Laws,causality and the intentional explanation of action

Whether or not an intentional explanation of action necessarily involves law-like statements is related to another question, namely, is it a causal explanation? The Popper-Hempel Thesis, which answers both questions affirmatively, inevitably faces a dilemma between realistic and universalistic requirements. However, in terms of W.C. Salmon’s concept of causal explanation, intentional explanation can be a causal one even if it does not rely on any laws. Based on this, we are able to refute three characteristic arguments for the claim “reason is not a cause of action,” namely, the “proper logical” argument, the “logical relation” argument, and the “rule-following” argument. This rebuttal suggests that the causal relationship between reason and action can provide a justification for intentional explanations.     

Explaining essences

Philosophical Studies - This paper explores the prospects of combining two views. The first view is metaphysical rationalism (the principle of sufficient reason): all things have an explanation....     

The contingency argument—A reply

Conclusion Brian Medlin has excluded the possibility of something being self-explanatory in anything but a logical sense. Hence any non-logical necessity has always to be in terms of something other than the explicand. In this context, the principle of sufficient reason cannot escape contraction to a form so patently useless that no proponent of the contingency argument would want to employ it. Many of the objections in Section 4 have point, however, only against an argument which uses such an unacceptable form of the principle. The objections in Section 5 are directed against an argument framed in the only other way allowable under Medlin’s dichotomy, but which is of no use to the theist, for the simple-reason that its conclusion is not existential in the required (present actuality) sense. Objections against such an argument would concern the theist only if their validity were so wide as to embrace a truly existential argument as well. As we have-seen it is in just that case that they break down. In neither Section 4 nor 5, therefore, does the article come to grips with the contingency argument. The objections leave it untouched, because neither of Medlin’s notions of contingency and necessity corresponds to that which is operative in the argument.     

Structural awareness mitigates the effect of delay in human causal learning

Many studies have demonstrated that reinforcement delays exert a detrimental influence on human judgments of causality. In a free-operant procedure, the trial structure is usually only implicit, and delays are typically manipulated via trial duration, with longer trials tending to produce both longer experienced delays and also lower objective contingencies. If, however, a learner can become aware of this trial structure, this may mitigate the effects of delay on causal judgments. Here we tested this “structural-awareness” hypothesis by manipulating whether response–outcome contingencies were clearly identifiable as such, providing structural information in real time using an auditory tone to delineate consecutive trials. A first experiment demonstrated that providing cues to indicate trial structure, but without an explicit indication of their meaning, significantly increased the accuracy of causal judgments in the presence of delays. This effect was not mediated by changes in response frequency or timing, and a second experiment demonstrated that it cannot be attributed to the alternative explanation of enhanced outcome salience. In a third experiment, making trial structure explicit and unambiguous, by telling participants that the tones indicated trial structure, completely abolished the effect of delays. We concluded that, with sufficient information, a continuous stream of causes and effects can be perceived as a series of discrete trials, the contingency nature of the input may be exploited, and the effects of delay may be eliminated. These results have important implications for human contingency learning and in the characterization of temporal influences on causal inference.     

Reasons Explanation: Further Defense of a Non-causal Account

If moral responsibility requires uncaused action, as I believe, and if a reasons explanation of an action must be a causal explanation, as many philosophers of action suppose, then it follows that our responsible actions are ones we do for no reason, which is preposterous. In previous work I have argued against the second premise of this deduction, claiming that the statement that a person did A in order to satisfy their desire D will be true if the person, while doing A, intended of that action that it contribute to satisfying their desire D, a condition that does not entail any causal connection between the explaining desire and the explained action. This claim has received trenchant criticism from Randolph Clarke. The main part of the present paper responds to Clarke’s latest objections. The rest of the paper addresses another worry about my account (not raised by Clarke): does my non-causal sufficient condition hold as widely as it needs to if responsible, uncaused actions are as widespread as we would like to think?     

