Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?

[Copernicus]

Physicist Sean Carroll has examined the concept of downward causation in emergent systems and come to the conclusion that it is a "misguided/unhelpful notion".

Here is how Sean Carroll describes downward causation:

Downward causation, as I understand it, is an attempt to give some oomph to the claim that higher levels are not simply derived from lower levels. Consider the good old mental/physical divide. A reductionist would claim that the mental can ultimately be reduced to the physical. (I’m gliding over various nuanced divisions of opinion in the two-dimensional parameter space of reductionism/physicalism, but so be it.) But an antireductionist might say: “Look, I can choose to lift up my hand and put it somewhere. That’s the mental acting on the physical, with causally efficacious outcomes. You can’t describe this in terms of the physical alone; the higher level is influencing what happens at the lower level.”

That’s downward causation; the higher levels acting causally on the lower levels. If you get spooked by mind/body issues, think of the snowflakes. Sure, they are made of water molecules that act according to atomic/molecular physics. But the shape that they end up taking is highly constrained by the macroscopic crystalline structure of the snowflake itself. That wouldn’t have been visible if you were just thinking about molecules; the macroscopic structure has influenced the dynamics of the microscopic constituents.

Basically, Carroll rejects the notion of downward causation on the ground that it inappropriately mixes up the vocabulary that describes one type of systemic behavior with the different vocabulary needed to describe another. What follows is a clip from his blog post Consciousness and Downward Causation, but I recommend reading the whole post. It isn't too long.

So, I like to think I’m in my right mind, and I’m happy to admit that solidity acts causally when a hammer strikes a nail. But I don’t describe that nail as a collection of particles obeying the Core Theory *and* additionally as a solid object that a hammer can hit; we should use one language or the other. At the level of elementary particles, there’s no such concept as “solidity,” and it doesn’t act causally.

To be perfectly careful — all this is how we currently see things according to modern physics. An electron responds to the other fields precisely at its location, in quantitatively well-understood ways that make no reference to whether it’s in a nail, in a brain, or in interstellar space. We can of course imagine that this understanding is wrong, and that future investigations will reveal the electron really does care about those things. That would be the greatest discovery in physics since quantum mechanics itself, perhaps of all time; but I’m not holding my breath.

I really do think that enormous confusion is caused in many areas — not just consciousness, but free will and even more purely physical phenomena — by the simple mistake of starting sentences in one language or layer of description (“I thought about summoning up the will power to resist that extra slice of pizza…”) but then ending them in a completely different vocabulary (“… but my atoms obeyed the laws of the Standard Model, so what could I do?”) The dynamical rules of the Core Theory aren’t just vague suggestions; they are absolutely precise statements about how the quantum fields making up you and me behave under any circumstances (within the “everyday life” domain of validity). And those rules say that the behavior of, say, an electron is determined by the local values of other quantum fields at the position of the electron — and by nothing else. (That’s “locality” or “microcausality” in quantum field theory.) In particular, as long as the quantum fields at the precise position of the electron are the same, the larger context in which it is embedded is utterly irrelevant.

Carroll goes on to close out his argument:

It’s possible that the real world is different, and there is such inter-level feedback. That’s an experimentally testable question! As I mentioned to Henrik, it would be the greatest scientific discovery of our lifetimes. And there’s basically no evidence that it’s true. But it’s possible.

So I don’t think downward causation is of any help to attempts to free the phenomenon of consciousness from arising in a completely conventional way from the collective behavior of microscopic physical constituents of matter. We’re allowed to talk about consciousness as a real, causally efficacious phenomenon — as long as we stick to the appropriate human-scale level of description. But electrons get along just fine without it.

