<div dir="auto">"Actual Causes and Thought Experiments"<br><br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 10:01 PM Frank Wimberly <<a href="mailto:wimberly3@gmail.com">wimberly3@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">Some jargon that "we" use. The kind of causation where time order matters is called "actual causation" or "token causation". Hitting the glass with a a hammer causes it to break.<br><br>The other kind is called "statistical" or "probabilistic" causation. Smoking causes cancer.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">See Glymour, et al "Actual Causation and Thought Experiments".</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="auto">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:03 PM Eric Charles <<a href="mailto:eric.phillip.charles@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">eric.phillip.charles@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">As repeatedly hammered in the excellent book "Beyond Versus", Sober is conflating two things:<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">1) A does not cause C except through B. (A-> B -> C with no other arrows)</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">2) In this data set, knowledge of B lets us predict C exactly as well as we can predict it with combined knowledge of B & knowledge of A. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">For the first one, time matters a lot (assuming standard forward-casualty views), and for the latter it doesn't matter in the slightest. As Glen points out, it could easily be bidirectional. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Also, to Sober's point: YES, if internal mental states existed in a Cartesian manner, AND we somehow had perfect knowledge of them, THEN they would be higly useful for predicting behavior. But we can all see that isn't actually a good arguement for believing in them... right? All the math in the world wouldn't change that.... right?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But ALSO, don't forget the crucial point behaviorist-Nick should be making... let's say someone punches you, and you kick them back. Let's say I happen to be brain scanning when you get punched, and I detect a signal in your brain that perfectly predicts you will kick back. That signal, is part of the process by which the other guys punch caused your kick. The signal is contained in "you kicked back"; it is a component part of it. That "you kicked" entails all of that stuff, not just the muscle contractions in your leg, which could be caused by knee-tap reflexes, external electrical stimulation, or other causes completely unrelated to the internal process entailed in "you kicked". </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:42 PM Frank Wimberly <<a href="mailto:wimberly3@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">wimberly3@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">Instead of "if A is true then B is true" think "if I know the value of A then I know something about the value of B". For instance A = age and B = income.<div dir="auto"><br><br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="auto">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:03 PM <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><p>I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause". When two variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Sober’s word, not mine. Yours is the meaning he seems to give it. The whole article concerns how a causal “fork” breathes life into hypothetical “inner” variables. The abstract concerns how a causal collision breathes life into hypothetical “inner” variables. You and glen agree that order is NOT important, so now I am going to have a rethink. Does it make any sense to distinguish between logical and temporal order? So B is true, given A, speaks to logical order. A CAUSES B speaks to temporal order, unless we have given up on the requirement that the Cause A cannot occur after A itself. <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">N<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Nick Thompson<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0563c1">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0563c1">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #e1e1e1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Frank Wimberly<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, December 20, 2021 12:02 PM<br><b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues<u></u><u></u></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause". When two variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.<u></u><u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM<u></u><u></u></p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 8:17 AM uǝlƃ <span style="font-family:"Segoe UI Symbol",sans-serif">☤</span>>$ <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p></div><blockquote style="border:none;border-left:solid #cccccc 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><br>I don't understand your criticism. What do you think is "cocked up"? [<span style="font-family:"Segoe UI Symbol",sans-serif">⛧</span>]<br><br>I'll take a swipe at what might be the problem: The concluding paragraph seems to make the point that forks *are* (reversed) collisions and collisions are (reversed) forks. The key may lie in some preemptive registration of words like "prediction". If you stick to words like "relation" and "correlation" and toss out all the mechanistic/causal language, it might be clearer how forks are collisions and vice versa. The only difference is the *direction* of inference.<br><br>But to be clear, despite my guess above, I'm asking a question. What do you think is wrong, here?<br><br>[<span style="font-family:"Segoe UI Symbol",sans-serif">⛧</span>] For my own convenience, here's the link to the article I *think* we're talking about: <br>methodological behaviorism, causal chains, and causal forks<br><a href="https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BPv45_SOBER.pdf" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BPv45_SOBER.pdf</a><br><br>On 12/19/21 10:08 PM, <a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br>> */Yes! Right! Thankyou! /*<br>> <br>> That is now obvious to you because you know that stuff. But for three weeks it has been driving me crazy. <br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> Now for the second point.<br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> E1 and E2, each causally contribute to a behavior, B. In this case, postulating<br>> <br>> an inner state, I, that is caused by both E1 and E2, and which causes I, affects <br>> <br>> one's predictions concerning the relationship between environment and behavior. <br>> <br>> <br>> <br>> This is from the abstract of the article. Not only do we see the same slip-up with respect to I (I IS after all, the inner state), but we see also that the abstract entertains an article about causal convergence (“collision”), not causal forks. Yet every where else, in the title, or in the body, the article seems to be talking about forks. Even with my weak knowledge of formal logic and probability, I can see that that would make a huge difference. Can you confirm also that that is a cockup, so I don’t spend another month trying to make it make sense?<br><br>-- <br>"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."<br><span style="font-family:"Segoe UI Symbol",sans-serif">☤</span>>$ uǝlƃ<br><br><br>.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>archives:<br> 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><u></u><u></u></p></blockquote></div></div></div><br>
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .<br>
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>
un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>
archives:<br>
5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br>
1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br>
</blockquote></div>
<br>
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .<br>
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>
un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>
archives:<br>
5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br>
1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br>
</blockquote></div>
<br>
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .<br>
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br>
un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>
FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br>
archives:<br>
5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br>
1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br>
</blockquote></div>
</blockquote></div>