Causation as Folk Science

John D. Norton
Center for Philosophy of science
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh

1
Principal Claims

Negative Thesis Denial of causal fundamentalism, which asserts that

the world is governed by a principle of causality;
based on a dilemma.

Positive Thesis Sciences restricted to hospitable domains adopt

forms of various folk sciences of causation, which
explains the prevalence and utility of causal
notions.

Modern Physics Causal anti-fundamentalism is compatible with the

widespread presence of causal terms and principles
in modern physics.

2
Guiding Intuitions

Negative
Causation is about the physical
connectedness of things in the
world. Its analysis is the province
of science and not a priori
postulation.

Modern philosophical literature

Positive
Causal notions are pervasive
because, whatever the domain, we
are plastic enough and inventive
enough to find relations we are
comfortable to label “causal.”
in causation has lost its way.
It is devoted to finding out
precisely what we mean when we
say C causes E; and mistakes that
for finding out deep truths about
the connectedness of things in
the world.

3
 Negative Thesis
Causal Anti-fundamentalism

4
Causal Fundamentalism: the doctrine

Nature is governed by cause and effect;

and the burden of individual sciences is to
find the particular expressions of the general
notion in the realm of their specialized
subject matter.

There is a universally applicable

principle of causality.

Causation is about the connectedness Unity of meaning of causal

of things in the world. talk in different domains.
5
 Causal fundamentalist's
dilemma
Conforming a science
to cause and effect…

1. EITHER (first horn)

…places a restriction We must find some No appropriate
on the factual restriction that can be restriction; no enduring
content of a science properly applied to all principle of causality.
sciences.

OR (second horn)

…it does not place a The imposition of the causal It is an empty

restriction on the framework makes no difference honorific.
to the factual content of the

2.
factual content of a
sciences.
science.

6
 First horn
1. How might causation restrict the factual content of a science?
4th c. BC. Aristotle’s four causes. 17th c. mechanical philosophy. No
Material, formal, efficient, final. place for final causes.

17th c. Newton. Action at a distance? 18th, 19th c. No mechanism found;

“…so great an absurdity that no man, who has no finite velocity measured; no
in philosophical matters a competent faculty of shielding. Gravity is action at a
thinking, can ever fall into it.”
distance.

19th century purification of causation. 20th c. Quantum theory. Physics

No agents/patients, continued existence of supplies probabilities only of
cause. Causation is determinism. Causes effects.
guarantee effect.

20th c. Principle of common cause Fails for entangled states in quantum theory

20th c. Probabilistic account of causation. Virtually all physical theories

indeterministic. No probabilities for
undetermined outcomes. Even
Newtonian physics! 7
2. What if causation places no factual restriction on science?
Second horn m
c ho y
ice

Any possible science, no matter odd, may be

conformed to causation.
“Nature is governed by cause and effect;
…but it is no way restricted by it.
and the burden of individual sciences is to
find the particular expressions of the …so the burden consists solely in
general notion in the realm of their assigning honorific, causal labels.
specialized subject matter.”

Causation as indispensable to
science. (Kant, Nagel, …)
Principle of causality …so it does not tell us about the
“…is an analytic consequence of what is world, but about our definitions and
commonly meant by ‘theoretical science.’” or own psychology.
“…maxim for inquiry rather than a
statement with definite empirical content.”
Nagel

8
Russell on the sun as a cause of gravity.
ABC of Relativity

“The language of cause

and effect adds only a
number of quite
irrelevant imaginings,
connected with will,
muscular tension, and
such matters.”

JDN irrelevant  Pragmatic

ally useful

9
 Interventionism
The definition
delineates which
relations in the world can
bear the title “causal.”

There is no assurance
that the world must host
such relations.

It is very convenient
if they do, if our
interest is to manipulate
things in the world.

10
From J. Woodward, “Causation and Manipulability,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
 Positive Thesis
Causation as Folk Science

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Generative capacity of reduction relations

General relativity: Gravity behaves just like

fundamentally the force for which
gravity is not a force, but a restrict to weak fields, Newton found powerful
manifestation of the non-cosmic scales evidence.
curvature of spacetime.

Statistical physics: Heat behaves just like the

fundamentally conserved fluid “caloric”
Heat is just a disorderly restrict to systems that of Lavoisier and Carnot.
distribution of energy. do not exchange heat
and work

Gravitational forces, heat as caloric

…we require the same
can be pervasive and useful notions
of causal relations.
without being fundamental.

12
 Generating causation

Greater science Determinism

not fundamentally Present state
restrict to ordinary Newtonian
causal systems of finitely many
causes future via
degrees of freedom forces

restrict to restrict to
vacua dissipative
surrounded systems
by fluids
States of lowest
energy, highest
Vacua have active entropy are final
powers. They suck. causes

Sense of causation recovered

in each domain is different.

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Folk theory of weather

High pressure zones,

low pressure zones,
cyclones,
anticyclones,
warm fronts,
cold fronts,
….

