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Causal Asymmetries
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Book Synopsis Causal Asymmetries by : Daniel M. Hausman
Download or read book Causal Asymmetries written by Daniel M. Hausman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-28 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, by one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science writing today, offers the most comprehensive account available of causal asymmetries. Causation is asymmetrical in many different ways. Causes precede effects; explanations cite causes not effects. Agents use causes to manipulate their effects; they don't use effects to manipulate their causes. Effects of a common cause are correlated; causes of a common effect are not. This book explains why a relationship that is asymmetrical in one of these regards is asymmetrical in the others. Hausman discovers surprising hidden connections between theories of causation and traces them all to an asymmetry of independence. This is a major book for philosophers of science that will also prove insightful to economists and statisticians.
Book Synopsis Elements of Causal Inference by : Jonas Peters
Download or read book Elements of Causal Inference written by Jonas Peters and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-11-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise and self-contained introduction to causal inference, increasingly important in data science and machine learning. The mathematization of causality is a relatively recent development, and has become increasingly important in data science and machine learning. This book offers a self-contained and concise introduction to causal models and how to learn them from data. After explaining the need for causal models and discussing some of the principles underlying causal inference, the book teaches readers how to use causal models: how to compute intervention distributions, how to infer causal models from observational and interventional data, and how causal ideas could be exploited for classical machine learning problems. All of these topics are discussed first in terms of two variables and then in the more general multivariate case. The bivariate case turns out to be a particularly hard problem for causal learning because there are no conditional independences as used by classical methods for solving multivariate cases. The authors consider analyzing statistical asymmetries between cause and effect to be highly instructive, and they report on their decade of intensive research into this problem. The book is accessible to readers with a background in machine learning or statistics, and can be used in graduate courses or as a reference for researchers. The text includes code snippets that can be copied and pasted, exercises, and an appendix with a summary of the most important technical concepts.
Book Synopsis Asymmetries In Time by : Paul Horwich
Download or read book Asymmetries In Time written by Paul Horwich and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1987-04-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time is generally thought to be one of the more mysterious ingredients of the universe. In this intriguing book, Paul Horwich makes precise and explicit the interrelationships between time and a large number of philosophically important notions. Ideas of temporal order and priority interact in subtle and convoluted ways with the deepest elements in our network of basic concepts. Confronting this conceptual jigsaw puzzle, Horwich notes that there are glaring differences in how we regard the past and future directions of time. For example, we can influence the future but not the past, and can easily gain knowledge of the past but not of the future. Moreover we see a profusion of decay processes but little spontaneous generation of order; time appears to "flow" in one privileged direction, not the other; and we tend to explain phenomena in terms of antecedent circumstances, rather than subsequent ones. Horwich explains such time asymmetries and examines their bearing on the nature of time itself. Asymmetries in Time covers many notoriously difficult problems in the philosophy of science: causation, knowledge, entropy, explanation, time travel, rational choice (including Newcomb's problem), laws of nature, and counterfactual implication—and gives a unified treatment of these matters. The book covers an unusually broad range of topics in a lucid and nontechnical way and includes alternative points of view in the philosophical literature.
Book Synopsis Causal Reasoning in Physics by : Mathias Frisch
Download or read book Causal Reasoning in Physics written by Mathias Frisch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues, partly through detailed case studies, for the importance of causal reasoning in physics.
Book Synopsis Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality by : Huw Price
Download or read book Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality written by Huw Price and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In philosophy as in ordinary life, cause and effect are twin pillars on which much of our thought seems based. But almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell declared that modern physics leaves these pillars without foundations. Russell's revolutionary conclusion was that 'the law of causality is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm'. Russell's famous challenge remains unanswered. Despite dramatic advances in physics, the intervening century has taken us no closer to an explanation of how to find a place for causation in a world of the kind that physics reveals. In particular, we still have no satisfactory account of the directionality of causation - the difference between cause and effect, and the fact that causes typically precede their effects. In this important collection of new essays, 13 leading scholars revisit Russell's revolution, in search of reconciliation. The connecting theme in these essays is that to reconcile causation with physics, we need to put ourselves in the picture: we need to think about why creatures in our situation should present their world in causal terms.
