Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics PDF Download
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Author: Douglas Kutach
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019993620X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.
Author: Douglas Kutach
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019993620X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.
Author: Babette A. Brumback
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 100047030X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
One of the primary motivations for clinical trials and observational studies of humans is to infer cause and effect. Disentangling causation from confounding is of utmost importance. Fundamentals of Causal Inference explains and relates different methods of confounding adjustment in terms of potential outcomes and graphical models, including standardization, difference-in-differences estimation, the front-door method, instrumental variables estimation, and propensity score methods. It also covers effect-measure modification, precision variables, mediation analyses, and time-dependent confounding. Several real data examples, simulation studies, and analyses using R motivate the methods throughout. The book assumes familiarity with basic statistics and probability, regression, and R and is suitable for seniors or graduate students in statistics, biostatistics, and data science as well as PhD students in a wide variety of other disciplines, including epidemiology, pharmacy, the health sciences, education, and the social, economic, and behavioral sciences. Beginning with a brief history and a review of essential elements of probability and statistics, a unique feature of the book is its focus on real and simulated datasets with all binary variables to reduce complex methods down to their fundamentals. Calculus is not required, but a willingness to tackle mathematical notation, difficult concepts, and intricate logical arguments is essential. While many real data examples are included, the book also features the Double What-If Study, based on simulated data with known causal mechanisms, in the belief that the methods are best understood in circumstances where they are known to either succeed or fail. Datasets, R code, and solutions to odd-numbered exercises are available at www.routledge.com.
Author: Yemima Ben-Menahem
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400889294
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events--the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation—to a broad family of concepts and principles generating constraints on possible change. Yemima Ben-Menahem looks at determinism, locality, stability, symmetry principles, conservation laws, and the principle of least action—causal constraints that serve to distinguish events and processes that our best scientific theories mandate or allow from those they rule out. Ben-Menahem's approach reveals that causation is just as relevant to explaining why certain events fail to occur as it is to explaining events that do occur. She investigates the conceptual differences between, and interrelations of, members of the causal family, thereby clarifying problems at the heart of the philosophy of science. Ben-Menahem argues that the distinction between determinism and stability is pertinent to the philosophy of history and the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that the interplay of determinism and locality is crucial for understanding quantum mechanics. Providing historical perspective, she traces the causal constraints of contemporary science to traditional intuitions about causation, and demonstrates how the teleological appearance of some constraints is explained away in current scientific theories such as quantum mechanics. Causation in Science represents a bold challenge to both causal eliminativism and causal reductionism—the notions that causation has no place in science and that higher-level causal claims are reducible to the causal claims of fundamental physics.
Author: Mathias Frisch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107031494
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
This book argues, partly through detailed case studies, for the importance of causal reasoning in physics.
Author: Huw Price
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199278199
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality 'a relic of a bygone age'. Scholars revisit Russell's conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought.
Author: Bradford Skow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192561715
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
When you light a match it is the striking of it which causes the lighting; the presence of oxygen in the room is a background condition to the lighting. But in virtue of what is the striking a cause while the presence of oxygen is a background condition? When a fragile glass breaks it manifests a disposition to break when struck; however, not everything that breaks manifests this disposition. So under what conditions does something, in breaking, manifest fragility? After some therapy a man might stop being irascible and he might lose the disposition to become angry at the slightest provocation. If he does then he will have lost the disposition after an "internal" change. Can someone lose, or gain, a disposition merely as a result of a change in its external circumstances? Facts about the structure of society can, it seems, explain other facts. But how do they do it? Are there different kinds of structural explanations? Many things are said to be causes: a rock, when we say that the rock caused the window to break, and an event, when we say that the striking of the window caused its breakage. Which kind of causation - causation by events, or causation by things - is more basic? In Causation, Explanation, and the Metaphysics of Aspect, Bradford Skow defends answers to these questions. His answers rely on a pair of connected distinctions: first is the distinction between acting, or doing something, and not acting; second is the distinction between situations in which an event happens, and situations in which instead something is in some state. The first distinction is used to draw the second: an event happens if and only if something does something.