 

[Copernicus]

In case it isn't clear, Carroll's argument is that thoughts, consciousness, and free will are not illusions. They are very real phenomena. You just can't explain them in terms that make reference to quarks and neurons. Reductionist explanations fail.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It seems I agree with all that is said here. In particular, that there's absolutely no use for the concept of downward causation, or at least that you can't coherently think in terms of both downward and upward causation. You have to choose one and stick with it. Both should work fine on their own but you won't get anywhere if you use both at the same time to explain the world.


That being said, I would bring in a distinction that I think matters here. I routinely make the distinction between what I call the "quantitative" aspects of consciousness and the "qualitative" aspects. It's not a perfect terminology but I guess it easy to understand. In the qualitative side of things, I put two different things: the qualia we experience, and then the experience in itself, so to speak, what I also call "bare consciousness". Those are things we can only think of in terms of the particular quality. On the quantitative side, I put everything else, in particular the physical world as we understand it in scientific terms, as well as whatever scientific descriptions as are used to refer to what is thought of as mental phenomena.

I would expect all quantitative aspects to be eventually, or at least potentially, reducible. That's definitely a hard job but scientists should be able to improve on what we can do now.

I'm not so optimistic as to the qualitative aspects. In fact, I'm at a loss to even conceive of how that would go. And, in fact, I don't believe that's possible.

Obviously, I don't expect that the qualitative aspects could possibly contradict the quantitative aspects. It's just that the existence of the qualitative aspects, as such, isn't in any way explained by whatever we think is going on on the quantitative side of things, broadly "in the physical world". And I don't expect any explanation could be there for us to find it.

So, as I see it, no upward causation, but no downward causation either between the qualitative and the quantitative. No emergence either. Just two faces of presumably the same coin, absolutely unconnected to each other. A kind of dualism with no teeth, if you like, although the absence of contradiction between the two sides requires perfect synchronicity between qualitative and quantitative.

According to this, each side is "self-sufficient", i.e. logically closed. The physical world has its own laws and qualitative aspects play no part in that. The qualitative side may or may not have laws. We just don't know.

I'll finish by noting that we only actually know the qualitative side of things. The physical word is something we certainly believe exists but that we can only imagine, and imagine within this qualitative world in which each of us is "trapped", so to speak.

The advantage of this perspective is that the notion of "emergence" can be "disappeared" by being entirely reduced to causation. Less woo.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Also, there seems to be a misconception between causation, which is something understood as operational through time, so to speak, and the various abstraction/reduction levels we are wont to use. We can choose to some extent the level of abstraction which is best suited to what we want to do or explain, but it would make no sense to think in terms of causation between different levels of abstraction. I suspect that the point of Sean Carroll is really to clarify things in this respect.

And then, to reply to the question, "Downward Causation: Useful or Misguided Idea?", I think there is something to it and I do expect one day some smart ass will try it and show how it should be done.

But again, it's either downward or upward , not both at the same time.

Much like abstraction levels. You have to choose one and then you have to stick to the one you chose if you want to avoid logical issues and mental confusion.
EB

 

[untermensche]

..There aren’t “really” mental states that cause things to happen; there are simply neurons and tissues (or atoms and forces) acting according to the laws of physics/biology...

Who says the mind acting freely based on ideas and influencing the brain somehow violates any laws of physics or biology?

Who says downward causation of the mind violates any known laws of physics or biology? Who even knows what the mind is objectively?

If the mind is influencing the brain then downward causation is a real phenomena and one that should be studied, not discarded as if the answer is already known.

Just like so much from this guy.

A lot of style. A lot of hand waving. Some partial explanations that go nowhere.

Devoid of any real substance.

 

[DBT]

There are problems with Carroll's view;

Quote;
''Sean Carroll recently argued that free will can have a peaceful coexistence with modern science on an emergent level, in an effective description of human beings. That only works though if in the process of arriving at that effective level you throw away information that was fundamentally there. I believe Sean is aware of that when he writes “But we don’t know [all the necessary information to predict human decisions], and we never will, and therefore who cares?”