Con-reasons and the causal theory of action

A con-reason is a reason which plays a role in motivating and explaining an agent's behaviour, but which the agent takes to count against the course of action taken. Most accounts of motivating reasons in the philosophy of action do not allow such things to exist. In this essay, I pursue two aims. First, I argue that, whatever metaphysical story we tell about the relation between motivating reasons and action, con-reasons need to be acknowledged, as they play an explanatory role not played by pro-reasons (the reason the agent takes to count in favour of the action taken). Second, I respond to an argument recently developed by David-Hillel Ruben to the effect that a causal theory of action – still known as ‘the standard story’ – cannot account for con-reasons. His argument attempts to show that a fundamental principle of the causal theory cannot be reconciled with the role con-reasons play in a certain kind of imagined case. I first argue that a causal theorist is not, in fact, committed to the problematic principle; this argument has an added benefit, since the principle has been taken by many to show that the causal theory generates a puzzle about the possibility of weak-willed action. I then argue that a causal theorist has good reason to reject the possibility of Ruben's imagined cases. If successful, my arguments make clearer the commitments of the causal theory and show that it can accommodate con-reasons in the way I think they ought to be accommodated.     

Non-dominance,third person and non-action Newcomb problems,and metatickles

It is plausible that Newcomb problems in which causal maximizers and evidential maximizers would do different things would not be possible for ideal maximizers who are attentive to metatickles. An objection to Eells's first argument for this makes welcome a second. Against it I argue that even ideal evidential and causal maximizers would do different things in some non-dominance Newcomb problems; and that they would hope for different things in some third-person and non-action problems, which is relevant if a good theory of rational choices of acts should fit smoothly into a good theory of rational desires for facts.This paper elaborates on Section V of Sobel. forthcoming.     

The Romantic Absolute

In this article I argue that the Early German Romantics understand the absolute, or being, to be an infinite whole encompassing all the things of the world and all their causal relations. The Romantics argue that we strive endlessly to know this whole but only acquire an expanding, increasingly systematic body of knowledge about finite things, a system of knowledge which can never be completed. We strive to know the whole, the Romantics claim, because we have an original feeling of it that motivates our striving. I then examine two different Romantic accounts of this feeling. The first, given by Novalis, is that feeling gives us a kind of access to the absolute which logically precedes any conceptualisation. I argue that this account is problematic and that a second account, offered by Friedrich Schlegel, is preferable. On this account, we feel the absolute in that we intuit it aesthetically in certain natural phenomena. This form of intuition is partly cognitive and partly non-cognitive, and therefore it motivates us to strive to convert our intuition into full knowledge.     

An erotetic approach to explanation by specification

In earlier publications of the first author it was shown that intentional explanation of actions, functional explanation of biological traits and causal explanation of abnormal events share a common structure. They are called explanation by specification (of a goal, a biological function, an abnormal causal factor, respectively) as opposed to explanation by subsumption under a law. Explanation by specification is guided by a schematic train of thought, of which the argumentative steps not concerning questions were already shown to be logically valid (elementary) arguments.Independently, the second author developed a new, inferential approach to erotetic logic, the logic of questions. In this approach arguments resulting in questions, with declarative sentences and/or other questions as premises, are analyzed, and validity of such arguments is defined.In the present paper it is shown that all four kinds of erotetic argumentative steps occurring in the train of thought of explanation by specification are valid arguments in the sense of inferential erotetic logic. Hence, in view of the fact that the other argumentative steps were already shown to be valid, it may be concluded that the logical structure of explanation by specification can be as well-established as that of explanation by nomological subsumption. Moreover, explanation by specification provides some illustrations of the applicability of erotetic logic in everyday life and some empirical sciences.     

The contribution of logical reasoning to the learning of mathematics in primary school

It has often been claimed that children's mathematical understanding is based on their ability to reason logically, but there is no good evidence for this causal link. We tested the causal hypothesis about logic and mathematical development in two related studies. In a longitudinal study, we showed that (a) 6‐year‐old children's logical abilities and their working memory predict mathematical achievement 16 months later; and (b) logical scores continued to predict mathematical levels after controls for working memory, whereas working memory scores failed to predict the same measure after controls for differences in logical ability. In our second study, we trained a group of children in logical reasoning and found that they made more progress in mathematics than a control group who were not given this training. These studies establish a causal link between logical reasoning and mathematical learning. Much of children's mathematical knowledge is based on their understanding of its underlying logic.     

