Examples that puzzle philosophers

1. Examples that puzzle philosophers • Me not watering my neighbors’ plants is the cause of their death • Causation by omission • Dr. Jeckyl’s mother => Dr. Jeckyl => Mr. Hyde => Mr. Hyde committing crimes • Dr. Jeckyl’s mother is the cause of the crimes?

2. Different Accounts of Causality Probabilistic account Difference-making account Counterfactual account Mechanistic account Manipulationist account • Difference-making • Mechanistic None of them capture all aspects of causality Dualism?

3. Causality in the World versusCausality in the Mind. Jan Lemeire Mechanisms and Causality in the Sciences Canterbury, September 9th 2009 Ghent Workshop 3

4. The world Space and time How the world goes from one state to the next seems to be governed by laws A law describes that an event A under some background conditions will result in event B • Causality in the world = causation ≈ mechanisms

5. The Mind • The mind wants to understand the world and know what’s going to happen. • Describe the things that are present in world • Describe by laws how world moves, how events generate others • To do so: mind mimics the world by simulating it • Simulation tells us what will happen starting from an initial world, a set of interventions and a set of laws • Runs parallel to the real world • Makes hypothetical worlds possible

6. Default world • Default reasoning: Based on what we know about the state and laws of the world “In absence of other factors, A will result in B.” • If simulation result is different than actual world: • there must be a cause explaining the difference • by making the outcome more probable by adding the cause to our simulation. 6

7. Example • I got a fine while walking around • ?? • I crossed the road when it was red • ! • In Brussels… • ?? • The policeman shouted • ! • Causality in the mind ≈ causal explanation

8. Context –Dependence of Causality • See Menzies’ work: • Peter Menzies, Causation in Context, In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited. Oxford University Press, 2007. • Peter Menzies, Difference-Making in Context, in John Collins, Ned Hall and L.A. Paul (eds.), causation and counterfactuals, MIT, 2004. • We give a detailed account of the notion of default world • Default world requires no explanation • Consists of what we know

9. World-Mind distinction explains: • Causation by omission • Normally x would happen, unless y – which is taken for granted - unexpectedly does not occur • Why J’s mother is not the cause of J’s crimes (and thus not responsible) • J’s mother does not make the crimes more probable. • Unless she gave J a bad education • Difference between causes and conditions • It shows how to check counterfactual statements • ¬A => ¬B

10. Conclusions • We tried to clarify the apparent dualism of causality based on an analysis of how the mind tries to grasp the world. • To do so, the mind makes a fundamental assumption about how we ought to look at the world: laws state how state at t goes to state t+1 • Mind explains, predicts and reasons about the world by simulating it. • All the mind knows defines the default world. Causes in the world are potential causes in the mind; causes in the mind are difference-makers with respect to the default world.