scholarly journals Degrading Causation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin O'Neill ◽  
Paul Henne ◽  
Paul Bello ◽  
John Pearson ◽  
Felipe De Brigard
Keyword(s):  
Forest Fire ◽  
Lightning Strike ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
Independent Effects ◽  
Causal Strength ◽  
Confidence Ratings

When asking if lightning caused the forest fire, one might think that the lightning is more of a cause than the dry climate (i.e., it is a graded cause) or they might instead think that the lightning strike completely caused the fire while the dry conditions did not cause it at all (i.e., it is a binary cause). Psychologists and philosophers have long debated whether such judgments are graded. To address this debate, we started by reanalyzing data from four recent studies. In this context, we provide novel evidence that causal judgments are actually multimodal: although most causal judgements were binary, there was also some gradation. We then tested two competing explanations for the gradation we observed: the confidence explanation, which states that gradation distinguishes between certain and uncertain causes, and the strength explanation, which states that gradation distinguishes between strong and weak causes. Experiment 1 tested the confidence explanation and showed that gradation in causal judgments was moderated by confidence. People tended to make graded causal judgments when they were less confident, but they tended to make discrete causal judgments when they were more confident. Experiment 2 tested the causal strength explanation and showed that although causal judgments varied with factors associated with causal strength, confidence ratings were unchanged. Overall, we found that causal judgments are multimodal and that observed gradation reflects independent effects of confidence and causal strength on causal judgments.

Occasionalism

Philosophy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Forest Fire ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Lightning Strike ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
Modern Period

Occasionalism is the doctrine that God is the only true cause. What appear to be causes in the natural world—a lightning strike that sets off a forest fire, for example—are only “occasions” for God to act. Such natural events are merely correlated, not causally connected. The same holds true for human action: One’s desire to move one’s arm toward the chocolate ice cream is only an occasion for God to move one’s arm. Such a view seems outlandish, at best a historical curiosity. Since the modern period, occasionalism has been dismissed as an ad hoc answer to the Cartesian problem of interaction: If minds are not physical things, how can they act on bodies? Occasionalism simply denies that there is any interaction at all, hence the problem is dissolved. But in fact, occasionalism antedates the Cartesian problematic by many centuries. And even in the modern period, its real motivations have more to do with the nature of divine creation and causation itself than with the problem of interaction. While occasionalism has few adherents today, its rejection of genuine causal connections in the sublunary world was an important source for the views of David Hume in the 18th century and David Lewis in the 20th.

scholarly journals Nutrition and Lifestyle Factors Associated with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Qalqili ◽  
Yaser Rayyan ◽  
Reema Tayyem
Keyword(s):  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Vegetarian Diet ◽  
Lifestyle Factors ◽  
Dietary Factors ◽  
Major Life ◽  
High Fiber ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Fiber Diet ◽  
Intestinal Inflammatory Disease ◽  
Independent Effects

Many dietary and lifestyle factors are found to be associated with the pathogenesis of IBD. The purpose of this study is to review the dietary and lifestyle factors associated with IBD. Several studies in IBD were discussed, and highlighted the independent effects of various dietary and lifestyle factors on the risk of IBD. IBD is chronic relapsing intestinal inflammatory disease characterized by complex interactions of multiple factors including smoking, major life stressors, diet and lifestyle.  This paper attempts to investigate the association between dietary patterns and IBD risk and compare lifestyle factors among IBD patients. Dietary factors tend to play a pivotal role in the disease etiopathogenesis and course. However, research on food and IBD is contradictory. An excessive intake of sugar and animal fat is considered a risk factor for the development of IBD, whereas a high fiber diet and high intake of fruits and vegetables may play a protective effect.  The role of lifestyle factors in IBD is crucial. Amply of evidence suggested that smoking is a causative agent in CD while it is protective against UC. Stress, depression, vitamin D deficiency and impaired sleep have all been all associated with incident IBD. A diet with a modified carbohydrate composition, a semi-vegetarian diet, a diet low in protein and fat and a diet low in fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols should be taken into consideration for IBD patients.

scholarly journals The interplay between covariation, temporal, and mechanism information in singular causation judgments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Stephan ◽  
Michael R. Waldmann
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Causal Attribution ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Spatiotemporal Location ◽  
The Past ◽  
Singular Causation ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Causal Strength ◽  
Causal Cognition ◽  
Psychological Studies

Most psychological studies on causal cognition have focused on how people make predictions from causes to effects or how they assess causal strength for general causal relationships (e.g., “smoking causes cancer”). In the past years, there has been a surge of interest in other types of causal judgments, such as diagnostic inferences or causal selection. Our focus here is on how people assess singular causation relations between cause and effect events that occurred at a particular spatiotemporal location (e.g., “Mary’s having taking this pill caused her sickness.”). The analysis of singular causation has received much attention in philosophy, but relatively few psychological studies have investigated how lay people assess these relations. Based on the power PC model of causal attribution proposed by Cheng and Novick (2005), we have developed and tested a new computational model of singular causation judgments integrating covariation, temporal, and mechanism information. We provide an overview of this research and outline important questions for future research.

scholarly journals Quantitative causal selection patterns in token causation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Morris ◽  
Jonathan Scott Phillips ◽  
Tobias Gerstenberg ◽  
Fiery Andrews Cushman
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Causal Judgment ◽  
Lightning Strike ◽  
Lightning Strikes ◽  
Prior Probabilities ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Causal Selection