Well, I'd say that if you make room for free will by neglecting in principle available information, then his notion of free will is an empty concept that, as I've learned from the comments to his blogpost, the philosopher Edward Fredkin more aptly named “pseudo free will.”

I'm only picking around on Sean's post because it's short enough for you to go and read it unlike hundreds of pages that some philosophers have spent to say essentially the same thing. In any case, it is interesting how some scientists desperately try to hold on to some notion of free will in the face of an uncaring universe. I believe one of the reasons is that rejecting free will sheds a light of doubt on ones' moral responsibility, and since I feel personally offended, some words on that.

Morals and Responsibility


Whether the universe evolves deterministically, or whether its time evolution has a random element, an individual, fundamentally, has no choice over his or her actions in either case. It is then difficult to hold somebody responsible for actions if they had no way to make a different choice. This and similar thoughts have spurred a number of studies that claim to have shown that priming people’s belief in a deterministic universe reduces their moral responsibility.

For example, a study by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler (summary here) had half of the participants read a text passage arguing against the existence of free will. All participants then filled out a survey on their belief in free will and completed an arithmetic test in which they had an option to cheat, but were asked not to. It turned out that disbelief in free will was correlated with the amount of cheating. Also, in the previously mentioned study by Sarkassian et al, most participants held the opinion that in a deterministic universe people are not responsible for their actions.

However, the issue of moral responsibility is a red herring, for morals are human constructs whether or not we have free will . From the viewpoint of natural selection, the reason why most of us don’t go around cheating, stealing, or generally making others suffer is not that it’s illegal or immoral or both, but that our self-extrapolation correctly predicts we will be suffering in return. Not primarily because we may be thrown into jail but because our brains would keep returning to that moment of offense, imagining how other people suffered because of our wrongdoing, telling us that way that we did act against the interests of our species, and more generally reducing our overall fitness.

In fact, that our species still exists and seems to be doing reasonably well means that most of us do not take pleasure in letting others suffer. The reason we don’t perform “immoral” acts is that we can’t: We’re the product of a billion years of natural selection that has done well to sort out those who pose a risk to our future, and we've called the result “moral.” (I am far from saying one can derive morals.)

The less consequences an act has for ones’ own future and that of others the larger the variety in people’s behavior. (There are more people jaywalking than strangling talk show hosts in front of running cameras.) That we have laws enforcing rules is because there remain people among us whose brains are some sigma away from the average and our laws are one more channel of natural selection, keeping these people off the streets, trying to readjust their brain’s functionality, or at least generally making their lives difficult. David Eagleman recently made a very enlightened argument for a rethinking of our justice system in light of neurobiological evidence for our reduced capability to change our brain’s working.

In a world without free will, we should not ask if a person is worth blaming, but simply look for the dominant cause of the problem and take steps to solve it.''

 

[Lion IRC]

An infinite past regression of materialist determinism and/or random chance?
Or free will?

Can't Sean Carroll just use Occams Razor to airbrush reality and escape those pesky why questions?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Physicist Sean Carroll has examined the concept of downward causation in emergent systems and come to the conclusion that it is a "misguided/unhelpful notion".

Here is how Sean Carroll describes downward causation:



Basically, Carroll rejects the notion of downward causation on the ground that it inappropriately mixes up the vocabulary that describes one type of systemic behavior with the different vocabulary needed to describe another. What follows is a clip from his blog post Consciousness and Downward Causation, but I recommend reading the whole post. It isn't too long.



Carroll goes on to close out his argument:

It’s possible that the real world is different, and there is such inter-level feedback. That’s an experimentally testable question! As I mentioned to Henrik, it would be the greatest scientific discovery of our lifetimes. And there’s basically no evidence that it’s true. But it’s possible.

So I don’t think downward causation is of any help to attempts to free the phenomenon of consciousness from arising in a completely conventional way from the collective behavior of microscopic physical constituents of matter. We’re allowed to talk about consciousness as a real, causally efficacious phenomenon — as long as we stick to the appropriate human-scale level of description. But electrons get along just fine without it.

