[FRIAM] Downward causation

Fri Dec 1 09:04:14 EST 2017

What philosophers argue about:

On Nov 23, 2017 6:38 AM, "Eric Charles" <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "causality makes reference to experiments or to nothing whatsoever"
>
> Well sure.... if we have a generous definition of "experiment". I think
> you might be better served by the word "investigation".
>
> A consequence is something that would be experienced under some arranged
> circumstances (or you are talking nonsense). Whether you want to call the
> act-of-arrangement an experiment is a semantic distraction. Let's say I
> have the idea that "George is in the elevator" and I make that thought more
> clear in my mind by thinking through the consequences. One consequence is
> that if I go to where the elevator door is going to open and wait there, I
> will see George after the door opens. Is that an experiment? Personally, I
> would say "yes", but a very minimal sort. A more pretentious scientist -
> and certainly anyone committed to evangelical scientism
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism>- would scoff at applying such a
> noble label to such a mundane act. Is it an investigatory act? I think
> everyone would grant it that status.
>
> At some point in his Harvard lectures Perice rephrases his Pragmatic Maxim
> as follows:
> Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in
> a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only
> meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding
> practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis
> in the imperative mood.
>
> So far as I am comfortable with such language, I think it means: Anytime
> someone trying to make a truth claim about the world, they would be better
> served by making if-then claims, where the "then" clause states a thing you
> will do. For example, "George is in the elevator" should be understood as
> shorthand for an elaborate collection of statements such as "If you want to
> see George, you will stand in front of the elevator door as it opens", "If
> you measure the weight of the elevator before and after the passenger
> exits, you will find it different by one-George's-worth of weight," and "If
> you want to kill George, you will kill a person in the elevator."
>
>
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Supervisory Survey Statistician
> U.S. Marine Corps
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
> On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 7:44 AM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.
> com> wrote:
>
>> Frank, Nick,
>> I highly recommend that the book "Beyond Versus
>> <http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2015/08/does-nature-versus-nurture-makes-sense.html>".
>> Though it limits itself to the context of the nature vs. nurture debates
>> (over a century's worth of them), it fits this context because it is a
>> book-length study of the differences in mindset and result between trying
>> to predict variation and trying to elucidate causal mechanisms. To set the
>> task of determining whether variation in smoking habits relate to variation
>> in cancer rates is quite a different task from trying to determine
>> biological pathways that lead from smoking to cancer. Statistics plays a
>> role in both, to be sure, but the roles are very different and should not
>> be confused.
>>
>>
>> -----------
>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>> U.S. Marine Corps
>> <echarles at american.edu>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 1:29 AM, Nick Thompson <
>> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Frank,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I suspect that “actual” causation is just the hypostization of
>>> statistical causation.   But we’ll see.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I look forward to talking about the models.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank
>>> Wimberly
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 22, 2017 10:13 PM
>>>
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> They are not beyond your ability to understand.  I am happy to explain
>>> as much as you like.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Frank
>>>
>>> Frank Wimberly
>>> Phone (505) 670-9918
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 22, 2017 10:10 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Frank,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Please forgive me for not being adequately responsive.  I have looked at
>>> some of the sources you have mentioned and they are beyond my ability to
>>> understand.  So, I am dependent on you (or others) to explain to me how
>>> those models work.  Now, I realize that this perhaps brings us to the
>>> threshold of our old argument about whether mathematics needs explanation …
>>> it just is,  You like it or you don’t.   Sounds like a good discussion to
>>> have on Friday
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank
>>> Wimberly
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 22, 2017 9:55 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Whenever I say this it doesn't seem to register.  Pearl, Glymour,
>>> Spirtes, et al have put statistical causal reasoning on a firm foundation.
>>> This involves learning causal models from observational rather that
>>> experimental data, including data from the past.  Also remember the
>>> distinction between "actual" causation (hitting this jar with a hammer
>>> causes it to break) and statistical causation (smoking causes cancer).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There is an extensive and growing literature on these topics.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Frank
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Frank Wimberly
>>> Phone (505) 670-9918
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 22, 2017 9:43 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi, Eric,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I would like to say that my personal version of the Pragmatic
>>> Maxim:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Consider what possible experimental effects the invocation of your
>>> conception has; those effects are the entire meaning of your conception.*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> … means that the causality makes reference to experiments or to nothing
>>> whatsoever.   The problem is, of course, that strictly speaking that means
>>> we cannot apply causality to past events, including evolutionary ones.
>>> That would seem to be overkill.   There is, of course, the comparative
>>> method and, of course, “thought experiments.”   Nothing in the maxim, I
>>> suppose, requires me to actually perform the experiment; only to
>>> conceptualize it.  Seems like mushy ground.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Carl
>>> Tollander
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 22, 2017 7:10 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> One of the recurring conundrums of teaching.  Finger pointing at the
>>> moon....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 22, 2017 14:32, "Eric Charles" <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> "Is there any way to put those two things together:  the abduction
>>> thing and the misattribution thing? "
>>>
>>>
>>> I would head in a different direction. The question is about, how one
>>> does the attribution; the answer is, most people do it poorly. In a large
>>> part, the history of scientific *method *is a history of determining
>>> the conditions under which we allow causal attributions. When I used to
>>> teach, I illustrated this most directly in my intro-to-behaviorism class.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That class included a lot of discussion of applied behavior analysis
>>> (altering the environment of a person in an effort to improve their
