[FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues

Tue Dec 28 00:05:52 EST 2021

"Actual Causes and Thought Experiments"

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 10:01 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> The other kind is called "statistical" or "probabilistic" causation.
> Smoking causes cancer.
>
> See Glymour, et al "Actual Causation and Thought Experiments".
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:03 PM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As repeatedly hammered in the excellent book "Beyond Versus", Sober is
>> conflating two things:
>>
>> 1) A does not cause C except through B. (A-> B -> C with no other arrows)
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> 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".
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:42 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:03 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> N
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Nick Thompson
>>>>
>>>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>>>
>>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>>>> *Sent:* Monday, December 20, 2021 12:02 PM
>>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>>
>>>> 505 670-9918
>>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 8:17 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand your criticism. What do you think is "cocked up"? [⛧
>>>> ]
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> But to be clear, despite my guess above, I'm asking a question. What do
>>>> you think is wrong, here?
>>>>
>>>> [⛧] For my own convenience, here's the link to the article I *think*
>>>> we're talking about:
>>>> methodological behaviorism, causal chains, and causal forks
>>>> https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BPv45_SOBER.pdf
>>>>
>>>> On 12/19/21 10:08 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>>> > */Yes!  Right!  Thankyou! /*
>>>> >
>>>> > That is now obvious to you because you know that stuff.  But for
>>>> three weeks it has been driving me crazy.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Now for the second point.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> E1 and E2, each causally contribute to a behavior, B.  In this case, postulating
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>>  an inner state, I, that is caused by both E1 and E2, and which causes I, affects
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> one's predictions concerning the relationship between environment and behavior.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > 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?
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
>>>> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>>>>
>>>>
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