It's difficult stuff, but if I'm getting this right, I find some of Carroll's arguments and claims unpersuasive, in particular about keeping the different languages separate.

In fact, the only way we can make predictions about the lower level is by means of making observations about the higher level - since our senses cannot directly perceive the lower level. For example, if we make a prediction about the lower level, we can only test it by looking at its effects at a higher level. And in order to make predictions about what will happen at a lower level, we also need information about the higher level (e.g., we need to know that some scientists have set up such and such experiment in order to predict the outcome, which also we learn about by looking at the higher level effects).

Carroll seems to acknowledge at least some of that when he says that "Features of a lower level, like conservation of energy, can certainly imply or entail features of higher-level descriptions; and indeed the converse is also possible. But saying that such implications are “causes” is to mean something completely different than when we say “swinging my elbow caused the glass of wine to fall to the floor.”"
Yet, I don't see any good evidence in support of his semantic claim (i.e., about the elbow, etc.). For example, if we say that there is a good change North Korean engineers designed a bomb and managed to cause a fusion reaction (i.e., such-and-such atoms behaved in such-and-such way at the lower level), I see no good reason to think the word "cause" is being used in an unusual manner. Similarly, if we say that some neutrinos hit the stuff in a detector and caused such-and-such effect, which in turn caused such other effect, etc., which caused the effect we see (so we know we detected the neutrinos), I don't see any good reason to think the word "cause" is being used differently.

That does not entail downward causation, though. I don't see any good reason to believe it exists, either.

 

[fromderinside]

Which parts? Oh, all the parts. Is the list complete? Some say uh uh. Can see this is going to just fade away .....

 

[Kharakov]

Can't Sean Carroll just use Occams Razor to airbrush reality and escape those pesky why questions?

I don't think he's a Christian.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I don't think he's a Christian.

Yeah, it seems he thinks the higher level can't cause stuff to happen at a lower level.

We're fortunate. Life must be so much harder at the higher level.
EB

 

[DBT]

An infinite past regression of materialist determinism and/or random chance?
Or free will?

Can't Sean Carroll just use Occams Razor to airbrush reality and escape those pesky why questions?

Consciousness, thought and decision making are physical activities and processes and so are subject to the laws and principles of physics, therefore the world at large. If deterministic, allowing no deviation. If random or probabilistic, allowing no deviation from random or probabilistic causality; random interference within the system being neither chosen or desirable in terms of rational response.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's difficult stuff, but if I'm getting this right, I find some of Carroll's arguments and claims unpersuasive, in particular about keeping the different languages separate.

In fact, the only way we can make predictions about the lower level is by means of making observations about the higher level - since our senses cannot directly perceive the lower level. For example, if we make a prediction about the lower level, we can only test it by looking at its effects at a higher level. And in order to make predictions about what will happen at a lower level, we also need information about the higher level (e.g., we need to know that some scientists have set up such and such experiment in order to predict the outcome, which also we learn about by looking at the higher level effects).

There's no simple relation of cause and effect between for example an atom losing one electron and the state of a measuring instrument. The measuring instrument will contain billions and billions of atoms and what each of these atoms does matters just as much as the one losing an electron in terms of causing the measuring instrument to be in a particular state. What matters here is that the theory which is used at the atomic level won't be used to predict the state of the measuring instrument. It won't be used because nobody would know how to apply it to such a large collection of atoms that there is in a measuring instrument. So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

For example, if we say that there is a good change North Korean engineers designed a bomb and managed to cause a fusion reaction (i.e., such-and-such atoms behaved in such-and-such way at the lower level), I see no good reason to think the word "cause" is being used in an unusual manner.