Rough and ready ways to

make the real weather
processes of the motion
of moist air more
intelligible.

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 Modern Physics and
Causal Anti-fundamentalism

15
Is there a Contradiction…?
1. Talk of causal relations and
causal principles permeates the
fundamentals of modern physics;

2. Causal anti-fundamentalists do
not believe that the world is governed
by a principle of causality.

There is not. The causal talk pertains to

contingent features of modern physical theories
that are not a manifestation of a deeper causal
necessity.

16
The causal notions and causality conditions of modern
physics express:

1. The existence of a finite, invariant velocity in spacetime

= spacetime has a light cone structure

2. Propagation of matter in spacetime must conform to the

lightcone structure. “No propagation outside the light
cone.”

These are contingent facts about the world. Physical theories

without them can be quite cogent. They are not metaphysical necessities.

17
 Illustrations in Relativity Theory
Special Causally connectible = timelike or lightlike connected
relativity (+ numerous variant forms)

General “local causality” = Laws governing matter fields are such that there is
relativity no propagation outside the light cone. The condition is formulated more
exactly in terms of a Cauchy problem for the differential equations governing the
matter fields. (p. 60)

Global extensions

“causality condition” holds holds if there are no closed non-

spacelike curves. (p. 190)

"The strong causality condition is said to hold at p if every

neighbourhood of p contains a neighborhood of p [sic] which no non-
spacelike curve intersects more than once." (p. 192)

"Stable causality condition ... [informally] one can expand the light cones
slightly at everypoint without introducing timelike curves." (p. 198)

S. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis. The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime.

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 Illustrations in EPR/Quantum Theory

"Locality Principle (L)

Elements of reality pertaining to one system cannot be affected by measurements performed 'at
a distance' on another system.”

"For Bell locality, 'at a distance' means in the absence of causal influences recognized by
current physical theories.”

“For Einstein locality, 'at a distance' means at a space-like separation between the space-time
locations where the element of reality pertaining to one system exists and the measurement on
the other system takes place.”

M. Redhead, Incompleteness, Nonlocality, Realism. p. 75

This principle is not offered a principle of quantum theory,

but as part of an expressed hope that quantum theory will
conform to it. It may fail to, as happened with the common
cause principle.
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Illustrations from Quantum Field Theory

Wightman axioms

"E. Causality.
The fields shall satisfy causal commutation relations of either the bosonic or fermionic type.
If the supports of the test functions f and h are spacelike to each other then either
[i(f), j(h)] = 0
or
[i(f), j(h]+ = 0”
(I.e. measurement on one field operator has no effect at events spacelike separated from it.)

"G. "Time-slice axiom." "Primitive Causality"

"There should be a dynamical law which allows one to compute fields at an arbitrary time in
terms of the fields in a small time slice...[formula for time slice]”
(I.e. propagation of field operators akin to propagation of ordinary fields that admit well posed Cauchy problem, domains
dependence, etc.)

R. Haag, Local Quantum Physics: Fields, Particles, Algebras. p.57

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Reichenbach's common cause principle
It is not a principle that defines the nature of causation.

It is really a rule for detecting causal connections

without defining what that connection is.

It is a fallible rule and so not suitable for a definition.

A correlation between A and B can be screened off by
conditionalizing on C licenses the inference that C is the
common cause of A and B. But there remains a very small but
non-vanishing probability that A and B may be interacting
causally nonetheless.

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Causal talk in modern physics…
… does not conform to the first horn (causal principle as universal factual restriction).

It does not supply a contingent, universal causal principle.

Otherwise all physical theories that do not explicitly invoke
conformity to a light cone structure would be deficient causally.

Newtonian mechanics was not causally deficient, just odd.

Sciences can invoke causation without making explicit use of
the lightcone structure of spacetime. (Geology)

… does conform to the second horn (causal talk as honorific).

The complaint that processes violate causality requirements in

modern physics is not a complaint that they violate some
overarching metaphysical principle.

It is an abbreviation for the objection that they do not respect the

light cone structure spacetime is known empirically to have.

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Conclusion

23
Principal Claims

Negative Thesis Denial of causal fundamentalism, which asserts that

the world is governed by a principle of causality.

Failure of any stable, factual principle of

causality to emerge from our science.

Positive Thesis Sciences restricted to hospitable domains adopt

forms of various folk sciences of causation, which
explains the prevalence and utility of causal
notions.
Folk sciences generated by same
mechanism that gives us gravitational
forces and caloric.

Modern Physics Causal anti-fundamentalism is compatible with the

widespread presence of causal terms and principles
in modern physics.

Causal talk arises as part of assuring that

processes respect the light cone structure
of spacetime. 24
Finis
25
26
Analogies to reduction relations in science
Folk theories of causation are warranted as physical theories in so far as they
capture the relevant physical content of the embracing theory.

Folk theories of causation are attractive for their ease of comprehension and
ease of use.

