Questions tagged [causation]
The causation tag has no usage guidance.
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Causation with Inductive/Deductive Logic
I'm sofa-philosopher and I have a case I can't quite dismantle. My friend (let's call him John) just made a statement that I find philosophically weak, and I'd like to run it thru you guys.
So, John ...
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43 views
Does analysis start with a premise or conclusion?
I'm trying to perform an analysis but I'm unsure which way around the premise and conclusions are.
Here is the example:
"The circulatory system is able to circulate blood.".
Now I'm trying ...
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229 views
Does time have a beginning? [closed]
I'm not expecting to learn individual points of view of those who read this question here (The specific question here is whether time has a beginning - not general ideas pertaining to philosophy of ...
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Aristotle Physics: Things found in virtue of a concomitant attribute
Synopsis
I am trying to understand better Aristotle's notion of things that do not exist by nature. I will give my understanding below, and hopefully, you guys can help me see any flaws in my ...
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Leibniz's theory of subtance and causal interaction - with God
It follows from Leibniz' complete concept theory of truth that substances have no causal interaction with another. But Leibniz also says that created substances depend on God and that God conserves ...
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85 views
If y is a direct result of x, and x is occurring, is y unavoidable?
Suppose knocking over a glass has the direct result of making fall. If you knock over a glass, will it fall, no matter what?
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Are patterns prior to causes? Which philosophers are hesitant to believe there really are causes?
Most people and most philosophers seem to strongly believe in causation. I would like understand what philosophers have to say about how to go from believing in just patterns to causes too.
Are the ...
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50 views
How does a dualist explain changing their mind?
If I'm a monist about the mind and physicalism and/or causal determinism, when I change my mind about some topic, I can posit something causally linked to my mind as changing my opinion. Perhaps I ...
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113 views
Is the reason why we can't come up with a perfect definition of causation, that our common idea of causation is diffuse?
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 ...
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31 views
Questions about Reichenbach's Principle and causes
Is "statistical dependences need to be explained causally" an accurate depiction of Reichenbach's Principle? (Rob Spekkens https://youtu.be/n8NRSPCekmI?t=1575)
Does one need to accept this ...
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51 views
Suzy and Billy throwing rocks at a bottle or hitting a bell - are these examples of late preemption?
Regarding causation, late preemption occurs, when a process (cause) leads to an effect, but a backup-process is also set in motion and would have led to the same effect, if the other process wouldn't ...
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214 views
Historical Causation or Causality in History
The words, "Cause" and "Effect", are studied in fields, such as Physics, Cosmology and particularly Philosophy-(i.e. Analytical Philosophy, Metaphysics, as well as, The Philosophy ...
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How does Spinoza deduce substance must cause itself?
Prop. VII. Existence Belongs to the Nature of Substance
Spinoza demonstrates this by arguing substance must be the cause of itself, i.e. existence must belong to the nature of substance (by def. 1). ...
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60 views
Is there a Possible World in which Humeanism isn't true?
I'm an amateur philosopher, interested in the work of Ned Hall:
Mindscape podcast: Ned Hall on Possible Worlds and the Laws of Nature (Dec-2019)
PhilPapers: Humean Reductionism About Laws Of Nature (...
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2answers
103 views
What's the difference between a causal relation and a causal and nomic relation?
If a nomic and causal relation is a relation in which something cause something else and this effect is dependent on the properties of the causal object, what is specific in a simple causal relation?
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What's the relationship between physical and logical causation?
I have always presumed that logical causation - such as logical rules like the formation of a valid syllogism, or the law of the excluded middle - operate independently of physical causation. That is, ...
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197 views
Kant on causation
I want to start off by saying that I'm not a philosophy major and haven't read any texts. All my understanding is from Wikipedia, Stanford website and Reddit. Please don't hold that against me.
I have ...
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356 views
What's the difference between "cause" and "allow"?
Let's say person A picks up a pencil and drops it and person B catches it.
I think most people would agree that person A dropping the pencil allowed person B to catch it, but did not cause person B to ...
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Why does cause exist?
We intuitively believe that everything must have a cause. If that is true, does it mean that causation itelf must have a cause? To be clear, I do NOT mean "does the cause of a cause have a cause?&...
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405 views
Why are Heisenberg's uncertaity principle and the quantum theory considered to upset or to affect human experience of reality? [closed]
These two principles seem to have caused an uproar within the scientific community and to have supposedly disrupted notions of 'causality'. Since both features already existed before their 'discovery' ...
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216 views
Why is causation not just a special case of correlation?
Here is more context to the question.
A common example given of the “obviousness” that correlation does not equal causation is that shark attacks correlate with ice cream consumption. The explanation ...
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3answers
199 views
Free Will as Incoherent (What's wrong with this argument?)
Is this a sound argument?
Free will is a cause that is neither determinism nor stochastic.
Causes are either deterministic or stochastic.
Free will is an incoherent entity
All incoherent entities do ...
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513 views
Is the idea of a causal chain physical (or even scientific)?
I am aware that the idea is venerable, going back through Lucretius to the Stoics and Epicurus, and even to Aristotle with his prime mover argument. But isn't this a pre-scientific notion? The ...
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201 views
How can God be in the genus of efficient causes?
In Summa Theologica I q. 3 a. 5 "Whether God is contained in a genus?", Aquinas says that if God were in a genus, it would be the genus of "being," but being cannot be the genus of anything (cf. ...
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86 views
Is there a non singularist analysis of causation which says it's an internal relation?
The final distinction we will need, or more accurately, family of distinctions, is between internal and external relations. What makes them members of a single family is that a relation is internal if ...
