The Nature of Causation: The Counterfactual Theory of Causation

[@luzhang998]

Thank you! Looking forward to the other four parts of the series! Awesome work!

[@JohnEButton]

She's an excellent communicator

[@fanboy8026]

her lectures are amazing

[@drunkenlizard2]

This is great

[@4747da]

1:06:00. Why not say that transitivity doesn't hold for casual relations? I think the problem here is the difference between something being necessary, and something affording something. The placing of the bomb affords there to be a survival, it doesn't necessitate it. So we have to be clear if a cause can be something that affords something else, or necessitates. That's why casual relations need to be specified, before we can say they're transitive.

[@syedadeelhussain2691]

I have watched three parts of this series. Where can I find the other three? thanks for your help in advance.

[@csaracho2009]

Just google this: KZbin nature of causation given at Oxford in 2016

[@careneh33]

I am confused why this is so confusing. Obviously, pinching the fuse causes Susies survival only conditionally a bomb has been placed. Placing the bomb is not a cause of survival, it's the condition under which we investigate causes of survival and which heavily influences such causes. Also, counterfactually, _not_ placing a bomb does not cause Susies demise, so placing a bomb is not the causal reason for Susies survival in this sense either.

[@ruskiny280]

No credit and no blame is the consequence of causality.

[@thejimmymeister]

9:54 Could the state(s) of affairs in this world that make the German counterfactual true or false be, for example, that the Germans had no intention of forcing an occupied Britain to speak German or that the Germans did have that intention but the British were completely unwilling to do so? Maybe identifying the state of affairs would be very difficult-How confident can we be in a defiant Englishman's claim that he'd never speak German or in the Germans' ability to force a language change?-but it seems to me that such a state of affairs could exist (or have existed).

[@aren8798]

The arguments made by the students at about 25 minutes is actually valid and accurate. Unfortunately, the professor is teaching the subject at a much more basic level (and thus flawed). So from a general standpoint the professor is correct. From the “actual reality” the student is correct.

[@xxstickmanxx20]

The argument from the students is valid but not sound because they are focused mainly on the central fact of the story, where Lucy breaks the window and not the added fact that Brian would have. This extension (Brian would have) is vital to claim that the window shattering is not counterfactually dependent on Lucy's rock throwing. Because if Brian never existed, then it must be the case that the window shattering is counterfactually dependent on Lucy's rock throwing. However, Brian exists in the 'factual story' where Lucy breaks the window and will break the window if she doesn't. Therefore, the 'counterfactual story' to this one is where Lucy's rock doesn't shatter the window, but the window shatters anyway because of Brian's proceeding throw. Thus, making the 'counterfactual story' dependent on Brian. I hope this clears that up for you.

[@aren8798]

So the point that you’re missing is also the same point that they don’t understand in this example. Counterfactual’s or hypothetical and don’t actually exist in real life. In the real world what happens a.k.a. causation is a math equation with time. Meaning it is directional. And therefore because there’s always one outcome or one thing that happens in reality, counterfactual’s don’t actually exist. I appreciate the time you talk to reply to my message. Hope this helps you out.

[@xxstickmanxx20]

​@@aren8798 The 'concept' of a counterfactual exists. That concept points to a reality that would have happened if not for the one we experience. We don't talk about the real world when discussing things that would be 'counterfactual' to it. The point of the speaker's story about Lucy's rock-throwing not being needed for the window to shatter comes from the simple addition of 'Brian would have shattered it.' This seemingly-negligible bit stems from a real-world observation of Brian's rock immediately following behind Lucy's. Thus making it valid and sound to say that the window shattering isn't counterfactually dependent on Lucy. Giving another scenario. If you and I are out on the range shooting the same clay target, and I shoot less than a second before you do, and it shatters, that clay target shattering isn't counterfactually dependent on my shot because your immediate shot after mine 'would have' hit it. I can say this because I witnessed your shot hit the raised dirt mound behind the target. There only needs to be one 'possible' condition met to say that the outcome of something isn't counterfactually dependent on you. If someone is murdered, we don't say that person dying is counterfactually dependent on the murderer because we know that we all have a biological clock.

[@Notapizzathief]

So causation and explanation are independent, but are explanations dependent on counterfactuals too? Dependent in an epistemological sense

[@chinaboytag1]

My gut would say yes. If there are a sufficient number of counterfactual, it would seem that that is a primary factor for something not being an explanation for something. For instance, a particular camper being born is not a sufficient explanation for the forest fire given how many other campers had been born as well, yet this would not result in forest fires in their cases. I think that a large part of an explanation is the probability of a cause causing the outcome. Probabilities constructed from an estimation of counterfactuals. The reason that we don't like accepting placing the bomb as a cause for Suzy's survival is the weight of the counterfactuals where she doesn't survive the bomb as opposed to the actual reality that she factually did and that the placing of the bomb is a cause of her survival. I think that explanations should be considered not only what is intelligible to a person, but also what is the sum total of the probability, based on the counterfactuals that an agent is aware of.

