Ben C said:
....
It depends on what we are meaning by "clarify". For me, no clarification
is needed to use the word "cause" in ordinary conversation including
some mildly scientific endeavours and talking about science (this last
as in reading and chatting about the latest in New Scientist or what
someone has discovered in the chemistry or physics dept.).
I _was_ thinking of clarifying the ordinary use of the word. No
clarification is needed ordinarily, but it might be in order to get out
of a philosophical muddle.
[...]
The only interest a scientist or a normal conversationalist might have
in this is to see whether there are some further little As and Bs
between *the* A and B.
....
There is a real question to wonder what it is in physics (where we would
be talking about forces and things). But if we're asking what it is in
some logical sense, isn't that just exactly the same as asking what it
means? I don't see the difference.
Yes, right, no need for clarification of phrases like 'was the cause
of', 'caused', etc. for ordinary purposes because we are not suddenly
landed on English speaking shores and having to learn English. And yes,
to get out of some muddles, not necessarily philosophical, we gain by
looking at clarifying meanings.
But there is a big issue at stake here and it is one we are seeing from
very different sides of some fence or other. And it has to do with the
distinction I seem to be forever making between meaning and reference.
You have queried this distinction's exact import a few times below and
so I might spend some time on it here.
Consider the question how two things can be said to be one? If such was
true, there is only one thing all along and one thing being itself is
not exactly news to anyone! Yet identity statements are in fact often
news and substantial information at that. Think maths. Think scientific
discoveries. Think ordinary life.
1. The man visiting the blonde women in the flat above you is your
husband!", announces the private detective to his startled client, the
man's wife.
So some analysis of this needs to be made to remove the paradoxical air.
To the rescue is a distinction between the meaning of a phrase and its
reference. "The man visiting the blond woman in the flat above you" has
a meaning independent of the actual reference. The very same words might
be used by other detectives in other places. The meaning is something
portable. Same goes for the phrase "Your husband". Here are *two*
different meanings.
But the reference, in this case, is unique. There is one man, one
featherless biped, one object that both terms refer to. Both "The man
visiting the blonde women in the flat above you" and "your husband"
refer to or point to the very same and one thing in the world. Or so we
can suppose if the detective is correct.
Meaning is one thing. What a name or description or process refers to is
quite a different thing altogether. One is about words and language use,
the other is something about the world outside of language.
We can talk *about* reference without referring and that is talking
about the meaning of the word "reference". But when we actually use
words to make a reference than the reference is typically something
non-linguistic. The reference is the adulterer, the bloke - it weighs
something!
Now, we can talk a lot about the meaning of causal phrases and
sentences. But all this talk is just one thing. There is another most
important thing about causal phrases (as with many names and
descriptions and phrases): what in the world is being referred to.
Here are pretty well two sentences that mean much the same.
2. The cause of the car exploding was a bomb
3. The bomb caused the car to explode.
The phrases, the descriptions, the relations all have a meaning English
speakers understand well enough to use and get other language users
nodding their head. "The cause" and "the bomb" and the relational
"caused" have a meaning, a sense, a connotation. Different philosophers
have different analyses of this. Some locate the meaning in ideas in
people's heads, others in public language practices, others in spooky
objects - concepts - able to be contemplated by human minds. But, let us
not get into detail, basically this is *all* about the meaning of words.
But *the cause* itself, *the bomb* itself, the relation of "causing" is
all about the non-linguistic world. And we are discussing this
non-linguistic world. In order to discuss it, we need to be clear about
meaning, sure. And, yes, this latter can take up our time and resources.
In the case of A causing B, Hume saw nothing more in the relation than
the appreciation that type A things are followed by type B events plus
an expectation that this will be so in the future.
Some of us do not believe this, nor believe it is some spooky
essentialist thing instead. There are a range of views and I have
described a few of them in summary.
[...]
First, the recasting is not something merely artificial. It is part of
the very meaning of "A causes B" that one is forced to agree that B
would not have happened in the circumstances had A not happened.
I agree that one is forced to agree that. I could quibble (my bomb blew
up the car, but it would have blown up anyway because there happened to
be another bomb put there by someone else...) but I'm satisfied one
can wriggle out of such quibbles.
Don't be worried to air these so called quibbles, they sometimes reveal
cracks and strengths. It is instructive to look at the case of the two
bombs and how one has to "wriggle out". It might need counterfactuals to
do so.
If they both went off at exactly the same time, then the claim that your
bomb blew it up is either false or only part of the truth. What you are
worried about, perhaps, is that your bomb might not really be the cause
considering it was not needed! But that could be said of the second bomb
too. What, were neither needed? How come the car blew up then?