When many events contributed to an outcome, people consistently judge some more causal than others, based in part on the prior probabilities of those events. For instance, when a tree bursts into flames, people judge the lightning strike more of a cause than the presence of oxygen in the air -- in part because oxygen is so common, and lightning strikes are so rare. These effects, which play a major role in several prominent theories of token causation, have largely been studied through qualitative manipulations of the prior probabilities. Yet, there is good reason to think that people's causal judgments are on a continuum -- and relatively little is known about how these judgments vary quantitatively as the prior probabilities change. In this paper, we measure people's causal judgment across parametric manipulations of the prior probabilities of antecedent events. Our experiments replicate previous qualitative findings, and also reveal several novel patterns that are not well-described by existing theories.

scholarly journals Certainty and Singular Causal Judgment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Causal Judgment ◽  
Metacognitive Judgments ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Causal Strength

In this paper, I map out broad aims, challenges, predictions, and implica- tions for the resulting intersection of singular causal judgment and metacognition that I (tentatively) call causal metacognition. First, I will overview research on sin- gular causal judgment, focusing on popular counterfactual theories that provide a formal framework for evaluating dependency relationships, as well as several compet- ing definitions of singular causal strength. Next, I will provide relevant background in the literature on metacognition for perception and decision-making, discussing major computational theories of metacognitive judgments. After covering the small amount of work on uncertainty in causal judgments, I will then argue that although singular causal judgments pose a particular problem for some theories of metacognition, coun- terfactual theories of singular causal judgment already provide testable predictions for confidence in causal judgments and can be extended to account for a wide range of patterns in confidence in singular causal judgments. Finally, I will summarize why we need a study of causal metacognition, and what empirical and theoretical advancements in that field might look like.

scholarly journals How to achieve long-term breast-feeding: factors associated with early discontinuation

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1173-1179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aysu Duyan Camurdan ◽  
Mustafa N Ilhan ◽  
Ufuk Beyazova ◽  
Figen Sahin ◽  
Nilgun Vatandas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Feeding ◽  
Maternity Leave ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Bottle Feeding ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Feeding Duration ◽  
Breast Feed ◽  
Independent Effects

AbstractObjectivesTo evaluate the factors associated with discontinuation of breast-feeding before 12 months in order to make suggestions for achieving long-term breast-feeding.DesignA descriptive cross-sectional study.SettingGazi University Medical School, Ankara, Turkey.SubjectsMothers of 1230 children who discontinued breast-feeding at least 15 d before the last visit were asked to fill out a questionnaire about the discontinuation process. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the independent effects of factors that might influence breast-feeding discontinuation.ResultsMean breast-feeding duration of the study group was 11·04 (sd 7·45) months. Introduction of bottle-feeding correlated with discontinuation of breast-feeding (r = 0·507, P = 0·001). Important risk factors for discontinuation of breast-feeding before the first 12 months were not exclusively breast-feeding at 3 and 6 months, prematurity, not having a plan about breast-feeding duration and maternity leave duration of ≤91 d for working mothers. The common reasons for abandoning breast-feeding in the first and second 6 months were similar, namely the mother’s concerns about the sufficiency of breast milk. After 12 months and 18 months the reasons for discontinuation were the baby’s unwillingness to eat solid foods while breast-feeding and the mother’s perception that ‘the baby is old enough’, respectively.ConclusionThe factors that improve long-term breast-feeding are successful exclusive breast-feeding in the first few months, intention of the mother to breast-feed and sufficient duration of maternity leave. This study emphasizes the importance of successful breast-feeding counselling during the first few months to achieve the desired long-term breast-feeding.

scholarly journals When do we think that X caused Y?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadeg Quillien
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Forest Fire ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Causal Selection

When explaining an event, people tend to select a single cause out of the multiple factors that contributed -- for instance, they will say that a forest fire was caused by a lit match, without mentioning the oxygen in the air which helped fuel the fire. Recently scholars have suggested that causal selection is designed to provide explanations that are likely to generalize across a variety of background circumstances. Here, we develop a computational model of causal selection which formalizes this idea. Under minimal assumptions, the model is surprisingly simple: a factor is regarded as a cause of an outcome to the extent that it is, across counterfactual worlds, correlated with that outcome. The model explains why causal selection is influenced by the normality of candidate causes, and outperforms other known computational models when tested against a fine-grained dataset of human graded causal judgments.

scholarly journals Normality and actual causal strength

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Icard ◽  
Jonathan F. Kominsky ◽  
Joshua Knobe
Keyword(s):  
Causal Models ◽  
Causal Judgment ◽  
Actual Causation ◽  
Probabilistic Sampling ◽  
Causal Judgments ◽  
Causal Strength

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation.

Stain contamination and embedding in electron microscopy

1986 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 50-53
Author(s):  
Hilton H. Mollenhauer
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Epoxy Resins ◽  
Image Contrast ◽  
Sample Preservation ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Electron Microscopical ◽  
Contrast Information

Many factors (e.g., resolution of microscope, type of tissue, and preparation of sample) affect electron microscopical images and alter the amount of information that can be retrieved from a specimen. Of interest in this report are those factors associated with the evaluation of epoxy embedded tissues. In this context, informational retrieval is dependant, in part, on the ability to “see” sample detail (e.g., contrast) and, in part, on tue quality of sample preservation. Two aspects of this problem will be discussed: 1) epoxy resins and their effect on image contrast, information retrieval, and sample preservation; and 2) the interaction between some stains commonly used for enhancing contrast and information retrieval.

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