The North Korean engineers wouldn't know what any particular atom in a fusion reaction does. They will know things about the fusion reaction itself, as a macroscopic event, but know nothing about each individual atom in it. The wouldn't even know of the existence of any of these particular atoms. So, the engineers designing and building a nuclear bomb cannot be said to have been able to cause the specific behaviour of any particular atom. Even the idea that they caused the bomb to explode is a very loose use of the word "cause" compared to interactions between elementary particles. The cause of the explosion of a bomb is both complex beyond our ability to compute and too vague to put it on a par with interactions between elementary particles. You could just as well say that it was the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un who caused the explosion, the engineers being just a means to an end. Or it was the Americans by abstaining to preventively carpet bomb the nuclear facility. To opt for a particular cause in this case is to adopt a particular perspective on the event. So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

So, yes, you can use the word "cause" for any level of abstraction, but the word takes a much looser meaning as you apply it to higher levels of abstraction. So, mixing different levels in your explanation using indifferently the same word "cause", is just equivocation and bad rhetoric.
EB

 

[Angra Mainyu]

There's no simple relation of cause and effect between for example an atom losing one electron and the state of a measuring instrument. The measuring instrument will contain billions and billions of atoms and what each of these atoms does matters just as much as the one losing an electron in terms of causing the measuring instrument to be in a particular state. What matters here is that the theory which is used at the atomic level won't be used to predict the state of the measuring instrument. It won't be used because nobody would know how to apply it to such a large collection of atoms that there is in a measuring instrument. So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

But the events at the lower level will be used to predict the behavior at a higher level, even if not by means of applying the theory directly to the instrument.

Consider Schrödinger's cat:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

Here the first atomic decay would have killed the cat; if one wants a more details, it would have caused the measurement in the counter, which would have caused something else, etc. But I don't see how that would not be causation (regardless of what actually happens to the cat; I'm talking about how he is talking).

The North Korean engineers wouldn't know what any particular atom in a fusion reaction does. They will know things about the fusion reaction itself, as a macroscopic event, but know nothing about each individual atom in it. The wouldn't even know of the existence of any of these particular atoms.

They're not identifying the atoms one by one, but they do know that at the lower level, that stuff will be happening.

So, the engineers designing and building a nuclear bomb cannot be said to have been able to cause the specific behaviour of any particular atom.

Why?
The fact that they do not identify the atoms one by one, don't give them a name, etc., is no good reason to think they're not the causes of that behavior. If the North Korean generals fire a nuke at a South Korean village and hit it, they caused the death of the people in the village, even if they didn't know any of those people. The fact that they don't know their victims has nothing to do with whether they caused them to die. Even if they did not have the means to identify the victims, that would not mean they did not cause their deaths.

You could just as well say that it was the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un who caused the explosion, the engineers being just a means to an end.

He was a cause as well. We can focus on one cause or another. Both of those events (i.e., his decision and their actions) are proximate enough to be captured by the common understanding of causation, it seems to me, though his is more debatable.

Or it was the Americans by abstaining to preventively carpet bomb the nuclear facility.

No, I don't think that's true, under a common understanding of the word; the common usage of the word "cause" constrains the perspectives that are fitting; saying that the cause was the KT asteroid because without its hitting the Earth that bomb would not have existed is not true, under a common understanding of the term "cause", I think.

So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

While a confusion would be bad epistemology, I don't think you (or Carroll) have given a good argument for the existence of said confusion (in principle; people get confused often, that's for sure, but my point is that in principle (and in also many cases) it does not seem confused to talk about causation by particles and the like).

 

[ruby sparks]

Just on the question of whether (what we routinely call) the 'mental' can have a causal effect on (what we routinely call) the 'physical'......

What about placebos? Am I right in thinking they will only work if there is conscious understanding? If I give you a placebo tablet and explain to you in Chinese (assuming that you don't understand Chinese) what to expect, it won't work, I think, even though all the same information is entering the system. It appears you have to form a belief.

Just wondering.