The question turns on counterfactuals: had the second bomb not gone up,
the first would still have demolished the car; and vice versa. The cause
of the car blowing up was both bombs. But either one would have done the
job. To even begin to understand this situation, one needs to understand
counterfactuals. So *yes*, very much so to your question just below
here. It is at the very heart of our meaning.
The important question is: is that really part of the very meaning of "A
causes B"?
Lots of statements imply other things. If I tell you a cube has six
faces and eight corners, you are forced to agree that it has 12 edges.
But is having 12 edges part of the very meaning of "cube" any more or
less than its having 6 faces and 8 corners?
I might not even know it has 12 edges without counting them, so how
could that have been what I meant?
OK, in your cube case there are logically necessary entailments that are
not part of the meaning as commonly understood and it takes quite a bit
to get to them. The causal case is different. If you said to any
reasonable English speaker, do you mean that had A not been the case,
neither would B have been in that particular situation? The assent is
quicker and also the counterfactual is more readily forthcoming in
various forms when any one is challenged to explain what they mean.
....
Analytic statements about "causation" may be used to define it-- if
someone didn't know what "cause" meant, you might use counterfactuals in
the explanation but wouldn't have to-- or they may be used in an attempt
to make statements about it even when we know what it is.
I would like to see how someone can understand causal statements without
readily understanding some simple counterfactuals.
So what are such statements really saying? If you say "bachelors are
unmarried" aren't you just saying that's what "bachelor" means (or
that's what "unmarried" means)?
No, you are saying that bachelors are unmarried. Not trying to be funny
here, you are not defining anything. You are saying something true. How
you know it is true and what sort of truth it is, is a different
question.
You could say, no, this is a statement
about the true nature of bachelors in the world, but it isn't really
because it isn't telling us anything we didn't know already.
In a sense it is a statement about the very meaning of being a bachelor,
but only if we understand that as just a statement of what "bachelor"
means.
Does showing that causation statements can be recast as counterfactuals
tells us something about causation, even if we already knew what
causation was?
No, it does not tell us anything about the world itself, it is about
meaning. The reference is the business of science and, some would say,
philosophy, to explore.
....
You say you're not talking about the meaning of the word, but what else
is there here? What is "philosophical speculation"? How is it related to
philosophical illusion and philosophical mistake?
What more there is here is the nature of the world in respect to
causation. The reference. Now scientists will talk about particular
mechanisms and go into details. Philosophers, according to this line -
which I sense you mistrust - will do as best as they can to answer
questions left over that the scientists cannot answer. For example, what
is common to A causes B for all the many different values that fill
these variables?
i. Hume said "basically nothing more than the values go in pairs as
observed from the past".
ii. Essentialists say in each case, there is a spooky metaphysical gluey
sort of thing that they all share connecting them.
iii. Possible world theorists say that in all cases there exists - yes
exists - sets of worlds that are similar to our world in various ways in
all of which worlds that differ from our world in that the A does not
happen, the B does not happen either.
and there are other theories.
....
Why the requirement for reference at all?
It hints to me at a "correspondence theory of truth" and a picture of
language in which the constituents of a statement are required to refer
to things in the world. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of when
I said all this might have a point if there were a deeper agenda of some
kind. If so, then that's the thing to examine.
Well, I would be very surprised if true sentences did not correspond to
or represent aspects of the world. You are right to raise this and I
will admit that hardly any part of philosophy is unconnected with all
the other parts.
[The possible worlds is 1. The combinatorial this world way is 2.]
But how can 1 or 2 be true? We've mostly agreed I think neither is a
privileged or better definition of causation than any other. So what are
they? Just philosophical speculations.
I have not agreed at all that the different theories are as good as each
other. Only that there are equivalent ways to express the meaning of
causal statements. But it is not *meaning* that is the real interesting
thing here.
So what is it then? What else is there?
What has human mind to do with it? The theory of possible worlds - as
for example, Lewis has it - says what he says it says.
What does he say it says? From what I remember he just gets carried away
with the formalization without justifying it too much.
Well, this looks wrong to me. What you call formalization, if you are
thinking of the analysis of counterfactuality, never mind causality for
now, never mind necessary statements, is fleshing out details and
overcoming intricate objections to a clear program and question. What
makes a counterfactual true? It is not the truth of the antecedent, nor
of the consequent. So what is it outside human minds that makes it true?
And his answer is the worlds that exist outside human minds. He believed
in them, they were not idle speculations for him. Might seem curious to
some folk. But intelligent folk do believe in things others find
extraordinary.
