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Salmon, Statistics and Backwards Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

David Papineau
David Papineau*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Extract

Smokers are more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers. This statistical association gives us reason to suppose that smoking can cause lung cancer. But we would come to reject this supposition if we discovered that when family histories of lung cancer are taken into account smoking makes no further difference to the probability of lung cancer: that amongst those with a family history of lung cancer (and amongst those without) non-smokers are just as likely to develop lung cancer as smokers. Such a discovery would lead us to conclude that, despite initial appearances, smoking actually makes no causal contribution to lung cancer, but is statistically associated with it only because a genetic predisposition to lung cancer also somehow predisposes people to smoke.

Type
Part VIII. Applications of Statistical Ideas
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 302 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Hugh Mellor and Graham Nerlich for comments on earlier versions of this paper. The argument about backwards causation was originally suggested by a conversation with Dan Gvirtzman. Further treatment of some of the issues herein is given in Chapter 3 of my forthcoming For Science in the Social Sciences, London: Macmillan, 1978.

References

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