>>> behavioral functioning within that environment). The central challenge is
>>> that the ABA practitioner typically only has access to the (usually a)
>>> child for a very limited time, and you don't want to jump to the conclusion
>>> that your efforts are working when external factors might equally explain
>>> the change in the child's behavior. We work up from very basic methods of
>>> increasing confidence. We eventually build up to an ABAB design, in which
>>> the prospective solution is applied, then removed, then applied, then
>>> removed. Every time the problem behavior goes away, comes back, goes away,
>>> and comes back, etc., our confidence increases that our intervention is *causing
>>> *the improvement in behavior, because it is increasingly unlikely that
>>> some other factor just so happens to be varying at exactly the same times.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Part of the process of "becoming" "a scientist" is increasingly the
>>> sophistication of research needed before you draw such conclusions... or,
>>> perhaps more accurately, how well you match the tentativeness-vs-solidity
>>> of your beliefs to the type of empirical evidence in favor of them.
>>> Eventually one is drawing on a wealth of difficult-to-specify
>>> domain-specific knowledge in support of any conclusion, but likely
>>> justifies the conclusion on the basis of the latest bit of crucial evidence
>>> (the one which, for them, solidifies the pattern).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Though... suddenly I might have a legitimate response to your inquiry: I
>>> would hypothesize that people often mistakenly point at the bit of
>>> information that was crucial to them, rather than the larger pattern that
>>> the crucial bit of information brought into focus.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> With Murder on the Orient Express on my mind.... Hercule Poirot would
>>> narrate such a thing explicitly, would he not? He would say "The crucial
>>> clue in helping me unravel my confusion was X" and then he would explain
>>> the larger pattern thus illuminated. A lesser detective would act as if the
>>> clue itself were crucial in its own right - "This is the key!" - even if it
>>> was a trivial thing on its own, thus committing a dramatic misattribution
>>> by virtue of not being self-aware of the abduction taking place.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Did that get anywhere?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----------
>>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>>> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>>>
>>> U.S. Marine Corps
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 1:07 AM, Nick Thompson <
>>> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi, Eric,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you, Eric.   OF COURSE, that is what I should have said.  Thank
>>> you for saying it so excellently.  Peirce did in fact see causal
>>> attribution as a form of abduction.  I  would hope I would have thought to
>>> say it myself, if I wasn’t so distracted by the “counter-factual” thang.
>>> But that way of speaking makes me CRAAAAAY-ZEEE.  How can something defined
>>> in terms of something that didn’t happen
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Before you wrote, I was about to get on my “mystery” high horse.  A
>>> mystery, you remember, is a confusion arrived at when a bit of language is
>>> applied to a situation where it doesn’t really work.  Causal attributions
>>> are often falsely singular, in the sense that , we often speak as if  the
>>> motion of a billiard ball was caused by the motion of the cue ball, say.
>>> But what we really have to back those attributions up is a pattern of
>>> relations between impacts of cue balls and motions of object balls.  When
>>> we step up to the next level of organization, the confusion disappears,
>>> doesn’t it?  Events of Type A are said to cause events of type B when
>>> experiments with proper controls show that an increase in the occurrence of
>>> type B events is dependent upon the previous occurrence of Type A events.
>>> But to say that any particular Type A event causes a Type B event is an
>>> abuse of language, a mystery.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there any way to put those two things together:  the abduction thing
>>> and the misattribution thing?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric
>>> Charles
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 21, 2017 6:43 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward Hicausation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What great timing! One of the best philosophy comics on the web right
>>> now is "Existential Comics." This very week they took a swipe at
>>> "causation." Here is an adventure of Sherlock Hume:
>>> http://existentialcomics.com/comic/212
>>>
>>> I suspect that the best I can do to contribute beyond that is to try
>>> fall back on my role of scolding Nick.
>>>
>>> Nick *should *be asserting that "causation" is a metaphor. The billiard
>>> ball are the understood scenario. Billiard balls sitting on a still table,
>>> unmolested don't move. But if you knock one ball into another ball, the
>>> other ball move so. When I say something like "The approaching lion *caused
>>> *the gazelle to move", I am invoking the metaphor that the lion-gazelle
>>> relationship is like that of the billiard balls. Had the lion not been
>>> doing what it was doing, the gazelle would not have moved away. It isn't
>>> simply a "counterfactual." It is an assertion (an *abduction*)
>>> regarding broad patterns of gazelle behavior that can be readily observed
>>> under many other situations.** Some of those, I have presumably already
>>> seen. Those constitute the "basic implication" of the metaphor. Others I
>>> have not observed, and those constitute potential investigatory events -
>>> not ethereal thought experiments. As in true of any metaphor, there are
>>> also aspects of the billiard-ball scenario I do not intend to map perfectly
>>> onto the lion-gazelle scenario (e.g., the lion and gazelle are not
>>> spheres).
>>>
>>> So that is where Hume and those like him go wrong. They want to beat the
>>> billiard balls scenario itself to death. But that's not how metaphors work.
>>> There is something understood about the billiard balls, and it is
>>> that-understood-thing that is being generalized to another scenario. Any
>>> attempt to explain the billiard balls will involve evoking *different *metaphors,
>>> which would entail different assertions (abductions). There is no
>>> foundation (Peirce tells us, amongst others), Descartes was on a fool's
>>> errand: In the land of inference, it is turtles all the way down.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ** The breadth of the patterns being referenced is, I believe, where
>>> Frank's point about probability slips in. One could certainly simplify the
>>> complexity of the assertion by making lumping similar scenarios together
>>> and speaking about the probability of a certain gazelle behavior within the
>>> cluster of similar situations.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----------
>>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>>> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>>>
>>> U.S. Marine Corps
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 5:08 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Also Known As: Beware equating experience with existence.
>>>
>>> On 11/21/2017 02:00 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>>> > Beware the tendency to think that if you can't immediately measure
>>> something then it doesn't exist.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ☣ gⅼеɳ
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
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