Book Synopsis Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality by : Huw Price
Download or read book Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality written by Huw Price and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality 'a relic of a bygone age'. Scholars revisit Russell's conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning by : Michael Waldmann
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning written by Michael Waldmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields.
Book Synopsis Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics by : Douglas Kutach
Download or read book Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics written by Douglas Kutach and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive attempt to solve what Hartry Field has called "the central problem in the metaphysics of causation": the problem of reconciling the need for causal notions in the special sciences with the limited role of causation in physics. If the world evolves fundamentally according to laws of physics, what place can be found for the causal regularities and principles identified by the special sciences? Douglas Kutach answers this question by invoking a novel distinction between fundamental and derivative reality and a complementary conception of reduction. He then constructs a framework that allows all causal regularities from the sciences to be rendered in terms of fundamental relations. By drawing on a methodology that focuses on explaining the results of specially crafted experiments, Kutach avoids the endless task of catering to pre-theoretical judgments about causal scenarios. This volume is a detailed case study that uses fundamental physics to elucidate causation, but technicalities are eschewed so that a wide range of philosophers can profit. The book is packed with innovations: new models of events, probability, counterfactual dependence, influence, and determinism. These lead to surprising implications for topics like Newcomb's paradox, action at a distance, Simpson's paradox, and more. Kutach explores the special connection between causation and time, ultimately providing a never-before-presented explanation for the direction of causation. Along the way, readers will discover that events cause themselves, that low barometer readings do cause thunderstorms after all, and that we humans routinely affect the past more than we affect the future.
Book Synopsis Chance and Temporal Asymmetry by : Alastair Wilson
Download or read book Chance and Temporal Asymmetry written by Alastair Wilson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents twelve original essays on the metaphysics of science, with particular focus on the physics of chance and time. Experts in the field subject familiar approaches to searching critiques, and make bold new proposals in a number of key areas. Together, they set the agenda for future work on the subject.
Book Synopsis Space, Time and Causality by : Richard Swinburne
Download or read book Space, Time and Causality written by Richard Swinburne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal Institute of Philosophy has been sponsoring conferences in alter nate years since 1969. These have from the start been intended to be of interest to persons who are not philosophers by profession. They have mainly focused on interdisciplinary areas such as the philosophies of psychology, education and the social sciences. The volumes arising from these conferences have included discussions between philosophers and distinguished practitioners of other disciplines relevant to the chosen topic. Beginning with the 1979 conference on 'Law, Morality and Rights' and the 1981 conference on 'Space, Time and Causality' these volumes are now constituted as a series. It is hoped that this series will contribute to advancing philosophical understanding at the frontiers of philosophy and areas of interest to non-philosophers. It is hoped that it will do so by writing which reduces technicalities as much as the subject-matter permits. In this way the series is intended to demonstrate that philosophy can be clear and worthwhile in itself and at the same time relevant to the interests of lay people.
Book Synopsis Reconstructing Marxism by : Erik Olin Wright
Download or read book Reconstructing Marxism written by Erik Olin Wright and published by Verso. This book was released on 1992 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructing Marxism explores fundamental questions about the structure of Marxist theory and its prospects for the future. The authors maintain that the disintegration of the old theoretical unity of classical Marxism is in part responsible for what is commonly called the "crisis of Marxism." Only a reconstructed Marxism can come to terms with this disintegration. Addressing a range of problems in historical materialism and class analysis, the authors compare historical materialism with Darwinian evolutionary theory, and identify what is distinctively "historical" in Marx's theory of history. Through an evaluation of G.A. Cohen's defense and Anthony Giddens's critique of historical materialism they suggest what a plausible, yet still Marxist. theory of history might be. They analyze the relationship of microanalysis to macro theory and the assignment of causal primacy in explanations, and present a general assessment of the current state of Marxist theory and the prospects for its analytical reconstruction. Distinguished by the clarity of its presentation, the analytical rigour of its argument and its concern with fundamental philosophical and sociological issues, Reconstructing Marxism advances, at this critical juncture in the history of Marxism, a challenging new research programme.