Discounting in causality and covariation judgements

In two experiments, humans were asked to judge the strength of a moderate contingency between a cue and an outcome in the presence of a second strong contingency between another cue and the outcome. The first experiment replicated the discounting effect whereby a strong contingency causes subjects to reduce or discount judgements of a moderate contingency. This experiment used a video-game procedure in which subjects camouflaged a tank to make it safe from mines. The second causal cue was the presence or absence of a spotter plane. Experiment 1 also ruled out the possibility that judgements might be determined by the number of co-occurrences of the cue and outcome as opposed to the level of contingency. The second experiment used an abstract scenario in which discounting was demonstrated when subjects were asked to judge the relationship between the occurrence of geometric objects. The instructions were neutral to discourage causal hypotheses. These results support the notion that judgements result from associative or connectionist processes and not from a two-step cognitive retrospective process in which an estimate of covariation is calculated between cue and outcome and then in a second step this information is used in a normative manner when a decision is made.     

Why Friedman's non-monotonic reasoning defies Hempel's covering law model

In this paper we will show that Hempel's covering law model can't deal very well with explanations that are based on incomplete knowledge. In particular the symmetry thesis, which is an important aspect of the covering law model, turns out to be problematic for these explanations. We will discuss an example of an electric circuit, which clearly indicates that the symmetry of explanation and prediction does not always hold. It will be argued that an alternative logic for causal explanation is needed. And we will investigate to what extent non-monotonic epistemic logic can provide such an alternative logical framework. Finally we will show that our non-monotonic logical analysis of explanation is not only suitable for simple cases such as the electric circuit, but that it also sheds new light on more controversial causal explanations such as Milton Friedman's explanation of the business cycle.We gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions and critical comments of Johan van Benthem, Bert Hamminga, Kevin Hoover, Theo Kuipers, and Rick Looyen.     

Reasonable Pluralism,Interculturalism, and Sterba on Question-Beggingness

In From Rationality to Equality, James Sterba (From rationality to equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) argues that the non-moral, and non-controversial, principle of logic, the principle that good arguments do not beg-the-question, provides a rationally conclusive response to egoism. He calls this “the principle of non-question-beggingness” and it is supposed to justify a conception of “Morality as Compromise.” Sterba’s basic idea is that principles of morality provide a non-question-begging compromise between self-interested reasons and other-regarding reasons. I will focus, first, on Sterba’s rejection of the alternative Kantian rationalist justification of morality, and second, I discuss the logical principle of non-question-beggingness and I argue that Sterba is wrong to assume that there is a formal, logical requirement that a rational egoist must provide a non-question-begging defense of egoism. I argue that, like the Kantian, Sterba needs a more substantial conception of practical reason to derive his conclusion. My third focus is the problem of reasonable pluralism and public reason (Rawls in Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; The law of peoples with the idea of public reason revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999). The Rawlsian principle of public reason is analogous to Sterba’s principle of non-question-beggingness. Sterba recognizes that public policies should respect competing perspectives and that a public conception of justice must be justifiable to all reasonable people. The problem is that that reasonable people disagree about fundamental moral questions. Rawls calls this the fact of reasonable pluralism. I argue that an intercultural conception of justice is necessary to provide a response to reasonable pluralism and a shared basis for public reason.     

Change,Contradiction, and Overconfidence: Chinese Philosophy and Cognitive Peculiarities of Asians

This article discusses philosophical influence, especially the influence made by Confucianism and Daoism, on the way Asian people see and understand the world. Recently, Richard Nisbett drew a connection between Chinese philosophy (Confucianism and Daoism) and the cognitive profiles of the people who live in Asian countries where Confucianism and Daoism are strong social and cultural traditions. He argues that there is a peculiar way that Asians think and perceive things and this cognitive pattern is influenced by a group of principles derived from Chinese philosophy. This article critically analyzes Nisbett’s explanation, his emphasis on the principle of change in particular, and provides an alternative explanation of the connection between Chinese philosophy and cognitive peculiarities of Asians. Asians combine and integrate opposite viewpoints not because they believe that things change in all unexpected directions, but because they see the world as a big system with interrelated and mutually influencing components.     

