Irreversible (One-hit) and Reversible (Sustaining) Causation

Ross, Lauren N.; Woodward, James

doi:10.1017/psa.2022.70

Cited by 9 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Nothing changes in a stable block tower, it just sits there. Again, the CSM naturally extends to this type of causation that we may call “sustaining causation” (see Ross & Woodward, 2021 for relevant work in philosophy). A sustaining cause brings about an effect due to its continuing presence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The notion of sustaining causation has received little interest in work on causal cognition so far. In philosophy, Ross and Woodward (2021) have discussed sustaining causation in the context of reversible causal relationships. Causal relationships are reversible when an earlier change can be undone at a later point in time.…”

Section: People’s Intuitive Understanding Of the Physical Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mental jenga: A counterfactual simulation model of causal judgments about physical support.

Zhang¹,

Smith²,

Tenenbaum³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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From building towers to picking an orange from a stack of fruit, assessing support is critical for successfully interacting with the physical world. But how do people determine whether one object supports another? In this paper, we develop a counterfactual simulation model (CSM) of causal judgments about physical support. The CSM predicts that people judge physical support by mentally simulating what would happen to a scene if the object of interest was removed. Three experiments test the model by asking one group of participants to judge what would happen to a tower if one of the blocks were removed, and another group of participants how responsible that block was for the tower's stability. The CSM accurately captures participants' predictions by running noisy simulations that incorporate different sources of uncertainty. Participants' responsibility judgments are closely related to counterfactual predictions: a block is more responsible when many other blocks would fall if it were removed. By construing physical support as preventing from falling, the CSM provides a unified account of how causal judgments in dynamic and static physical scenes arise from the process of counterfactual simulation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: People’s Intuitive Understanding Of the Physical Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental jenga: A counterfactual simulation model of causal judgments about physical support.

Zhang¹,

Smith²,

Tenenbaum³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…No mere trigger, if scaffolds are removed too early, this process will end, and the outcome of interest will not be realized. In this sense, scaffolded processes are initially revertible (Ross and Woodward 2022), at least, within a certain time frame. In the process of interest to Rainey and colleagues, removal of the scaffold will lead the system to revert to individual-level selection, unless some other evolutionary process endogenizes the cooperation created by the scaffold first.…”

Section: Evolutionary Scaffolding Explanations Causation and Evolutio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaffold: A Causal Concept for Evolutionary Explanations

Neto

Meynell

2023

Philos. sci.

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The concept of scaffold is widespread in science and increasingly common in evolutionary biology. While this concept figures in causal explanations, it is not clear what scaffolds are and what role they play in those explanations. Here we present evolutionary scaffolding explanation as a distinct type of explanatory strategy, distinguishing it from other types of evolutionary explanation. By doing so, we clarify the meaning of “scaffold” as a causal concept and its potential contribution to accounts of evolutionary novelty and major transitions.

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“…A rock that shatters a bottle or the injection of a lethal dose of a substance into a living organism are irreversible causes, i.e., returning the cause variable to its initial state will not case the effect variable to assume its initial state. By contrast, turning off a light switch and turning it back on again will return the lights to their initial state (Ross & Woodward, 2022).…”

Section: Irreversible (One-hit) Versus Reversible (Sustainable) Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most widely discussed distinctions in the literature include stability, proportionality, causal specificity (all three discussed in Woodward's seminal 2010 paper), and actual-versus potential-difference making cause (Waters, 2007). A more recent addition is Ross's and Woodward's distinction between irreversible or one-hit and reversible or sustainable causation (Ross & Woodward, 2022). Here is just a rough idea of these notions before going into details:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coherent causal control: a new distinction within causation

Weber

2022

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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The recent literature on causation has seen the introduction of several distinctions within causation, which are thought to be important for understanding the widespread scientific practice of focusing causal explanations on a subset of the factors that are causally relevant for a phenomenon. Concepts used to draw such distinctions include, among others, stability, specificity, proportionality, or actual-difference making. In this contribution, I propose a new distinction that picks out an explanatorily salient class of causes in biological systems. Some select causes in complex biological systems, I argue, have the property of enabling coherent causal control of these systems. Examples of such control variables include hormones and other signaling molecules, e.g., TOR (target of rapamycin), morphogens or the products of homeotic selector genes in embryonic pattern formation. I propose an analysis of this notion based on concepts borrowed from causal graph theory.

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Irreversible (One-hit) and Reversible (Sustaining) Causation

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Mental jenga: A counterfactual simulation model of causal judgments about physical support.

Mental jenga: A counterfactual simulation model of causal judgments about physical support.

Scaffold: A Causal Concept for Evolutionary Explanations

Coherent causal control: a new distinction within causation

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