Abstract
This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence (leading up to difference-making, or causal processes). This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action.
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Notes
In relation to Woodward’s account, my view can be seen in opposition to Gijsbers and de Bruin (2014) who argue for an agency concept of causation to address the issue of circularity: while Gijsbers and de Bruin recognize the importance of temporal information but do not deem this kind of understanding causal, I argue that prior to incorporation in models of causal inference causal concepts are primarily understood in temporal terms. Two caveats here are that my view targets causal models more broadly, not solely interventionism, and that I do not make a definite developmental claim.
In particular, Loew makes the case for the use of local asymmetric models in causal explanation in contrast to the laws of physics.
This question, thus, avoids the clash between realist and projectivist views, by narrowing down the scope to how the causal reasoners understand the asymmetry. Whether this corresponds to a feature of causality in the world (say, the metaphysics of time and causation) is a separate issue.
As mentioned above, for this reason, my view here can be roughly labeled as Humean. This applies to the temporal account for the causal asymmetry, but not to patterns of association, as I am relying on causal models instead.
See Schaffer, section 2.2.
Though a further question would arise regarding the extent to which these various possibilities would account for the direction of causality – counterfactuals, for instance, could go both ways as shown in the cases of causal and diagnostic reasoning. Nevertheless it is also possible that if the causal asymmetry is epistemically irreducible, such intuitive understanding would be the source of hypotheses.
Another example falling under psychological research is mental time travel – while people can mentally switch between past and future scenarios, this capacity obviously is in no way dependent on the possibility of time travel.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank David Lagnado, Phyllis Illari, and Federica Russo for comments on the dissertation chapter from which this article draws. I am also grateful to Matteo Colombo and Jan Sprenger for feedback on a related project during a fellowship at the Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science that has helped shape this paper. I would also like to thank one anonymous referee and the editor of this journal for suggestions on improving the main argument.
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Popa, E. A Psychological Approach to Causal Understanding and the Temporal Asymmetry. Rev.Phil.Psych. 11, 977–994 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-019-00459-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-019-00459-4