The Statistical Nature of Causation

The Monist 105 (2):247-275 (2022)
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Abstract

Causation is a macroscopic phenomenon. The temporal asymmetry displayed by causation must somehow emerge along with other asymmetric macroscopic phenomena like entropy increase and the arrow of radiation. I shall approach this issue by considering ‘causal inference’ techniques that allow causal relations to be inferred from sets of observed correlations. I shall show that these techniques are best explained by a reduction of causation to structures of equations with probabilistically independent exogenous terms. This exogenous probabilistic independence imposes a recursive order on these equations and a consequent distinction between dependent and independent variables that lines up with the temporal asymmetry of causation.

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David Papineau
King's College London

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