HETEROGENEOUS CAUSALITY

JULIAN REISS, ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM

Overview
For a scientific approach to LCA, the notion of causation is of crucial
importance
For instance, in the CALCAS project report it says that a systems approach
means distinguishing elements, and connecting these elements by
mechanisms... [A] mechanism is in the first place a causal relationship that
connects the levels of two activities
Unfortunately, there is no accepted definition of cause; rather, there is a
variety of theories of causation, each of which captures important aspects
of the notion
What I want to do here is to discuss the various approaches to causation
and eventually suggest a response to what one might call the problem of
heterogeneous causality: the fact that causal relations come in many kinds

Causation as regular
succession: Hume
Starting point for virtually all
contemporary philosophical
discussions of causation is David
Humes contribution to the topic
For a concept to be meaningful, it
has to be observable; but what do
we observe when we observe a
causing?
Hume: nothing but
Temporal priority
Contiguity
Regularity

Regularity Accounts
Regular succession cannot be all there is to causation:
Typically, conditions require enablers, other
conditions without which the effect would not occur
Preventors can almost always interfere with the
operation of the cause
Few effects can be produced by one set of
conditions only (plurality of causes)
Causes are therefore (at least) INUS conditions:
ABC or DEF or GHI is always followed by P

Regularity Accounts
Understanding causation as regular succession has a
variety of advantages:
Works for a large range of important cases
Justifes use of experimental method
Connects causality with policy
But it faces counterexamples:
Causation in singular cases
Probabilistic causation
Common-cause structures

Regularity Accounts
Understanding causation as regular succession has a
variety of advantages:
Works for a large range of important cases
Justifes use of experimental method
Connects causality with policy
But it faces counterexamples:

Causation in singular cases

Probabilistic causation
Common-cause structures

X
Y

Singular causation
According to a widely held theory, the everyday
conception of causation is counterfactual: X is a
cause of Y if and only if had X not been, Y would
not have been
This is also called the but-for conception of
cause at work in the law and history
Unfortunately, it is not without problems either:
Redundant causation
Makes causation subjective

Singular causation
According to a widely held theory, the everyday
conception of causation is counterfactual: X is a
cause of Y if and only if had X not been, Y would
not have been
This is also called the but-for conception of
cause at work in the law and history
Unfortunately, it is not without problems either:
Redundant causation
Makes causation subjective

C1

C2

Probabilistic causation
Idea: causes dont make their effects inevitable but rather more
probable
Immediate problem: correlation isnt causation
Hence: look for residual correlations once relevant factors have
been taken into account (conditional regression coefficients)
This account, too, faces counterexamples:
It doesnt work in cases that are genuinely indeterministic
(e.g., in quantum mechanics)
When two mechanisms or processes cancel, there is
causation without correlation

Mechanistic causation
Unfortunately, there are about as many conceptions of
mechanism as there are contributors to the literature
Important: more than just causation; continuous
process between cause and effect
Solves common-cause problems
But: causation by omission
And: in complex situations as good as useless (what
counts is not that there is a mechanism but that we
pick out the relevant mechanism)

Interventions
A final idea associated with causation is that manipulating
the cause results in a change in the effect
Helps in common-cause structures and with cancelling
mechanisms
Unfortunately (surprise, surprise!), this account, too, is
beset with problems:
Not all systems are modular (such that one can always
intervene such that only the cause is manipulated)
If interventions are not ideal, results cannot be
interpreted

Causation useful?
If all accounts of causation fail, does that mean
that the idea is not useful for science?
In my view, no. The problem is not that we look for
causal relations but that we look for the causal
relation
Thus, there is not one causal relation but rather
many different kinds of causal relation
Doesnt this lead to confusion?

Application matters
My answer is, again, no. Different kinds of causal relationship
have different properties; some show up in regularities, others
through a spatio-temporally continuous process, others support
interventions and so on
What matters is that we consider those relationships that have
the properties required for the application at hand:
Prediction: regularity or probability
Explanation: mechanism
Control: stability under intervention
Strategy: use tests that are able to pick out relationships that
have the properties required by the desired application

More matters of
application
John Stuart Mill taught us that relationships are causal only when they
are unconditionally invariant (day and night example)
Weve already seen that his account is unsuccessful as a univocal
analysis of causation
Nevertheless his idea contains an important insight: regular
associations are often dependent on some underlying structure
That makes causal inference doubly difficult: not only do
confounders have to be controlled for; when exporting causal claims
beyond the test population, we need to make sure that the underlying
structure of the target population is similar enough so that causal
inferences about the target are warranted
Alas, we use lab experiments/models because targets cannot be
investigated directly

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

External validity
This is the so-called problem of external validity: do causal
claims continue to hold beyond the observed population/
structure/system?
E.g., clinical trials

Securing external
validity
There are no ready-made solutions to the problem
If two systems share all relevant causal structure, we know we
can export claims
But this is seldom known to be the case
Mechanisms are sometimes supposed to help
The idea is that one can reduce uncertainty by starting to learn
how a cause operates; part-identity of mechanisms can make
external validity more likely
But this works only in so far as causes operate mechanistically

Summary
Each of the widely held theories of causation regularity,
counterfactual, probabilistic, mechanistic, interventionist is useful
to illuminate properties causal relationships have
These properties relate to causation like symptoms to diseases:
there is no unique set of symptoms that always co-occurs with the
disease; and, typically, a condition is characteristic of more than
one disease
This makes causal inference, policy and planning difficult
The right attitude is to first determine what properties (or
symptoms) are important in the context of applications; and then to
establish that relationships of that kind hold, and continue to hold in
the population (or system) in which application is envisaged