Book Synopsis Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry by : J. J. Halliwell
Download or read book Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry written by J. J. Halliwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-03-21 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We say that the processes going on in the world about us are asymmetric in time or display an arrow of time. Yet this manifest fact of our experience is particularly difficult to explain in terms of the fundamental laws of physics. This volume reconciles these profoundly conflicting facts.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Causation by : Helen Beebee
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Causation written by Helen Beebee and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers.
Book Synopsis A Perfect Moral Storm by : Stephen M. Gardiner
Download or read book A Perfect Moral Storm written by Stephen M. Gardiner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to pass the problem on to future generations. Third, our poor grasp of science, international justice, and the human relationship to nature helps to facilitate inaction. As a result, we are engaging in willful self-deception when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake. We should wake up to this profound ethical failure, Gardiner concludes, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders and ourselves. "This is a radical book, both in the sense that it faces extremes and in the sense that it goes to the roots." —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "The book's strength lies in Gardiner's success at understanding and clarifying the types of moral issues that climate change raises, which is an important first step toward solutions." —Science Magazine "Gardiner has expertly explored some very instinctual and vitally important considerations which cannot realistically be ignored. —Required reading." —Green Prophet "Gardiner makes a strong case for highlighting and insisting on the ethical dimensions of the climate problem, and his warnings about buck-passing and the dangerous appeal of moral corruptions hit home." —Times Higher Education "Stephen Gardiner takes to a new level our understanding of the moral dimensions of climate change. A Perfect Moral Storm argues convincingly that climate change is the greatest moral challenge our species has ever faced - and that the problem goes even deeper than we think." —Peter Singer, Princeton University
Book Synopsis What Makes Time Special? by : Craig Callender
Download or read book What Makes Time Special? written by Craig Callender and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we navigate through life we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model develops in childhood and is deeply saturated within our language, thought and behavior, affecting our conceptions of the universe, freedom and the self. Yet as central as it is to our lives, physics seems to have no room for this flowing present. What Makes Time Special? demonstrates this claim in detail and then turns to two novel positive tasks. First, by looking at the world "sideways" - in the spatial directions — it shows that physics is not "spatializing time" as is commonly alleged. Even relativity theory makes significant distinctions between the spacelike and timelike directions, often with surprising consequences. Second, if the flowing present is an illusion, it is a deep one worthy of explanation. The author develops a picture whereby the temporal flow arises as an interaction effect between an observer and the physics of the world. Using insights from philosophy, cognitive science, biology, psychology and physics, the theory claims that the flowing present model of time is the natural reaction to the perceptual and evolutionary challenges thrown at us. Modeling time as flowing makes sense even if it misrepresents it.
Book Synopsis Worldviews, Science and Us by : Robrecht Vanderbeeken
Download or read book Worldviews, Science and Us written by Robrecht Vanderbeeken and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together the lectures presented at the 5th Metaphysics of Science Workshop held from June 2 to 3, 2005, in Ghent, Belgium. The aim of this volume is twofold. First, it fields a selection of ongoing discussions on a central topic in contemporary analytical metaphysics. Authors were asked to encapsulate their lecture topic into a prcis, highlighting the contesting views, accentuating the pro and contra of the main arguments, and shedding light on the origin, the evolution and the eventual offspring of a respective discussion. Second, this volume addresses the methodological question by examining what can be learned if we compare these discussions from a methodological perspective. What are the red herrings and shortcomings? Is an integrated methodology possible? Does each discussion finally await a pluralism of plausible positions or will an overall convincing account be expected? And finally, can analytical metaphysics methodologically assert and investigate their basic assumptions, if not from a common sense stance?
Book Synopsis Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency by : Majid D. Beni
Download or read book Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency written by Majid D. Beni and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-12 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on advances in computational neuroscience and theoretical biology to provide a clear and accessible agentive account of the nature of causality and scientific explanations. Instead of attempting to establish the elements of scientific explanation, such as causality, in a reality unadulterated by a human perspective, this book relies on scientific facts about cognition to describe the structure of agency from a distinctly human perspective. The book draws on the Free Energy Principle to reinforce the agency theory of causality and extend it to an account of explanation as well. This principle not only provides a theoretical account of how self-organising systems engage with the causal structure of the environment, but it also offers a viable notion of agency and is compatible with the projectivist aspects of the agency theory. Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, epistemology, computational neuroscience, and theoretical biology.
