Causes -- and distinctions between them

[Kharakov]

"Why did you throw the glass?" he asked, like William Shatner's Kirk.

To prove that I was fully to blame and no other did or could have a hand in it.

Really. You caused the glasses fragility, the existence of a hard surface, evolution that created your form which allows the throwing of glasses, and your extremely irascible temper which leads to us hiding the glass of wine from you towards the end of the evening?

What about the philosophical question about causality which caused you to throw the glass in the first place? I blame philosophy.

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"Why did you throw the glass?" he asked, like William Shatner's Kirk.

Do you think it is possible to answer that?

Damnit unter, I'm a savant, not a sophist.

 

[Speakpigeon]

If I take a fragile drinking glass and forcefully throw it on the surface of a hard floor, then it wouldn't surprise me to learn that others would think I'm the cause of the subsequent broken glass. Had the glass not been fragile, and had the floor not been hard, then it's still the case I caused the glass to brake, as I threw it with sufficient force to break it given the conditions. I take full responsibility for being the cause behind why the glass broke. I admit, I caused it to break. We'll call that "cause of the first kind."

If a government entity or private organization changes a policy, we might find that things no longer happen as they might have before. There seems to be a tendency by many to attribute the change in policy as the cause for the real world change that subsequently occurs. For instance, (and I'm probably going to regret my impromptu attempt to give an example), an increase in the allowable speed limit in a given area might find future records of accidents conveying to us an increase in accidents and fatalities along that area. One might be inclined to blame the policy as being the cause. Okay, but if that's a cause, then it's certainly a cause of a different kind (and not a cause of the first kind).

The glass that broke wouldn't have broke had it been strong enough to withstand the force of my throw, but I'm still to blame regardless, for I threw the glass and the glass had no alternative but to react as it only could. The policy gave permission to drive faster along the roadway (and please, don't let this example rule over the point trying to be made), but the people could have continued to drive as they always have. This is very much unlike the glass. Yes, the people might have been led to think it was safe whereas it might not have been safe, but saying the change in policy caused the increase in traffic incidents cannot be the same kind of cause. It's a cause of a different kind, and I'll dub it a cause of the second kind.

I'm hesitant to regard it as an indirect cause, mainly because of the ambiguity potential. For instance, it could be a direct cause in the sense of it having a direct correlation yet an indirect cause as the change in policy itself has no immediate physical effect like the glass example. Other people have to respond (and through the choice not to respond, unlike the glass) before there are later physical accidents.

Any thoughts?

Humans have their limitations. We are best able to make progress when we cooperate especially by using language and language has a pathetically narrow band-width so we spend a large amount of our brain power to load linguistic units with ever more elaborate meanings leading to as just one example the notion of "cause" we use to communicate about all sorts of things, from human actions to elementary particles as if it was possible to encompass so diverse a reference field. I suspect that we started to talk about causes to be able to discuss individual and collective human responsibility in social and familial contexts. Given the complexity of human relations and the complication of the physical world, the notion of cause can only be a broad brush we use for the practical reason that human beings have to cooperate with each other to get things done more efficiently. If we now try to specify precisely what a cause is we're going to find that we can't do it without going into contradictions.

You want to categorise causes to provide semantic clarity I'd have to guess. But I think it's a mammoth task. You'd need to analyse how we use the notion of cause in different contexts.

However, I find the notion of causal link useful. There's a causal link between two events A and B if B wouldn't have occurred if, all things being otherwise equal, A had not occurred. A cause then is more like a condition and usually it's just one of many conditions. We just find it practically convenient to focus on just one or a few conditions and call those 'cause', probably because of our limited communication bandwidth.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

If I take a fragile drinking glass and forcefully throw it on the surface of a hard floor, then it wouldn't surprise me to learn that others would think I'm the cause of the subsequent broken glass. Had the glass not been fragile, and had the floor not been hard, then it's still the case I caused the glass to brake, as I threw it with sufficient force to break it given the conditions. I take full responsibility for being the cause behind why the glass broke. I admit, I caused it to break. We'll call that "cause of the first kind."

If a government entity or private organization changes a policy, we might find that things no longer happen as they might have before. There seems to be a tendency by many to attribute the change in policy as the cause for the real world change that subsequently occurs. For instance, (and I'm probably going to regret my impromptu attempt to give an example), an increase in the allowable speed limit in a given area might find future records of accidents conveying to us an increase in accidents and fatalities along that area. One might be inclined to blame the policy as being the cause. Okay, but if that's a cause, then it's certainly a cause of a different kind (and not a cause of the first kind).

The glass that broke wouldn't have broke had it been strong enough to withstand the force of my throw, but I'm still to blame regardless, for I threw the glass and the glass had no alternative but to react as it only could. The policy gave permission to drive faster along the roadway (and please, don't let this example rule over the point trying to be made), but the people could have continued to drive as they always have. This is very much unlike the glass. Yes, the people might have been led to think it was safe whereas it might not have been safe, but saying the change in policy caused the increase in traffic incidents cannot be the same kind of cause. It's a cause of a different kind, and I'll dub it a cause of the second kind.

I'm hesitant to regard it as an indirect cause, mainly because of the ambiguity potential. For instance, it could be a direct cause in the sense of it having a direct correlation yet an indirect cause as the change in policy itself has no immediate physical effect like the glass example. Other people have to respond (and through the choice not to respond, unlike the glass) before there are later physical accidents.

Any thoughts?

I think I'm pretty much with Juma on this (Juma can correct me if we differ). What we call 'causes' are in fact concepts in our explanatory model. That is not to say that 'actual' (real-world, out there) causes don't exist, I think, but just that when we try to understand what's going on (and we do indeed have a craving for that endeavour) we have to model the world. Ditto if we want to predict it.

In the case of the difference between the outcomes of you breaking the glass and a local authority changing the speed limit on the road, I would say that one important difference is of degree. There appear to be far fewer variables in the former case, therefore it seems easier to explain (to label cause or causes) using our handy concept of how stuff interacts.