Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:39:44.244Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Causal Pluralism in Philosophy: Empirical Challenges and Alternative Proposals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Phuong (Phoebe) Ngoc Dinh  and
David Danks
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An increasing number of arguments for causal pluralism invoke empirical psychological data. Different aspects of causal cognition—specifically, causal perception and causal inference—are thought to involve distinct cognitive processes and representations, and they thereby distinctively support transference and dependency theories of causation, respectively. We argue that this dualistic picture of causal concepts arises from methodological differences, rather than from an actual plurality of concepts. Hence, philosophical causal pluralism is not particularly supported by the empirical data. Serious engagement with cognitive science reveals that the connection between psychological concepts of causation and philosophical notions is substantially more complicated than is traditionally presumed.

Type
Causation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , December 2021 , pp. 761 - 772
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beebee, Helen. 2009. “Causation and Observation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Causation, ed. Beebee, Helen, Hitchcock, Christopher, and Menzies, Peter, 471–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne, Fonlupt, Pierre, Pachot-Clouard, Mathilde, Darmon, Céline, Boyer, Pascal, Meltzoff, Andrew N., Segebarth, Christoph, and Decety, Jean. 2001. “How the Brain Perceives Causality: An Event-Related fMRI Study.” Neuroreport 12 (17): 3741–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buehner, Marc J., Cheng, Patricia W., and Clifford, Deborah. 2003. “From Covariation to Causation: A Test of the Assumption of Causal Power.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29 (6): 1119–40.Google ScholarPubMed
Buehner, Marc J., and May, Jon. 2002. “Knowledge Mediates the Timeframe of Covariation Assessment in Human Causal Induction.” Thinking and Reasoning 8 (4): 269–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Leslie B., and Amsel, Geoffrey. 1998. “Precursors to Infants’ Perception of the Causality of a Simple Event.” Infant Behavior and Development 21 (4): 713–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Leslie B., Rundell, Leslie J., Spellman, Barbara A., and Cashon, Cara H.. 1999. “Infants’ Perception of Causal Chains.” Psychological Science 10 (5): 412–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, Phil. 1992. “Process Causality and Asymmetry.” Erkenntnis 37 (2): 179–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowe, Phil. 2000. Physical Causation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernbach, Philip M., and Sloman, Steven A.. 2009. “Causal Learning with Local Computations.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 35 (3): 678–93.Google ScholarPubMed
Fugelsang, Jonathan A., and Dunbar, Kevin N.. 2005. “Brain-Based Mechanisms Underlying Complex Causal Thinking.” Neuropsychologia 43 (8): 1204–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fugelsang, Jonathan A., and Dunbar, Kevin N.. 2009. “Brain-Based Mechanisms Underlying Causal Reasoning.” In Neural Correlates of Thinking: On Thinking, Vol. 1, ed. Eduard Kraft., Balázs Gulyás, and Ernst Pöppel, 269–79. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2009. “Causal pluralism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Causation, ed. Beebee, Helen, Hitchcock, Christopher, and Menzies, Peter, 326–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gopnik, Alison, Glymour, Clark, Sobel, David M., Schulz, Laura E., Kushnir, Tamar, and Danks, David. 2004. “A Theory of Causal Learning in Children: Causal Maps and Bayes Nets.” Psychological Review 111 (1): 3–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Griffiths, Thomas L., Sobel, David M., Tenenbaum, Joshua B., and Gopnik, Alison. 2011. “Bayes and Blickets: Effects of Knowledge on Causal Induction in Children and Adults.” Cognitive Science 35 (8): 1407–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Griffiths, Thomas L., and Tenenbaum, Joshua B.. 2005. “Structure and Strength in Causal Induction.” Cognitive Psychology 51 (4): 334–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hagmayer, York, and Waldmann, Michael R.. 2002. “How Temporal Assumptions Influence Causal Judgments.” Memory and Cognition 30 (7): 1128–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hall, Ned. 2004. “Two Concepts of Causation.” In Causation and Counterfactuals, ed. Collins, John David, Hall, Edward J., and Paul, Laurie Ann, 225–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher. 2003. “Of Humean Bondage.