Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - What is Causation?

In a ‘billiard-ball world’ of Newtonian science, causation was obvious—things had to touch each other in space and a cause always had to precede an effect. But quantum mechanics destroys such notions. What then is causation? Moreover, must causes always be physical? Is ‘mental causation’ a coherent concept? What about ‘top-down causation’?

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is a philosopher specializing in ethics, epistemology, neuroethics, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of cognitive science. He is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[mattd]

This guy isn’t discussing the nature of causation or what it is, rather he’s just saying that people don’t often attribute every effect to its exact and specific cause. Best I can tell, at least.

The moon causes tides which is a physical process—we don’t have to have the moon reach down some rocky arm and directly touch the oceans and wash them around in order to describe the effect the moon has on tides as physical.

Heat is a physical process—just bc we can’t see the excited atoms causing what we call heat, doesn’t mean it isn’t physical or that heat is merely an abstraction.

The coke machine has a series of electrical inputs, or conditions, that, when satisfied by certain physical processes, operates to dispense a coke. There is no abstraction of a dollar necessary for the coke machine to operate in this way, it is simply a combination of physical processes triggering a defined operation—the coke machine has no conception of a dollar, nor does it have any clue that it is dispensing a coke. It’s a fancy electrical yet still very much mechanical machine responding to physical processes.

[dbwstein]

Isn’t this a discussion about semantics when the physics is quite clear: ones’s body and brain chemistry and wiring are interrelated physical systems. They have evolved to gather nutrients so they can better pass on certain molecules and patterns of molecules. We’re all just Mesa optimizers.

[squatch]

Except nothing caused Robert to say 'thank you'. He said 'thank you' out of social convention, for which he had a reason to say thank you. In other words, reasons are not causes.

[A.--.]

The causation of saying "thank you" in your example was not the dollar....it was the ACCESS to the Coke.

He would have said thank you even without a dollar if you had given him that coke (or the affect coke has on his senses).

If you had activated the same exact sensors in his body that Coke does he would have thanked you as well.

In essence ge is thanking you for ACCESS to that experience.

[rishabhthakur]

You cannot think beyond space, time and causation .
~upanishad

[marcusbruzzo]

he is talking about emergence bottom-up causation, in a popular manner. Really good.

[cashbuyer]

It all comes down to the essence of why anything at all occurs, which is to achieve or move toward equilibrium, so from no matter what level of analysis you examine from, bottom-up processes along the continuum of organizational hierarchy, everything is guided by discrimination and selection of that which will achieve balance for the organizing state of a given system at a given time, contingent on given conditions.

[avi]

Why is time sequence/directionality in causality not addressed early on...? Prior/Later? Is the time factor taken for granted? Thoroughly unsatisfied by this discussion...

[A.--.]

All causations have to "activate the mechanism of change" in the subject. This may be a better definition of causation.

Causation is that affect which brings about the activation of the mechanism of change in its subject.

The mechanism is a property of the subject while the entitity inducing causation catalyzes that mechanism.

[jamesruscheinski]

causation, time more than space equation, produces physical nature, in the process brings about consciousness?

[Minion-khtq]

Keep it up, guys. The world needs more levity.

[jameshudson]

Blast! I thought I was finally gonna understand causation. I wasn't holding breath though.

[rc]

as an abstraction, cause points towards an infinite possibility that we're not capable of processing...

[fineasfrog]

Until we understand what time is, we will not understand what causation is.

[jamesruscheinski]

human body is like a machine that mental thoughts or emotions can operate? what might be the mechanism for mental thought or emotion to operate physical body?

[phillipebrall]

Gosh, the comments clearly show most people so far just don’t ‘get it’. Please keep going on this journey, it is appreciated.

[gregsmith]

I can't believe this has to be said: No, a vending machine does not respond to an abstract idea of a dollar. Coins physically interact with machinery in a billiard ball chain of causation in ways that we fully and completely understand. Coin machines have to prevent people from activating it without giving it coins, so clearly it's not the mere notion of a dollar at work. Even if we lived in a world where we controlled machines with non-physical causes, we would need to explain how the non-physical affects the physical. Dualists cannot answer the question without analogies, thought experiments, or sophistry - how could your model of the universe possibly work?

[Kritiker]

I'd considered that "causation" (for saying thank you) might result primarily from a need to show oneself as polite and kind.

[InventiveHarvest]

To have causation, you need three things: the cause and effect must be correlated, the cause proceeds the effect in time, and without the cause the effect will not occur.

[sonarbangla]

Cause and effect are related by the complex number i, which is defined as the ratio of effect by cause, i= effect/cause.