It might get trickier if I primed you subliminally. That opens up the idea that you don't have to consciously experience the priming. So is there still a belief, or indeed a 'mental' event in that case?

 

[ruby sparks]

In case it isn't clear, Carroll's argument is that thoughts, consciousness, and free will are not illusions. They are very real phenomena. You just can't explain them in terms that make reference to quarks and neurons. Reductionist explanations fail.

First, I would consider free will the odd one out of those three, on the basis that it's a process, not an experience (unless we are talking about free will as an experience, in which case it's real in that it feels like something, but that would just make it an instance of the other two, not unlike, say, love and happiness, which are of course also processes, as are thoughts and consciousness so I've confused myself, lol).

Anyhows, setting that aside and talking about the other two (not even sure what the exact difference between them is, but moving on......)

The above (bolded bit) always exercises my brain.

I'm never sure if we say this because unlike with other things, we are just never satisfied with the explanation, the way we are with other explanations, such as for instance gravity. If for instance we were, hypothetically, able to take a trillion trillion tiny little reduced 'things' and put them together so that consciousness emerged, and we were able to do this routinely over and over in a factory, what 'something more' explanation would we need? We'd know how it worked.

So, I'm thinking, reductionist explanations only fail because at this time they are incomplete, not because reductionism is the wrong approach.

 

[Speakpigeon]

There's no simple relation of cause and effect between for example an atom losing one electron and the state of a measuring instrument. The measuring instrument will contain billions and billions of atoms and what each of these atoms does matters just as much as the one losing an electron in terms of causing the measuring instrument to be in a particular state. What matters here is that the theory which is used at the atomic level won't be used to predict the state of the measuring instrument. It won't be used because nobody would know how to apply it to such a large collection of atoms that there is in a measuring instrument. So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

But the events at the lower level will be used to predict the behavior at a higher level, even if not by means of applying the theory directly to the instrument.

Consider Schrödinger's cat:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

Here the first atomic decay would have killed the cat; if one wants a more details, it would have caused the measurement in the counter, which would have caused something else, etc. But I don't see how that would not be causation (regardless of what actually happens to the cat; I'm talking about how he is talking).

I don't dispute that it's legitimate to talk of causation at every level, only that mixing the different levels will usually result in equivocation.

Here, Schrödinger can afford to do it because there's a clear causal chain and he's able to distinguish the different parts of this chain, each with it own level of detail in the causal explanation. Perhaps the critical link is the measuring device, which is a macroscopic object but measuring a microscopic event. And typically, Schrödinger doesn't describe the behaviour of this measuring instrument like he can describe the "decaying" atom. He says, "the counter tube discharges", without explaining how that happens. There's no confusion here because there are three different causal descriptions and each applies to a different segment of the causal chain. The set-up here is reasonably simple so Schrödinger can get away with it, but you're more likely to mix up levels that should remain distinct in your explanation if you try to describe more complex systems, such as typically the human body, and in particular the human mind. Some parts of the causal chain can already be described there, but not all of them, far from it, and that's where you would probably get confused in your explanation.

The North Korean engineers wouldn't know what any particular atom in a fusion reaction does. They will know things about the fusion reaction itself, as a macroscopic event, but know nothing about each individual atom in it. The wouldn't even know of the existence of any of these particular atoms.

They're not identifying the atoms one by one, but they do know that at the lower level, that stuff will be happening.

Sure, but they still wouldn't be able to describe what really happened at the microscopic level except in generic terms. Scientists can describe the nuclear reaction only for a few atoms and engineers will assume that this is the sort of thing that happened throughout the nuclear material within the bomb, without being able to ascertain that this was true. Maybe something completely different happens. So, there's is equivocation as to the level of certainty we have given the level of detail we use.

So, the engineers designing and building a nuclear bomb cannot be said to have been able to cause the specific behaviour of any particular atom.