Perception Versus Knowledge of Cause and Effect in Children: When Seeing Is Believing

Recent research has shown that even infants have perceptual sensitivity to the causal structure of the world, and it is often claimed that causal knowledge supports many of preschoolers' impressive cognitive achievements. That older children nevertheless can encounter difficulties in causal-reasoning tasks is typically attributed to lack of domain knowledge. A different explanation, however, is that causal structure may appear at more than one level, in perception, as well as in underlying knowledge. Children may make some reasoning errors because they have difficulty coordinating these levels. This article reviews relevant evidence on physical causality: Even infants in their first year perceive the causal structure of simple collision events. This perceptual skill could support rapid causal learning without prior knowledge and thus helps us understand children's precocity preschoolers already reason with the assumption that causes and effects are linked by underlying physical mechanisms. However, what may promote early development may later become a hindrance: When perception and mechanism point to different causes, children may not realize that mechanism is superordinate. Although the components of competent causal reasoning are available early in development, much experience may be required before children learn how to integrate them.     

Happiness,morality, and politics

The idea that politics should promote the happiness of the population is rather common in the community of happiness researchers. This political view is sometimes based on the happiness principle, the fundamental ethical view that we have a strong moral reason to do what we can to maximize the happiness and minimize the suffering in the world. The first main purpose of this paper is to investigate (1) what role this principle play in ethics as a whole, how it should be weighed against other moral considerations, and (2) how exactly it should be understood, i.e. which possible version of the principle that is most plausible. This is the only way to arrive at well-founded theory of the fundamental moral (and political) significance of happiness and suffering (an “ethics of happiness and suffering”). The idea that politics should promote happiness is sometimes accompanied by the notion that we should introduce some kind of happiness index, and that it is a central goal of politics to maximize the value of this index. The second main purpose of this paper is to examine this suggestion. I will first ask (3) how such an index should be constructed, assuming that it might be a good idea to construct an index in the first place. I assume that an index of this kind cannot be plausible unless it incorporates a number of moral considerations, and that (3) is very closely related to (2). I will then ask (4) whether the suggestion is plausible, or whether there are better ways to put a politics of happiness into practice, e.g. to simply apply the knowledge we have about the determinants of happiness.     

Persons,Simplicity, and Substance

A novel argument has recently been advanced against materialism—the view that human persons are identical to composite, material objects. The argument claims that pairs of people are not conscious and that the only viable explanation for why they are not is because pairs of people are not simple. The argument concludes that only a simple thing can be the subject of conscious states. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation for why pairs of people are not conscious: pairs of people are not substances. I provide two characterizations of substantiality. The first proposal claims that substances have irreducible causal powers, and the second claims that substances cannot have other substances as proper parts. The alternative explanation based on these characterizations of substantiality shows that being conscious is compatible with materialism.     

XI—Internalising Practical Reasons

Practical reasons figure in both the justification and the causal explanation of action. It is usually assumed that the agent's state of believing rather than what they believe must figure in the causal explanation of action. But, that the agent believes something is not a reason in the sense of being part of the justification of what they do. So it is often concluded that the justifying reason is a different sort of thing from the causally motivating reason. But this means that in a causal process of acting the justifying reasons have done their work by the time the agent has the appropriate beliefs and desires. Transforming these into behaviour is not guided by reason. This conception of action in which there is no role for reason in the part of the process where anything actually gets done is not acceptable. So the original assumption that beliefs rather than the believed facts figure in the causal explanation of action should be challenged.     

Al-Ghazali's Use of the Terms “Necessity” and “Habit” in his Theory of Natural Causality

The present article aims at analyzing the terms “necessity” (Al-darura) and “habit” (al-āda) in al-Ghazali's (1058?–?1111) theory of natural causality (Al-Sbābiah al-Tabī'īa) by answering the following question: Why does Al-Ghazali use term “habit” and negation of “necessity” with regard to natural Causality? Al-Ghazali denies causal necessity that links cause and effect since this relationship does not draw on logical rules that make it necessary. This, however, does not mean that he denies the existence of a causal relationship between things, as he recognizes its existence. He, however, denies the necessity of that relationship, as he claims that the source of causal necessity stems from a psychological emotion rather than from being inherent in things themselves. Al-Ghazali also attempts to base causal necessity on “habit” by claiming that the similarity of event A as cause and event B as effect stems from observation, repetition and the sequencing of natural phenomena. Al-Ghazali, then, endeavors to prove that science is based on expectation and assumption that draws on observation, the senses, and repetition and does not consider it as constant and absolute.