Changing Minds ― Epistemic Interventions in Causal Reasoning

Did Tom’s use of nuts in the dish cause Billy’s allergic reaction? According to counterfactual theories of causation, an agent is judged a cause to the extent that their action made a difference to the outcome (Gerstenberg, Goodman, Lagnado, & Tenenbaum, 2020; Gerstenberg, Halpern, & Tenenbaum, 2015; Halpern, 2016; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009). In this paper, we argue for the integration of epistemic states into current counterfactual accounts of causation. In the case of ignorant causal agents, we demonstrate that people’s counterfactual reasoning primarily targets the agent’s epistemic state – what the agent doesn’t know –, and their epistemic actions – what they could have done to know – rather than the agent’s actual causal action. In four experiments, we show that people’s causal judgment as well as their reasoning about alternatives is sensitive to the epistemic conditions of a causal agent: Knowledge vs. ignorance (Experiment 1), self-caused vs. externally caused ignorance (Experiment 2), the number of epistemic actions (Experiment 3), and the epistemic context (Experiment 4). We see two advantages in integrating epistemic states into causal models and counterfactual frameworks. First, assuming the intervention on indirect, epistemic causes might allow us to explain why people attribute decreased causality to ignorant vs. knowing causal agents. Moreover, causal agents’ epistemic states pick out those factors that can be controlled or manipulated in order to achieve desirable future outcomes, reflecting the forward-looking dimension of causality. We discuss our findings in the broader context of moral and causal cognition.

Some Empirical Results Concerning Causal Learning and Representation

This chapter explores some empirical results bearing on the descriptive and normative adequacy of different accounts of causal learning and representation. It begins by contrasting associative accounts with accounts that attribute additional structure to causal representation, arguing in favor of the latter. Empirical results supporting the claim that adult humans often reason about causal relationships using interventionist counterfactuals are presented. Contrasts between human and nonhuman primate causal cognition are also discussed, as well as some experiments concerning causal cognition in young children. A proposal about what is involved in having adult human causal representations is presented and some issues about how these might develop over time are explored.

Causal Reasoning and Event Cognition as Evolutionary Determinants of Language Structure

The aim of this article is to provide an evolutionarily grounded explanation of central aspects of the structure of language. It begins with an account of the evolution of human causal reasoning. A comparison between humans and non-human primates suggests that human causal cognition is based on reasoning about the underlying forces that are involved in events, while other primates hardly understand external forces. This is illustrated by an analysis of the causal cognition required for early hominin tool use. Second, the thinking concerning forces in causation is used to motivate a model of human event cognition. A mental representation of an event contains two vectors representing a cause as well as a result but also entities such as agents, patients, instruments and locations. The fundamental connection between event representations and language is that declarative sentences express events (or states). The event structure also explains why sentences are constituted of noun phrases and verb phrases. Finally, the components of the event representation show up in language, where causes and effects are expressed by verbs, agents and patients by nouns (modified by adjectives), locations by prepositions, etc. Thus, the evolution of the complexity of mental event representations also provides insight into the evolution of the structure of language.

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

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.

Responsibility and Explanations of Rape

This chapter examines the psychological function and consequences of responsibility ascriptions in relation to the crime of rape. Section 1 draws on recent work in the philosophy and science of causal cognition to argue that responsibility ascriptions, like explanations, are tethered to interests and perspectives: descriptive and prescriptive background norms affect not only what counts as a satisfying explanation of why something happened, but who is singled out as the bearer of responsibility for what happened. Section 2 draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with convicted rapists, together with empirical studies of the attitudes and factors that result in ‘victim-blaming’ within the general population, to detail the descriptive and prescriptive norms of rape culture. Section 3 brings these discussions together. Given the pervasive influence of rape culture norms, introducing a woman’s violation of any of them in court can serve to (implicitly or explicitly) focus attention on those violations as causally salient and explanatory of what happened, and hence on her—as opposed to him—as the bearer of responsibility for what happened. The psychological function and consequences of responsibility ascriptions may therefore contribute to the grotesque and persistent failure of the courts to convict and appropriately sentence rapists.

Towards ending the animal cognition war: a three-dimensional model of causal cognition

Debates in animal cognition are frequently polarized between the romantic view that some species have human-like causal understanding and the killjoy view that human causal reasoning is unique. These apparently endless debates are often characterized by conceptual confusions and accusations of straw-men positions. What is needed is an account of causal understanding that enables researchers to investigate both similarities and differences in cognitive abilities in an incremental evolutionary framework. Here we outline the ways in which a three-dimensional model of causal understanding fulfills these criteria. We describe how this approach clarifies what is at stake, illuminates recent experiments on both physical and social cognition, and plots a path for productive future research that avoids the romantic/killjoy dichotomy.

Causal Cognition and Theory of Mind in Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology

It is widely thought that causal cognition underpins technical reasoning. Here we suggest that understanding causal cognition as a thinking system that includes theory of mind (i.e., social cognition) can be a productive theoretical tool for the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. With this contribution, we expand on an earlier model that distinguishes seven grades of causal cognition, explicitly presenting it together with a new analysis of the theory of mind involved in the different grades. We then suggest how such thinking may manifest in the archaeological or stone tool record and techno-behaviors of the last three million years or so. Our thesis is threefold: (a) theory of mind is an integral element of causal cognition; (b) generally speaking, the more advanced causal cognition is, the more it is dependent on theory of mind; and (c) the evolution of causal cognition depends more and more on mental representations of hidden variables. Ultimately, the final or seventh grade of causal cognition allows us to reason from a network of hidden variables that, amongst other things, enables the learning, manufacture, and use of complex technological systems. It also facilitates the seamless mapping of knowledge between personal (egocentric), physical, and social networks that allows for newly devised and innovative technical and social outcomes.