[@jocr1971]

why bother explaining an explanation when the explanation is not true? A does not cause B. B's cause is dependent on the entire timeline of happenings in the universe. our notion of A is the cause of B is a fiction. fictions have no actual truths.

[@KipIngram]

1:06:35 - Enemy placing the bomb is part of the historical sequence that ends with Suzy's survival. But attention has to be paid to the "polarity" of the actions here. Enemy placing the bomb contributed to the possibility that Lucy doesn't survive the events. Billy pinching out the fuse contributes to the possibiity that she *does* . The distinction matters and should be captured in some fashion. Something has to be done to account for sequences of *competing* causes. Enemy was trying to cause Suzy's DEATH - Billy was trying to cause her *survival*. The events are in entirely different categories.

[@chinaboytag1]

CTC is a form of RTC if you ask me. The MRL seems to be correct as stated in this video.

[@jocr1971]

why bother speaking of how we describe causation as being 'one thing causes another' if, in fact it is not how reality is. in what way do we make truth claims about causation using untruths?

[@chinaboytag1]

It seems like there is a psychological connection between intelligibility and counterfactuals to begin with. Counterfactuals are only counterfactuals, so much as they can be understood to be. Meaning, that explanations would be an estimation of the probability of that which us intelligibly counterfactual. Given that counterfactuals do not exist outside the mind, it seems like a fair conclusion could be made that an explanation is based on the cause with the lowest number of counterfactuals to the contrary. This should, in theory, be a correct explanation, given that counterfactuals are already obviously constrained by the limits of intelligibility. Meaning that an explanation is the cause that seems to be the cause that was the most likely to have had the outcome of the event, based on our perception. Unintelligible counterfactuals don't seem to exist, given that they are not perceivable in or outside of the mind. Meaning, that they can't be truly independent of each other. They just appear to be. If anything, explanations seem to be entirely dependent on the causes observed by a particular person in the past, which creates an intelligibility bias in the form of what counterfactuals a person has access to, leading to a psychological statement of explanation, which is a sum of the person's counterfactual evidence against the factual. It may be the case that in a particular event, the explanation is independent of the causation. However, it is not independent from the causation of previous events with similarities to the event, in the explainer's mind. So, I could agree that the explanation is independent of causation in an isolated instance, but this is because intelligibility is not reduced to a single event by anyone or it would not be intelligible. It seems like there is no real way to both isolate on the event and its intelligibility at the same time. Either the intelligibility of an explanation is a product of the chains of causation of previous events or no such explanation could exist. Making events necessarily interdependent of each other, if explanation is to be considered. The reason that an object being thrown up is a valid explanation for it coming down as opposed to the thrower being born is because of the observational bias of our experiences with causation in the past. If there's any kind of intelligibility of truth values, then we have to say that they are dependent on each other. And if there isn't, then explanations are irrelevant to causality anyway. I don't entirely agree with calling them independent of each other. TLDR: Explanations themselves are products of causation and must be dependent on causes. Additionally, causes, events, and especially, explanations cannot be viewed as independent of one another. They are necessarily contingent products of each other, as are counterfactuals. I think that one lady in the audience pointed that out.

[@dominiks5068]

Are those first semester undergrads? Like 99% of the objections they gave were unbelievably stupid.

[@axe863]

Thank you... I thought I was the only one with those thoughts.

[@stephenlawrence4821]

Isn't it reasonable to draw the distinction between if A hadn't happened B would have happened anyway because something else did caused B. And If A hadn't happen B would have happened anyway because something else would cause B. Doesn't that make sense of it without dismissing the need for counterfactual dependency with that slight modification?

[@jakecarlo9950]

😳 At 0:18 - Who let in the dolphin 🐬

[@KipIngram]

Ok, so what if the father of the person who started the fire that burned the forest down raised him in a way that led him to be obsessed with fire? That seems like something we could pick out as a cause. Of course you can run a long way with that - maybe the fire-starter's parents are to blame because they didn't teach him proper ways to handle a campfire. Seems like something it would be awfully easy to get carried away with (and in some places lawsuits tend to reflect this sort of thing - blaming a perpetrators family for his behavior (usually because the family has more money to try to take than the perp himself).

[@KipIngram]

39:00 - Yes, I have to admit I am having those "bloody philosphers" moments during this. A lot of it just seems ridiculously pedantic and nit-picky to me. What I'm trying to do, though, is think of it along the lines of computer programming. Your program doesn't work if it's "almost" right - it has to be *exactly* right.