Disanalogies to reduction relations in science

Different notion of causation recovered in different domains.

Folk theories tend to be less precise than the corresponding scientific
theories.

27
Are causes real?

Strong fictionalism. Inscrutability. Infinite regress.

Nothing is real unless it is in the We will never know that we know what is
ontology of the final science. real.

Qualified prudent realism. It is a real property of spacetime that its

Entities of present theories are curvature sometimes manifests as a force.
real in so far as they are It is a real property of random energy
structures licensed by further distributions that they sometimes manifest as
science. a conserved fluid.

Strong realism. Heat is NOT a conserved fluid; it just behaves

Every entity of a functioning like one sometimes.
science should be construed
literally.

Causes are as real as

gravitational forces and caloric.
28
We see faces and figures in clouds…

Fundamentally, there are no faces and figures there.

We all see them.

The shapes are real in the sense that the nose really is a
lobe of nose-shaped cloud

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Appendices

30
 Varieties of causal skepticism

Humean/Positivist skepticism Anti-Fundamentalism

Anti-metaphysical.
Epistemically pessimistic.
Skeptical of content of science beyond
observation.
Causation just is constant conjunction,
functional dependence of facts.
Anti-apriori.
Epistemically optimistic.
Science makes discoveries beyond observation.
Causation is an attempt to preempt discovery.

(Weaker) Eliminativism
Russell: “…oddly enough, in advanced
sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the
word ‘cause’ never occurs…”

Mach: “…science of the future will discard the

idea of cause and effect as being formally
obscure.” 31
 An Independent Principle of
Causality in Electromagnetic
Scattering?

32
 Scattering from a dielectric
Incident plane …excites dielectric
wave approaches atom and generates …and passes.
from left… scattered field…

Total field
(incident plus
scattered)

Scattered field
(total minus
incident)

33
Frames from animation at http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~swrhgnrj/maxwell/circle3.html
Basic Physics of Scattering

Scattered field at incident fields at same

is a linear sum of
position x position x and other times
∞
scattered(x,t) = ∫ −∞
G(x,t) ⋅incident(x,t − t')dt'
(“LIN”)
Hence incident
No influence
from future G(x,s)=0 for all s<0. can only
contribute to
(“NIFF”). scattered for
How do we t-t’>=0
arrive at this i.e. t’<t.
relation?

34
… Use the Principle of Causality

NIFF… “is an accord with our fundamental idea of causality in

physical phenomena”

LIN+NIFF is… “the most general spatially local, linear, and

causal relation can be written between [scattered] and
[incoming] in a uniform isotropic medium. Its validity
Mathias Frisch
transcends any specific model of [the dielectric].”

Final results are “are of very general validity, following from

little more than that assumption of the causal connection [LIN]
betweed [scattered] and [incoming].”

J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics

…and similar remarks from others.

35
… Use the Principle of Causality

Frisch:

“…now we postulate an additional constraint on

all causally possible models that
an effect cannot temporally Mathias Frisch

precede its cause…”

“It might in fact be true that effects never
precede their causes. But I think that we can
allow for the possibility that a certain causal
condition is not true in general and nevertheless
take it to be physically well-founded.”

36
Not clear that Jackson does use an
independent principle of causality.

First, Jackson computes a simple model of the

dielectric by ordinary methods and finds it
conforms with NIFF.
(Time reversals of ordinary scattering precluded by choosing
the boundary condition of dielectric charges initially at rest.)

Then, Jackson finds more general cases too hard to

compute, but he expects nonetheless that the final result
would still conform with NIFF if only we do all the sums.

Awkward… so he No precise principle of

proclaims NIFF fits causality is formulated or
with “causality.” applied to arrive at NIFF.
37
Not clear that Jackson could use an
independent principle of causality.

Literature that admits

Principle: “An effect cannot temporally backwards causation in
precede its cause.” may hold only some physics:
time travel, tachyons
times. When?

If only for scattering, If more broadly, then to

then we are merely which processes does it apply?
restating NIFF. Why is this any better than “it
applies except when it
doesn’t”?

38
How could a principle of causality pick out the
“true” forward direction?
Forward
Reversed Forward
Reversed

Time revesibility of
electrodynamics.

Any feature of
“forward” system has a
perfect correlate in the
“reversed” system.

Add a factual time … but both processes assembled from

direction to spacetime? pieces that are locally time reversible.
Allow them locally but prohibit assembly? 39
 What precisely does the principle of causality say?
“An effect cannot temporally precede its cause.”
Must be precise enough to be
applied in a computation in
mathematical physics.

Which state is the effect The cause comes earlier? That makes the
and which the cause, in any principle true by definition.
process with states that evolve
over time?

States over time? At an instant? Which

What counts as a hypersurface of simultaneity?
cause? An effect?

What sorts of processes “Causal” means later states depend on earlier?

are properly causal? What of Lagrange principles that pick out
motions by extremizing the entire history? 40