Platitudes and Counterexamples

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Menzies
Keyword(s):  
Difference Making ◽  
Normative Considerations ◽  
Causal Concept ◽  
Natural Relation

This article explains the conception of causation as a natural relation in more detail. It outlines some of the features of our use of the causal concept that do not fit with the idea of causation as a natural relation between events. It then outlines the correct explanation of these features, replacing the metaphysical conception of causation with a conception of causation in terms of a contrastive difference-making relation, where the contrasts are determined contextually on the basis of what are often normative considerations.

Varieties of Understanding

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Normative Considerations ◽  
Shed Light

According to a long historical tradition, understanding comes in different varieties. In particular, it is said that understanding people has a different epistemic profile than understanding the natural world—it calls on different cognitive resources, for instance, and brings to bear distinctive normative considerations. Thus in order to understand people we might need to appreciate, or in some way sympathetically reconstruct, the reasons that led a person to act in a certain way. By comparison, when it comes to understanding natural events, like earthquakes or eclipses, no appreciation of reasons or acts of sympathetic reconstruction is arguably needed—mainly because there are no reasons on the scene to even be appreciated, and no perspectives to be sympathetically pieced together. In this volume some of the world’s leading philosophers, psychologists, and theologians shed light on the various ways in which we understand the world, pushing debates on this issue to new levels of sophistication and insight.

Making a Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rani Lill Anjum ◽  
Stephen Mumford
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Positive Difference ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Making A Difference ◽  
Difference Makers ◽  
Trial Intervention

One view of what links a cause to an effect is that causes make a difference to whether or not the effect is produced. This assumption is behind comparative studies, such as the method of randomized controlled trials, aimed at showing whether a trial intervention makes a positive difference to outcomes. Comparative studies are regarded as the gold standard in some areas of research but they are also problematic. There can be causes that make no difference and some difference-makers that are not causes. This indicates that difference-making should be taken as a symptom of causation: a feature that accompanies it in some, though not all, cases. Symptoms can be useful in the discovery of causes but they cannot be definitive of causation.

Act Consequentialism and the No-Difference Challenge

2020 ◽  
pp. 633-654
Author(s):  
Holly Lawford-Smith ◽  
William Tuckwell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real World ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Act Consequentialism

According to act-consequentialism, only actions that make a difference to an outcome can be morally bad. Yet, there are classes of actions that don’t make a difference, but nevertheless seem to be morally bad. Explaining how such non-difference making actions are morally bad presents a challenge for act-consequentialism: the no-difference challenge. In this chapter we go into detail on what the no-difference challenge is, focusing in particular on act consequentialism. We talk about how different theories of causation affect the no-difference challenge; how the challenge shows up in real-world cases, including voting, global labor injustice, global poverty, and climate change; and we work through a number of the solutions to the challenge that have been offered, arguing that many fail to actually meet it. We defend and extend one solution that does, and we present a further solution of our own.

More accurate less meaningful? A critical physical geographer’s reflection on interpreting remote sensing land-use analyses

2021 ◽  
pp. 030913332199181
Author(s):  
Andreas Christian Braun
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Geographic Information Systems ◽  
Image Classification ◽  
Satellite Image ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Normative Considerations

Land-use and land-cover analyses based on satellite image classification are used in most, if not all, sub-disciplines of physical geography. Data availability and increasingly simple image classification techniques – nowadays, even implemented in simple geographic information systems – increase the use of such analyses. To assess the quality of such land-use analyses, accuracy metrics are applied. The results are considered to have sufficient quality, exceeding thresholds published in the literature. A typical practice in many studies is to confuse accuracy in remote sensing with quality, as required by physical geography. However, notions such as quality are subject to normative considerations and performative practices, which differ between scientific domains. Recent calls for critical physical geography have stressed that scientific results cannot be understood separately from the values and practices underlying them. This article critically discusses the specific understanding of quality in remote sensing, outlining norms and practices shaping it and their relation to physical geography. It points out that, as a seeming paradox, results considered more accurate in remote sensing terms can be less informative – or meaningful – in geographical terms. Finally, a roadmap of how to apply remote sensing land-use analyses more constructively in physical geography is proposed.

