Reasoning About Causes

1. Reasoning About Causes

2. What are causes for? • We use causal information to reason about the world • How do objects work? • Why do people do what they do? • Without causes, we can only reason with co-occurrences • Eclipses seem mysterious without causal knowledge • With causes, we can reason about goals of action • With causes, we can reason about why things happen.

3. Causal Status Effect • Causes matter more than effects • Categorizing an object • A -> B -> C • An object that has feature A is considered to be a better member of the category than an object that has B. • B is better than C. • True for causes, but not temporal precedence

4. Causal Centrality • Properties are connected to each other • Connections create a web of beliefs • Deeply connected beliefs are more central than sparsely connected beliefs • Deeply connected beliefs are causally central

5. Mutability • Causally central feature are less mutable • These features cannot be changed • Birds • Imagine a bird that has no beak • Imagine a bird that cannot fly • Imagine a bird that was not alive

6. Mutability and causal reasoning • Causal relations affect counterfactual reasoning • If I had studied more for that exam, then… • I would have gotten a better grade • I would have slept more soundly? • I would not have stubbed my toe?? • Return to Kahneman and Miller • Why is the person who missed their flight by 5-minutes more upset than the person who missed their flight by 30 minutes?

7. Kim & Ahn • Clinicians are supposed to make diagnoses based on the presence/absence of symptoms • All symptoms are supposed to be treated equally • Causal centrality affects importance of symptoms • More central features play a greater role in diagnoses than less central features • Features believed to be causes are more important than features believed to be effects. • Is this a problem?