific way of proving the truth of scientific
>findings."
>I hope this wasn't the point, because that would make it a regurgitation
>of mainstream philosophy of science from Bacon, Huygens, and Newton on.
>My claim was that some of the skeptism about causation despite a lack of
>skepticism about laws was founded on the belief that for knowledge of
>causation one needed proof, while for knowledge of (true, adequate) laws
>one did not. I was trying to point out that assertions of causal
>relations need no more "proof" than universal descriptive statements.
>The demand is a relic of metaphysical thinking.
>
>Harry remarked:
>"The lawfulness of physical laws is not stripped because it was never
>causality that made them lawful in the first place."
>
>This is true, but unclear.  There is a distinction between empirical
>laws (which do not indicate causal mechanisms and are mere "phenomenal"
>laws...the classical gas law is an example) and explanatory laws (a
>modern gas law which refers to the mean free path of molecules would be
>an example, because it points to the mechanism by which volume varies
>with pressure).  But if that is what you mean, it doesn't tell against
>the existence of causal laws.

The point is causal explanations are mislabeled as causal laws.
Laws don't explain; correctly or incorrectly they tell us what nature
forbids. It is a bad modern habit to conflate law with explanation.

Empirical or statistical laws can be derived using
causal explanations in conjunction with fundamental laws. However,
fundamental laws require no *causal* explanation.
A scientific *law* is to be refuted by observation not by
by a bunch of indignant academics.

Empirical laws, fundamental laws and causal explanations can be confused
with one another. Newton's law of gravity is an empirical law, conjectured
to be universal, with no adequate causal explanation. It is not a
fundamental
law.

>Or do you mean instead that there isn't some separate thing, the causal
>relation, which we observe over and above our observations of
>covariations?  That is of course true, and it is what was right about
>Hume's attack.  Causation isn't a separate thing in the world.  But
>nothing is wrong with Kant's response, either: it is WE who place causal
>assumptions into the world.

Yes.

>They are required by us to make inferences
>about events.

"Events" are another modern fiasco. They are observations
in the straight jacket of Kantian or Einsteinian space and time.

>  It is exactly this Kantian kernel that many people have
>taken up recently in arguing that when we make judgments about the
>outcomes of interventions which change structural conditions, we must
>use causal reasoning and not simply statistical reasoning.
> Statistics tells us what is likely to happen if things stay pretty much
the same as>they have been in the past.  Causal reasoning tells us what we
should
>expect to happen if we change some of those very things, based on other
>things that don't change.  In most cases, a cause is an intervention
>which alters what would have otherwise been the case.  this is why it is
>so closely tied to counterfactuals and the idea of responsibility (if
>only you hadn't insulted him, he would have invited us!)
>Correspondingly, a causal generalization (I don't assume it's a law) is
>one which remains invariant over some range of changes in the variables
>it mentions, and which we usually regard as a means to change one
>variable by bringing about or preventing another.
>
>Harry also made some interesting remarks about what laws do:
>"The lawfulness of laws is a matter of what they forbid not what they
>cause. Under a set of laws, prediction is accomplished by combining a
>causal explanation (making use of those laws) with appropriate boundary
>conditions... Laws are still laws because of what they they say is
>impossible."
>
>What does a law forbid but not prescribe?  I think you mean to say that
>simply given the true laws you cannot determine a course of events,
>because different initial conditions lead to different end states.
>That's fine, but that does not mean that a law cannot pick out an
>invariant relationship.

Laws don't "pick out invariant relationships", because they are invariant
relationships. Causal explanations pick out and use laws.

>We can achieve an invariant relationship between entities only when we
>abstract from temporal change and from concrete events.

There is no royal road to the formulation of scientific laws.
There is, however, a royal road to the acceptance of scientific laws.

>  For example,
>the gravitational law gives only the force on one mass at a given
>instant due to another mass some distance away.  It does not determine
>the total gravitational force on this basis, let alone the total force
>or the acceleration of objects towards one another.  You are right that
>for that you need to bring in other conditions (the presence of other
>bodies and forces).
>
>And yet, a strict law of physics does presume to say something that must
>be true, namely this aspect of the total situation or total effect.  It
>doesn't only rule things out.  But what it requires to be true are not
>concrete sequences of events, and if that's all you meant, we agree.

A *law* is a statement that rules things out. If it goes beyond this,
then it is an explanation.

Harry Veeder