Why?
The fact that they do not identify the atoms one by one, don't give them a name, etc., is no good reason to think they're not the causes of that behavior. If the North Korean generals fire a nuke at a South Korean village and hit it, they caused the death of the people in the village, even if they didn't know any of those people. The fact that they don't know their victims has nothing to do with whether they caused them to die. Even if they did not have the means to identify the victims, that would not mean they did not cause their deaths.

The ones saying the generals caused the death of villagers will be those who will see the actual dead bodies. They will know the result. In the case of the atoms in the nuclear device, no one will have anyway near the same level of certainty as to the particular atoms involved, let alone what each of these atoms did.

So, confusing the two levels is just bad epistemology.

While a confusion would be bad epistemology, I don't think you (or Carroll) have given a good argument for the existence of said confusion (in principle; people get confused often, that's for sure, but my point is that in principle (and in also many cases) it does not seem confused to talk about causation by particles and the like).

I don't dispute that it's legitimate to talk of causation at every level, only that mixing the different levels in your explanation or description will usually result in equivocation, by giving the impression that you claim a level of certainty equivalent at all levels of description, which can't be true, not a the moment anyway.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

One confusion that comes, I think, from mixing different levels of abstraction in our description is the notion of "emergence". Typically we have to modes of description: abstraction and causality. The notion of emergence seems to come from the confusion between these two modes. We can easily identify two different levels of abstraction. One is when we describe a macroscopic event, like an exploding nuclear bomb. The second is when we describe a microscopic event, like for example the fusion of two atoms of hydrogen. We just then go on to assume that the microscopic description can be used in a generic way to what happens inside the exploding nuclear bomb. Yet, that's not necessarily true. A good analogy is (ordinary) water. Typically, you learn that water is H₂O. And then, you may or may not learn that it's not the whole story. Pure water always contains a proportion of OH⁻ and  H₃O⁺ ions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydronium
The molecules in pure water auto-dissociate (i.e.: react with each other) into hydronium and hydroxide ions in the following equilibrium:

2  H₂O ⇌ OH⁻ +  H₃O⁺​

In pure water, there is an equal number of hydroxide and hydronium ions, so it is a neutral solution.

And this gives water some of it's properties (e.g. conductivity), so that number of causal explanations relative to water would just be wrong in assuming that water is just H₂O.


There's another, more subtle confusion possible. Some people may think of the different levels of abstraction as causally connected. Typically, some people may see a nuclear explosion as caused by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. Yet, different levels of abstraction are synchronous descriptions of the same thing. The term "water" is a high-level description of one thing corresponding to the low-level description of the same thing in terms of H₂O (as well as 2  H₂O ⇌ OH⁻ +  H₃O⁺). The two descriptions are meant to be synchronous. They describe the same thing at the same moment. This precludes causation, at least if we exclude the possibility of self-causation. Emergence can be a good way to describe the relationship between descriptions of the same thing at different levels of abstraction. However, there's always the possibility of getting things confused by introducing a notion of causality into that of emergence. It seems appropriate to me to talk of the mind as an emergent property of the brain, if we mean by that that the mind is broadly the same thing as the total activity, or a part of it, of the neurons and other cells the brain is made of. I think it's wrong if by "emergent property of the brain" it is meant that the mind is something else than that, casting the mind as somehow caused by the total activity of the neurons and other cells the brain is made of.
EB

 

[rousseau]

Misguided, to be sure. Looks to me like another attempt to find a God in there, which, imo, puts the conversation in the wrong ballpark.

I'm still waiting for this community to discuss the question of: 'what does it mean to be human in a deterministic universe'

Rather than constantly quibbling over free-will.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I don't dispute that it's legitimate to talk of causation at every level, only that mixing the different levels will usually result in equivocation.