[@alexmartin8748]

maybe it has to do with the means of expression. (English) language is not precise, so when used to explain precise concepts it gets verbose and boring. The definitions of the terms seem to be very different between audience members. For example, I define "surving" as something that requires both a threat to life and escape from the threat. The discussion on whether the bomb was causal to survival, seemed unnecessary to me, because it hinged on the difference of definitions between "survived" and "lived". Programming languages require precise definitions, so the "survival" variable would explicitly compile out of "threats" and "threat_escape" variables making it easy to argue about events (causes) which contributed to "survival".

[@KipIngram]

56:00 - Ok, this is weak. It *is* a matter of judgment, and that seems to arbitrary compared to the prior "nit-picky" nature of the presentation. What I'd like is an *algorithm* that one could use to program a computer to select the proper cause out of the causal history. I do see it as a "hard problem," though.

[@thejimmymeister]

What's arbitrary about it? It's just relative. Computer programs make for a perfect analogy. Certain programs can be run by (i.e. are intelligible to) certain computers but not others. Which computers can run which programs isn't arbitrary-that's fixed by facts about the computers and the programs. Still, even though it's not arbitrary, a program has no absolute intelligibility; it only has intelligibility relative to a certain kind of computer. The algorithm you'd like, I think, is really just a definition of causation. Using this to program computers to select proper causes out of the causal history would just be using causation to generate explanations. In order for any of that to work, whether on a computer or in a lecture hall, you have to be clear about your terms and what you're doing with them. Being "nit-picky" is really just avoiding sloppiness. The goal is to recognize incorrect outputs or, better yet, not to make the mistakes that yield those incorrect outputs in the first place.

[@KipIngram]

Well, actually there IS a correlation between the birth of people and forest fires *started by people*. Every person who has ever started a forest fire was, at some point in time, born.

[@thejimmymeister]

There isn't. An increase in the number of people born doesn't correspond to an increase (or a decrease) in the number of forest fires started by people. That's what would be sufficient for correlation. It's not enough that the people who do start forest fires were born. If x% of people born were destined to start forest fires or if some significant number of people started a forest fire for every n births, then there would be a correlation, but that's not the case.

[@piruz3243]

11:18 My cat is confused about his own catness; he thinks he's a dog and acts like one.

[@okzoia]

There is NO counterfactual dependence with Brian's throw: if he had not thrown the rock, the window would STILL have broken due to Lucy's throw.

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

Wasn't that the whole point? The scenario is supposed to be a counterexample to causation being counterfactual dependence. And the fact that there is causation but no counterfactual dependence means that causation cannot be counterfactual dependence.

[@stephenlawrence4821]

I think there is a counterfactual dependency with Lucy's throw. When we look for counterfactual dependency we want to know if the effect would have happened anyway. But by that we mean did something else cause the window to break. Would the window have broken if Lucy hadn't thrown the rock? No, not without something else causing it instead. Edited to fix mixing up Brian and Lucy.

[@connorwalker9977]

@@stephenlawrence4821 That is the point. Despite Lucy's throw causing the the window to smash, Brian's rock would have caused the window to smash if Lucy's did not, thus there is no counterfactual dependence on Lucy's throw. Counterfactual dependence requires that if Lucy had not thrown the rock, the window would not smash. But it would have done.

[@KipIngram]

23:00 - This gets back to the methods of science again. In a proper scientific experiment, you need to eliminate extraneous factors like Brian throwing a rock. In a properly simple situation you don't have the problem you're talking about here.

[@thejimmymeister]

Brian's throwing a rock isn't extraneous. It's essential. Without it, you're talking about a different situation. What would a proper scientific experiment without Brian be testing? I think the problem comes from two different analyses of events. The lecturer insists on treating the example as consisting of three events: (1) Lucy's throwing, (2) Brian's throwing, and (3) the window's reacting to Lucy's and Brian's throwing. The audience member, I think, is treating it as two events: (1) Lucy's throwing and the window's reacting to it and (2) Brian's throwing and the window's reacting to that. (Or maybe she considers it to be 4 events: Lucy's throwing, the window's reacting to Lucy's throwing, Brian's throwing, and the window's reacting to Brian's throwing.) The problem isn't from extraneous factors but from the unclear boundaries of events or perhaps their infinite analyzability. This is why the audience member goes on to say "it works out if you view it from _the window breaking_ as one event..." She realizes that the example shows what it's supposed to when the window's reacting to Lucy's and Brian's throwing is treated as its own, third event (assuming I understand her correctly).

[@yaphanpin8281]

This lady has a very odd delivery skill in lecture.this is extraorxinary S she kept lingering on for the audience question and thus fail to say what Hume is tryung to tell us. A sad story.

[@dhnguyen68]

Really unfair, I really enjoy her way of teaching difficult concepts to grasp.

[@EddieVBlueIsland]

Because she does not know - in the olden days we used to call it "tap dancing"