scholarly journals Epistemic values of quantity and variety of evidence in biological mechanism research

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin Chung Au
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Causal Inference ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Biological Mechanism ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Extended Version ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Mechanism Research ◽  
The Difference

AbstractThis paper proposes an extended version of the interventionist account for causal inference in the practical context of biological mechanism research. This paper studies the details of biological mechanism researchers’ practices of assessing the evidential legitimacy of experimental data, arguing why quantity and variety are two important criteria for this assessment. Because of the nature of biological mechanism research, the epistemic values of these two criteria result from the independence both between the causation of data generation and the causation in question and between different interventions, not techniques. The former independence ensures that the interventions in the causation in question are not affected by the causation that is responsible for data generation. The latter independence ensures the reliability of the final mechanisms not only in the empirical but also the formal aspects. This paper first explores how the researchers use quantity to check the effectiveness of interventions, where they at the same time determine the validity of the difference-making revealed by the results of interventions. Then, this paper draws a distinction between experimental interventions and experimental techniques, so that the reliability of mechanisms, as supported by the variety of evidence, can be safely ensured in the probabilistic sense. The latter process is where the researchers establish evidence of the mechanisms connecting the events of interest. By using case studies, this paper proposes to use ‘intervention’ as the fruitful connecting point of literature between evidence and mechanisms.

scholarly journals BDI reasoning with normative considerations

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Meneguzzi ◽  
Odinaldo Rodrigues ◽  
Nir Oren ◽  
Wamberto W. Vasconcelos ◽  
Michael Luck
Keyword(s):  
Normative Considerations

Actions

1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Agent Causation ◽  
Common View ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Causal Concept

What distinguishes actions of persons from other events? Too big a question; we make a customary substitution: what distinguishes a person's raising his arm from a person's arm rising? In each case, the arm rises. But in the former, we have something in addition. Let us say that in the former case, the person causes the arm's rising. Our problem then is to interpret this notion of causation by an agent.It can be done, I believe, in terms of the notion of causation of events by other events-events which may not be “mental,” contrary to one common view. My account of agent causation is presented in the concluding section of this paper. I set the stage (or clear it) for this account by first examining rivals of three types: one asserting that agent causation is or involves a causal concept which cannot be interpreted further, but which we all understand well enough; one which invokes causation by mental events of certain kinds; and one which avoids all reference to causation.

Quantum fluctuations of the metric, three-geometries and conformal embeddings in four-manifolds

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Davis
Keyword(s):  
Path Integrals ◽  
Invariance Group ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Exponential Expansion ◽  
Cotangent Bundles ◽  
Four Manifolds ◽  
Conformal Embeddings ◽  
Natural Relation

In this paper, connections between the path integrals for four-dimensional quantum gravity and string theory are emphasized. It is shown that there is a natural relation between these two path integrals based on the theorems on embeddings of two-dimensional surfaces in four dimensions and four-dimensional manifolds in ten dimensions. The isometry groups of the three-geometries that are spatial hypersurfaces confomally embedded in the four-manifolds are required to be subgroups of [Formula: see text], which is the invariance group of the Pfaffian differential system satisfied by one form in the cotangent bundles on the four-manifolds. Based on this and other physical conditions, the three-geometries are restricted to be [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] with a boundary, which may be included in the quantum gravitational path integral over four-manifolds which are closed at initial times followed by an exponential expansion compatible with supersymmetry.

If Counterfactuals Were Excluded from Historical Reasoning . . .

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yemima Ben-Menahem
Keyword(s):  
Relative Weight ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Making A Difference ◽  
Historical Necessity

The argument of this paper is that counterfactuals are indispensable in reasoning in general and historical reasoning in particular. It illustrates the role of counterfactuals in the study of history and explores the connection between counterfactuals and the notions of historical necessity and contingency. Entertaining alternatives to the actual course of events is conducive to the assessment of the relative weight and impact of the various factors that combine to bring about a certain result. Counterfactuals are essentially involved in understanding what it means for an event, an action, or an individual to make a difference. Making a difference, in turn, is shown to be a central category of historical reasoning. Counterfactuals, though sensitive to the description they use, make objective claims that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence.

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