Author: M. Hulswit
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401002975
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
From Cause to Causation presents both a critical analysis of C.S. Peirce's conception of causation, and a novel approach to causation, based upon the semeiotic of Peirce. The book begins with a review of the history of causation, and with a critical discussion of contemporary theories of the concept of `cause'. The author uncovers a number of inadequacies in the received views of causation, and discusses their historical roots. He makes a distinction between "causality", which is the relation between cause and effect, and causation, which is the production of a certain effect. He argues that, by focusing on causality, the contemporary theories fatally neglect the more fundamental problem of causation. The author successively discusses Peirce's theories of final causation, natural classes, semeiotic, and semeiotic causation. Finally, he uses Peirce's semeiotic to develop a new approach to causation, which relates causation to our experience of signs.
Author: Stuart Glennan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003854052
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
Causation: The Basics explores questions about what causes are, and how we come to know them, describe them, and put them to use. The book begins with an introduction to the history of philosophical thinking about causation, followed by a series of chapters introducing important contemporary accounts of causation. It concludes with chapters on causation and agency, causal discovery, and causal explanation. Key questions explored in the book include: What distinguishes correlation from causation? How are the causes of singular events related to more general patterns of cause and effect? How are commonsense, scientific, and legal conceptions of causation related? Can certain occurrences be singled out as the main or principle causes of some effect? Is there a place in the world’s causal structure for human agency and free will? While introducing the major philosophical debates about the nature of causation, Causation: The Basics emphasizes the uses and challenges of causal reasoning as it occurs in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and other areas of human life. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, the book provides readers with a clear and concise introduction to both theoretical and practical questions about causation.
Author: John Campbell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967860
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
A renowned philosopher argues that singular causation in the mind is not grounded in general patterns of causation, a claim on behalf of human distinctiveness, which has implications for the future of social robots. A blab droid is a robot with a body shaped like a pizza box, a pair of treads, and a smiley face. Guided by an onboard video camera, it roams hotel lobbies and conference centers, asking questions in the voice of a seven-year-old. “Can you help me?” “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” “Who in the world do you love most?” People pour their hearts out in response. This droid prompts the question of what we can hope from social robots. Might they provide humanlike friendship? Philosopher John Campbell doesn’t think so. He argues that, while a social robot can remember the details of a person’s history better than some spouses can, it cannot empathize with the human mind, because it lacks the faculty for thinking in terms of singular causation. Causation in Psychology makes the case that singular causation is essential and unique to the human species. From the point of view of practical action, knowledge of what generally causes what is often all one needs. But humans are capable of more. We have a capacity to imagine singular causation. Unlike robots and nonhuman animals, we don’t have to rely on axioms about pain to know how ongoing suffering is affecting someone’s ability to make decisions, for example, and this knowledge is not a derivative of general rules. The capacity to imagine singular causation, Campbell contends, is a core element of human freedom and of the ability to empathize with human thoughts and feelings.
Author: John Collins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262532563
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 500
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Book Description
One philosophical approach to causation sees counterfactual dependence as the key to the explanation of causal facts: for example, events c (the cause) and e (the effect) both occur, but had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. The counterfactual analysis of causation became a focus of philosophical debate after the 1973 publication of the late David Lewis's groundbreaking paper, "Causation," which argues against the previously accepted "regularity" analysis and in favor of what he called the "promising alternative" of the counterfactual analysis. Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection between—counterfactuals and causation, including the complete version of Lewis's Whitehead lectures, "Causation as Influence," a major reworking of his original paper. Also included is a more recent essay by Lewis, "Void and Object," on causation by omission. Several of the essays first appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy, but most, including the unabridged version of "Causation as Influence," are published for the first time or in updated forms. Other topics considered include the "trumping" of one event over another in determining causation; de facto dependence; challenges to the transitivity of causation; the possibility that entities other than events are the fundamental causal relata; the distinction between dependence and production in accounts of causation; the distinction between causation and causal explanation; the context-dependence of causation; probabilistic analyses of causation; and a singularist theory of causation.
