Is the reason why we can't come up with a perfect definition of causation, that our common idea of causation is diffuse?

Question

I have read a lot about theories of causation lately. None of them define causation satisfactorily. Either you end up with a definition that comes very close to common sense, but at the same time is prone to rather technical counter-arguments (e.g. common causes, preemption, etc.) or you end up with a definition that makes the whole configuration of the universe a cause for a certain effect and therefore is far from our common understanding of causation.

Now, my question, as stated in the title, is: Isn't the reason for this inability to define causation sufficiently, that we use that notion in a diffuse way in everyday life?

Answer 1

Isn't the reason for this inability to define causation sufficiently, that we use that notion in a diffuse way in everyday life?

Isn't the reality of everyday life that all the notions that we use we use them in a "diffuse way"? This doesn't seem to have prevented progress to be made in mathematics, science, engineering. What you say implies that there is a lot of theories of causation, which means that many bright minds have tried.

For one thing, maybe we should pay attention to the everyday notion of cause. This is clearly not what many people do, as demonstrated by one answer here. I quote:

So if we take as a premise some situation A, and we can use our rules to derive as a consequence a second situation B, with the consequence B happening later than all of our premises, then we say that A causes B.

I would describe this view of causation as typically scientific. Yet, it is apparent that this is not the ordinary notion that issues from everyday life. So, formal theories of causation fail to provide any perfect definition of causation probably because they don't even try to model the everyday notion, not because the everyday notion is "diffuse".

The reasons that they don't try may be trivial. The history of humanity is replete with false theories because it will always be much easier to produce at least some of the many false theories which are conceivable than to produce the only one which is true. Isn't that enough of a good reason to fail?

Another good reason to fail seems to be that many if not most bright minds tend to pooh-pooh everything which is not formally articulated, and the everyday notion of causation is certainly not formally articulated. And if you pooh-pooh something, you are not going to be motivated enough to want to dignify it with a proper formal model of it.

Yes, that's about it.

Answer 2

The basic concept of causation is: we have some rules that allow us to take some initial events as a premise and infer what events will happen temporally after the initial events.

We assume that the premises and conclusions here are tagged with the time that the events happen, so that we can order them in time, with the conclusion occurring after all the premises.

• The true, ultimate laws of physics are an example of such rules, though don't know exactly what they are.
• More imperfect, limited laws of physics that only apply to certain situations are also examples of such rules. For instance, the Lagrangian of a Newtonian system allows us to derive future states of the system when given initial conditions.
• Common sense reasoning is another example of such rules. A child knows that if you strike a match, it lights - the child has a cognitive system in place that takes as a premise the event, "the match is struck," and deduces as a consequence the later event, "the match lights."
• For a simplified sandbox, Conway's game of life has three simple rules for deriving the next state of the grid from the current state of the grid. Causation can thus be tracked in Conway's game of life. You can run the simulation one way, then rewind it, flip one cell from white to black, and run it again to see what happens afterwards as a result of the flip.

---

So if we take as a premise some situation A, and we can use our rules to derive as a consequence a second situation B, with the consequence B happening later than all of our premises, then we say that A causes B.

That's the basic idea of causation. We can quibble over definitions - when we will technically say "A causes B" - but this isn't a problem in the notion of causation itself. It is just a problem of standardizing the terminology around the same basic idea. Of course, different people have different ideas of how the terminology should be standardized. This is like all the different and conflicting electric plug and voltage standards in different countries - a problem of coordination and agreement, not a problem with the fundamental idea of alternating current.

• It is not technically right to speak of "the" cause of an event. There are any number of possible causes for a given event. Ultimately every event B is caused by the Big Bang, and there are many other sets of events A that we can say also are sufficient to cause B.
• Our rules may not allow us to say that B happens with certainty; they may be probabilistic. For this we may say things like, "A probably causes B," if from A we deduce an increase in the probability of B. To be more confident of the causation, we may appeal to a better set of rules or a more complete set of initial conditions.
• You mentioned preemption. If A "would have caused" B, if not for the interference of C, then really if we said, "A causes B," we were speaking loosely; A by itself was not sufficient to infer B. In truth it is, "A and the non-interference of C (and the non-interference of D, and E, etc) cause B." This is an appeal to a more complete set of initial conditions. It's not exactly wrong to say "A causes B" if that's what usually happens - it's just not exactly right either. We might call it a useful shorthand.