Here, Schrödinger can afford to do it because there's a clear causal chain and he's able to distinguish the different parts of this chain, each with it own level of detail in the causal explanation. Perhaps the critical link is the measuring device, which is a macroscopic object but measuring a microscopic event. And typically, Schrödinger doesn't describe the behaviour of this measuring instrument like he can describe the "decaying" atom. He says, "the counter tube discharges", without explaining how that happens. There's no confusion here because there are three different causal descriptions and each applies to a different segment of the causal chain. The set-up here is reasonably simple so Schrödinger can get away with it, but you're more likely to mix up levels that should remain distinct in your explanation if you try to describe more complex systems, such as typically the human body, and in particular the human mind. Some parts of the causal chain can already be described there, but not all of them, far from it, and that's where you would probably get confused in your explanation.

But the problem does not seem to be that one is talking about causes at a lower level (e.g., particles) and effects at a higher level, or vice versa. Rather, the usual problem seems to be to count causes twice by failing to realize that descriptions at the lower and the higher level sometimes describe (at least partially) the same stuff, but from different perspectives.

Sure, but they still wouldn't be able to describe what really happened at the microscopic level except in generic terms. Scientists can describe the nuclear reaction only for a few atoms and engineers will assume that this is the sort of thing that happened throughout the nuclear material within the bomb, without being able to ascertain that this was true. Maybe something completely different happens. So, there's is equivocation as to the level of certainty we have given the level of detail we use.

I don't see the equivocation. You seem to be saying the word "cause" is being used differently, if I'm getting this right, but I don't see that.

So, the engineers designing and building a nuclear bomb cannot be said to have been able to cause the specific behaviour of any particular atom.

Why?
The fact that they do not identify the atoms one by one, don't give them a name, etc., is no good reason to think they're not the causes of that behavior. If the North Korean generals fire a nuke at a South Korean village and hit it, they caused the death of the people in the village, even if they didn't know any of those people. The fact that they don't know their victims has nothing to do with whether they caused them to die. Even if they did not have the means to identify the victims, that would not mean they did not cause their deaths.

The ones saying the generals caused the death of villagers will be those who will see the actual dead bodies. They will know the result. In the case of the atoms in the nuclear device, no one will have anyway near the same level of certainty as to the particular atoms involved, let alone what each of these atoms did.

Actually, one of the engineers can say: "The device we made has caused the death of most of the people in that village", and he would be correct (he might also be executed, but that's another matter). And one of the generals could repent and say "Our bomb caused the death of most of the people in that village", and he would also be correct. And if the bomb is big enough - like a very powerful H bomb vs. a small village - he can correctly say that they caused the death of everyone in the village. But regardless of what they say, the point is that the bomb would cause the death of those people, and we can talk about it with no equivocation. The fact that the generals, engineers, etc., do not know the people they killed does not mean that they cannot be said to have caused each specific death, even if in order to identify the specific death, we need to know the villagers - but we can properly say "they caused every individual death" without knowning or being able to identify every specific villager.

I don't dispute that it's legitimate to talk of causation at every level, only that mixing the different levels in your explanation or description will usually result in equivocation, by giving the impression that you claim a level of certainty equivalent at all levels of description, which can't be true, not a the moment anyway.

Sorry, I meant causation of things at the higher level by particles and the like. I understand your position, but I don't find the arguments persuasive. I do think there's often confusion because people count causes twice, but I don't see this as a necessary result of talking about a cause at one level and an effect at a different one, or about giving the impression that there is the same degree of certainty at both levels, in terms of identifying specific objects (though it may be that that is often a problem as well, in practice, but it does not need to be so).
ETA:

There's another, more subtle confusion possible. Some people may think of the different levels of abstraction as causally connected. Typically, some people may see a nuclear explosion as caused by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. Yet, different levels of abstraction are synchronous descriptions of the same thing.

Yes, that seems to be a usual confusion. But it doesn't happen just because one is talking about causes and effects that are on different levels. It happens because people fail to realize that they're describing the same stuff (or part of it, more precisely) twice, from different perspectives, and then counting causes twice.