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What's wrong with this reconstruction of Nagarjuna?
I was trying to add clarity to my concept of "rebirth" on the Buddhist stack exchange. Nagarjuna's karika, 1.3 (Batchelor) reads:
The essence of things does not exist in conditions and so on. If ...
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62 views
What is the "ontic principle"?
"there is no difference that does not make a difference"
according to Bryant. Specifically, and independent of whether this is stated by him, does it mean that any two terms with the same referent ...
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91 views
How does Buddhist soteriology link to the first cause argument?
Aquinas argued that the observable order of causation is not
self-explanatory. It can only be accounted for by the existence of a
first cause; this first cause, however, must not be considered ...
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101 views
Some questions on causality and modern science
Note: I'm translating the vocabulary from Spanish so there may be some erroneous terms. If so, please edit them.
In Causality: the place of the causal principle in modern science by Mario Bunge, the ...
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1answer
174 views
What is the relationship between scientific explanation and interpretability?
I am trying to understand the relationship between Scientific Explanation and Intelligibility / Understanding. I believe the former is grounded in the Metaphysics of Causation while the latter is ...
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143 views
Examples of identical sets which are not causal?
Google is failing me in my search for examples of identical sets which do no have causal relationships between them. What I mean is that all and only objects which belong to set A belong to set B, but ...
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What do you call the fallacy of thinking that some action A will guarantee some outcome B, when in reality B depends on multiple other conditions?
Example:
Dentist: “You have multiple cavities.”
Patient: “That’s ridiculous! You always told me that brushing my teeth prevents cavities. I brush my teeth every night. Therefore, I can’t possibly ...
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Does a biconditional necessarily imply a causal relationship?
Supposing A if and only if B, is it necessarily true that either A causes B or B causes A?
I'm considering this question where the truth values of A and B are both True, not both false.
In theory, ...
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627 views
What's the difference between cause and condition?
If I drop a ball, the act of release is the cause. What are the conditions in this situation? Few examples that come to mind are: gravity, mass, density of air.. What's the difference between cause ...
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187 views
Is Duff's test of failure just the contrapositive of "D intends a consequence of his action if he acts with the aim of producing that consequence"?
Isn't 2 (Duff's test of failure) just the contrapositive of 1?
I can rephrase 2 as
2.1. If the result didn't occur, would D regard himself as having failed in his plan?
The logical contrapositive ...
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61 views
Do any arguments -- at all-- about qualia work analogously to arguments about causation?
Are there any arguments about qualia that are analogous to those about cause? I'm asking partly because cause and qualia seem they should be hot topics of any philosophy, and partly due to a confused ...
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149 views
Does the reversibility of laws of physics prove that causality doesn't exist?
Does the fact that the fundamental laws are symmetric with respect to direction of time show that causation does not exist? Since causality always requires the cause to precede the effect, but laws of ...
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167 views
Are all explanations either personal or scientific?
In A New Cosmological Argument, Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss offer up a cosmological argument for a personal God, from the weak principle of sufficient reason (among other premises, but the WPSR ...
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151 views
Is this argument equivalent to the argument of prime mover of Aristotle?
For alternation in the status of A to be a cause of the alteration in the status of B, we naively demand that the former alteration exists before the later, and so the later [i.e.; the alteration in ...
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114 views
Questions concerning Hume's argument for the unknowability of ultimate causes
I'm currently reading through Hume's An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and I'm having trouble understanding one of his big arguments in the section entitled "Skeptical Doubts Concerning the ...
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328 views
How are 'voluntary' actions possible in the scope of Sam Harris's framework of free will (its absence actually)?
Disclamer: I am striving to understand the point of view, not to examine if it is right or wrong (makes sense or not, etc.).
I have listened to two audio excerpts by Sam Harris, discussing his views ...
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Is there a philosophical position for and against the idea that every causal entity contributes to every effect?
Is there a philosophical position for and against the idea that every causal entity can in principle contribute to every effect?
So do some e.g. physical explanations claim that entities of type X ...
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297 views
Would a first cause exist necessarily, so that absences are uncaused?
Would a first cause exist necessarily?
So, let's suppose God is the first cause. Does that mean he necessarily exists? Does He then mean that his effects also exist, contingently or not, so that ...
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758 views
What are examples of causes that do not require energy to produce an effect?
As a comment to an answer Conifold mentioned that "Causes may not require any energy to produce the effect".
After thinking about that, I couldn't come up with any such causes outside of metaphysical ...
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1answer
236 views
Formal logic to describe causation?
I'm looking for any formal work that has been done on describing causation the way people understand it. I am not looking for logical implication, more a way to talk about "Why?" questions. Basically, ...
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462 views
"Idea of Power" - Locke and Hume
What is the concept of "power" in the context of "causation" in the philosophy of John Locke and David Hume?
At one instance, in his treatise "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding", Hume seems ...
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Must an eternal object be uncaused?
Let's say that we grant that item "X" is eternal. By "eternal" we mean that it has always existed and that it always will exist.
Because "X" is eternal, does it follow that it MUST be uncaused?
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Does a material cause either depend on its effect or appear to be somehow self-sufficient?
Does a material cause either depend on its effect or appear to be somehow self suffiient?
Aristotle considers the material "cause" (hyle) of an object as
equivalent to the nature of the raw ...
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102 views
Explain kant's conception of causality as an a priori category prescribed by the understanding to all possible objects of experience?
How does causality relate to the a priori and experience? I am having trouble connecting the dots. Any help would be great!
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How does Hume's conception of impressions and ideas lead him to argue that causality can only be probabilistic?
I am trying to understand this concept and it just isn't clicking. Any help would be appreciated!