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54:1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher. 2012. “Portable Causal Dependence: A Tale of Consilience.” Philosophy of Science 79 (5): 942–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kushnir, Tamar, and Gopnik, Alison. 2007. “Conditional Probability versus Spatial Contiguity in Causal Learning: Preschoolers Use New Contingency Evidence to Overcome Prior Spatial Assumptions.” Developmental Psychology 43:186–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leslie, Alan M., and Keeble, Stephanie. 1987. “Do Six-Month-Old Infants Perceive Causality?” Cognition 25 (3): 265–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, David. 1973. “Causation.” Journal of Philosophy 70 (17): 556–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lombrozo, Tania. 2010. “Causal-Explanatory Pluralism: How Intentions, Functions, and Mechanisms Influence Causal Ascriptions.” Cognitive Psychology 61 (4): 303–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lu, Hongjing, Yuille, Alan L., Liljeholm, Mimi, Cheng, Patricia W., and Holyoak, Keith J.. 2008. “Bayesian Generic Priors for Causal Learning.” Psychological Review 115 (4): 955–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michotte, Albert. 1963. The Perception of Causality. Trans. T. R. Miles and E. Miles. Andover: Methuen.Google Scholar
Oakes, Lisa M., and Cohen, Leslie B.. 1990. “Infant Perception of a Causal Event.” Cognitive Development 5 (2): 193–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Psillos, Stathis. 2010. “Causal Pluralism.” In Worldviews, Science, and Us: Studies of Analytic Metaphysics; A Selection of Topics from a Methodological Perspective, ed. Vanderbeeken, Robrecht and D’Hooghe, Bart, 131–51. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific.Google Scholar
Roser, Matthew E., Fugelsang, Jonathan A., Dunbar, Kevin N., Corballis, Paul M., and Gazzaniga, Michael S.. 2005. “Dissociating Processes Supporting Causal Perception and Causal Inference in the Brain.” Neuropsychology 19 (5): 591–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rottman, Benjamin M., and Keil, Frank C.. 2012. “Causal Structure Learning over Time: Observations and Interventions.” Cognitive Psychology 64(1–2):93–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salmon, Wesley. 1984. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schlottmann, Anne. 1999. “Seeing It Happen and Knowing How It Works: How Children Understand the Relation between Perceptual Causality and Underlying Mechanism.” Developmental Psychology 35 (1): 303–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schlottmann, Anne, and Shanks, David R.. 1992. “Evidence for a Distinction between Judged and Perceived Causality.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 44 (2): 321–42.Google ScholarPubMed
Scholl, Brian J., and Nakayama, Ken. 2002. “Causal Capture: Contextual Effects on the Perception of Collision Events.” Psychological Science 13 (6): 493–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scholl, Brian J., and Tremoulet, Patrice D.. 2000. “Perceptual Causality and Animacy.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (8): 299–309.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schulz, Laura E., and Sommerville, Jessica. 2006. “God Does Not Play Dice: Causal Determinism and Children’s Inferences about Unobserved Causes.” Child Development 77 (2): 427–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shanks, David R., and Dickinson, Anthony. 1987. “Associative Accounts of Causality Judgment.” Psychology of Learning and Motivation 21:229–61.Google Scholar
Sobel, David M., and Kirkham, Natasha Z.. 2006. “Blickets and Babies: The Development of Causal Reasoning in Toddlers and Infants.” Developmental Psychology 42 (6): 1103–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steyvers, Mark, Tenenbaum, Joshua B., Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan, and Blum, Ben. 2003. “Inferring Causal Networks from Observations and Interventions.” Cognitive Science 27 (3): 453–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolff, Phillip. 2008. “Dynamics and the Perception of Causal Events.” In Understanding Events: From Perception to Action, ed. Shipley, Thomas F. and Zacks, Jeffrey M., 555–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, James. 2009. “Agency and Interventionist Theories.” In The Oxford Handbook of Causation, ed. Beebee, Helen, Hitchcock, Christopher, and Menzies, Peter, 234–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, James. 2011. “Causal Perception and Causal Cognition.” In Perception, Causation, and Objectivity, ed. Roessler, Johannes, Lerman, Hemdat, and Eilan, Naomi, 229–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar