Posts Tagged ‘causality’
“We do not see our hand in what happens, and so we call certain events melancholy accidents”*…
Mariel Goddu suggests that humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect…
Causal understanding is the cognitive capacity that enables you to think about how things affect and influence each other. It is your concept of making, doing, generating and producing – of causing – that allows you to grasp how the Moon causes the tides, how a virus makes you sick, why tariffs change international trade, the social consequences of a faux pas, and the way each event in a story leads to what happens next. Causal understanding is the foundation of all thoughts why, how, because, and what if. When you plan for tomorrow, wonder how things could have turned out differently, or imagine something impossible (What would it be like to fly?), your causal understanding is at work.
In daily life, causal understanding imbues your observations of changes in the world with a kind of generativity and necessity. If you hear a sound, you assume something made it. If there’s a dent on the car, you know that something – or someone – must have done it. You know that the downpour will make you wet, so you push the umbrella handle to open it and avoid getting soaked. You watch as an acorn falls from a tree, producing ripples in a puddle.
The human power to view cause-and-effect as part of ‘objective reality’ (a philosophically fraught idea, but for now: the mind-independent world ‘out there’) is so basic, so automatic, that it’s difficult to imagine our experience without it. Just as it’s nearly impossible to see letters and words as mere shapes on a page or a screen (try it!), it is terrifically challenging to observe changes in the world as not involving causation. We do not see: a key disappearing into a keyhole; hands moving; door swinging open. We see someone unlocking the door.We don’t see the puddle, then the puddle with ripples-plus-acorn. We see the acorn making a splash.
Most people don’t realise that any of this is a cognitive achievement. But, in fact, it is highly unusual. No other animal thinks about causation in the hyper-objective, hyper-general way that we do. Only we – adult humans – see the world suffused with causality. As a result, we have unparalleled power to change and control it. Our causal understanding is a superpower.
The scientific story of how our causal minds develop features another superpower: human sociality. It’s our unique sensitivity to other people that lets us acquire our special causal understanding. The story also raises questions about ‘other minds’. If our causal understanding is the exception, rather than the rule, then how does the world show up for other animals? If we try to suspend the causal necessity that structures so much of our experience, what’s left over?
I’m going to suggest that what remains is our experience of doing – a value-laden, first-personal and inherently interactive perspective. It is in this involved, participatory ‘point of do’ – as opposed to a detached, objective point of view – that the seeds of higher cognition take root. Appreciating that our original perspective is action-oriented and goal-directed can also help us understand our own shortcomings – and how to change them…
Fascinating– and timely: “Suffused with causality,” from @marielgoddu.bsky.social in @aeon.co. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Stanley Cavell
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As we appreciate agency, we might send carefully-analyzed birthday greetings to Erich Fromm; he was born on this date in 1900. A social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist, he was an important member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory (who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States).
Fromm’s overriding interest was in the he connections between psychology and society. His first seminal work, Escape from Freedom (1941; known in Britain as The Fear of Freedom) is considered one of the founding works of political psychology. He wished to see the creation of a sane society meeting human needs with harmony between men and nations in a nuclear age, and helped organize the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957.
Lies, Damned Lies, and…
From Vali Chandrasekaran, on BusinessWeek.com: Need to prove something you already believe? Statistics are easy: All you need are two graphs and a leading question. Correlation may not imply causation, but it sure can help us insinuate it.
More here.
As we recalibrate our conclusions, we might send amplified birthday wishes to musician, composer, and inventor Les Paul; he was born on this date in 1915. Paul was an accomplished jazz and country songwriter and guitarist; but he is surely best remembered as a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar (and an early adopter of techniques like over-dubbing, tape delay, and multi-track recording)– that’s to say, as a father of rock and roll.
Les Paul, playing a Gibson Les Paul (source)
Correlation = Causality?…
As we think not, we might recall that it was on this date in 356 BCE that the Temple of Artemis (AKA the Temple of Diana) in Ephesus– reputedly the first Greek temple built of marble, sponsored by Croesus, and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World– was destroyed by a fire set in its roof beams.
Model of Temple of Artemis, Miniatürk Park, Istanbul (source)
Site in Ephesus today (source)
More mathematical merriment…
As we revisit our premises, we might recall that it was on this date in 1678 that the Gazette of London offered a reward to anyone who could identify the author of an electrifying pamphlet called “An Account of the Growth of Popery.” It was subsequently revealed to be the work of Andrew Marvell.
While we tend to remember Marvell as the creator of poems like “To His Coy Mistress,” he was known in his own time as a political figure. As a young man, Marvell served as tutor to Cromwell’s son and assistant to Milton. But Marvell became a supporter of the Restoration, a position that he pursued from a seat in Parliament that he occupied from 1659, the year of Cromwell’s death, until his own. By the 1670s, Marvell had become a prolific, albeit largely anonymous, pamphleteer.
Indeed, we know Marvell as poet only because his housekeeper, pretending to be his widow, published “Miscellaneous Poems,” the only collection of his poems, in 1681– three years after his death.
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