‘More of a Cause’: Recent Work on Degrees of Causation and Responsibility

Kaiserman, Alex

doi:10.1111/phc3.12498

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…While early accounts (e.g., Hume, 1748;Lewis, 1973) endorsed non-graded definitions of causation, the dominant view is now that causation does come in degrees (Danks, 2013;Danks, 2017;Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009;Halpern & Hitchcock, 2015;Hart & Honoré, 1985;Sprenger, 2018) or are at least consistent with this possibility (Dowe, 1992;Salmon, 1994). Nevertheless, some philosophers still argue that degrees of causation are illusory and that causation is not graded (Bernstein, 2017;Kaiserman, 2016;Kaiserman, 2018;Sartorio, 2020). Since we are interested in non-philosophers' judgments of causation and since it remains to be shown whether people's causal judgments depend at all on what causation actually is (indicated by the dashed arrow in Figure 1), we will not take a stance on whether causation itself is graded.…”

Section: Causationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confidence and gradation in causal judgment

et al. 2022

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When comparing the roles of the lightning strike and the dry climate in causing the forest fire, one might think that the lightning strike is more of a cause than the dry climate, or one might think that the lightning strike completely caused the fire while the dry conditions did not cause it at all. Psychologists and philosophers have long debated whether such causal judgments are graded; that is, whether people treat some causes as stronger than others. To address this debate, we first reanalyzed data from four recent studies. We found that causal judgments were actually multimodal: although most causal judgments made on a continuous scale were categorical, there was also some gradation. We then tested two competing explanations for this gradation: the confidence explanation, which states that people make graded causal judgments because they have varying degrees of belief in causal relations, and the strength explanation, which states that people make graded causal judgments because they believe that causation itself is graded. Experiment 1 tested the confidence explanation and showed that gradation in causal judgments was indeed moderated by confidence: people tended to make graded causal judgments when they were unconfident, but they tended to make more categorical causal judgments when they were confident. Experiment 2 tested the causal strength explanation and showed that although confidence still explained variation in causal judgments, it did not explain away the effects of normality, causal structure, or the number of candidate causes. Overall, we found that causal judgments were multimodal and that people make graded judgments both when they think a cause is weak and when they are uncertain about its causal role.

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Section: Causationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confidence and gradation in causal judgment

et al. 2022

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“…There are too many measures to cover them all, and some argue that a single measure of causal strength is not sufficient to explain singular causal judgments in general (Godfrey-Smith, 2009;Hitchcock, 2007;Lombrozo, 2010;Sprenger, 2018). As such, I will cover a selection of notable measures (for some other notable measures, see Kaiserman, 2018). I will not commit to any particular measure for the purposes of this paper, rather I will commit broadly to the general idea that causal judgments are made by sampling counterfactuals and computing some measure of causal strength across the sampled counterfactuals.…”

Section: Measures Of Singular Causal Strengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Certainty and Singular Causal Judgment

O’Neill¹

2021

Preprint

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In this paper, I map out broad aims, challenges, predictions, and implica- tions for the resulting intersection of singular causal judgment and metacognition that I (tentatively) call causal metacognition. First, I will overview research on sin- gular causal judgment, focusing on popular counterfactual theories that provide a formal framework for evaluating dependency relationships, as well as several compet- ing definitions of singular causal strength. Next, I will provide relevant background in the literature on metacognition for perception and decision-making, discussing major computational theories of metacognitive judgments. After covering the small amount of work on uncertainty in causal judgments, I will then argue that although singular causal judgments pose a particular problem for some theories of metacognition, coun- terfactual theories of singular causal judgment already provide testable predictions for confidence in causal judgments and can be extended to account for a wide range of patterns in confidence in singular causal judgments. Finally, I will summarize why we need a study of causal metacognition, and what empirical and theoretical advancements in that field might look like.

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“…Philosophers and psychologists continue to debate whether judgments of causation are graded (Kaiserman, 2018). Until recently, popular counterfactual accounts of causation dating back to Hume ruled out gradation entirely.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These early counterfactual theories leave no room for graded causation because, for any counterfactual, the outcome either occurs or it doesn't (Hume, 1748/2000, Lewis, 1973. And such views persist; a resurgence of work in philosophy has defended all-or-nothing notions of causation (Bernstein, 2017;Kaiserman, 2016;Kaiserman, 2018;Sartorio, 2020). Similarly some models of causal judgment in psychology also propose that people attribute causality in a binary manner (Bello, Lovett, Briggs, & Bello, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of recent counterfactual theories, however, utilize some notion of graded causation (e.g., Bernstein, 2014;Cheng, 1997;Cheng & Novick, 1990;Danks, 2013;Hall, 2007;Halpern & Hitchcock, 2015;Hitchcock, 2007;Icard, Kominsky, & Knobe, 2017;Kaiserman, 2018;Pearl, 2009;Quillien, 2020;Spellman, 1997;Spellman & Ndiaye, 2007, Sprenger, 2018Woodward, 2005). Theorists often introduce gradation by assuming that people consider not just one but several counterfactual alternatives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Confidence and Gradation in Causal Judgment

O’Neill¹,

Henne²,

Bello³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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When asking if lightning caused the forest fire, one might think that the lightning is more of a cause than the dry climate (i.e., it is a graded cause) or they might instead think that the lightning strike completely caused the fire while the dry conditions did not cause it at all (i.e., it is a binary cause). Psychologists and philosophers have long debated whether such judgments are graded. To address this debate, we started by reanalyzing data from four recent studies. In this context, we provide novel evidence that causal judgments are actually multimodal: although most causal judgements were binary, there was also some gradation. We then tested two competing explanations for the gradation we observed: the confidence explanation, which states that gradation distinguishes between certain and uncertain causes, and the strength explanation, which states that gradation distinguishes between strong and weak causes. Experiment 1 tested the confidence explanation and showed that gradation in causal judgments was moderated by confidence. People tended to make graded causal judgments when they were less confident, but they tended to make discrete causal judgments when they were more confident. Experiment 2 tested the causal strength explanation and showed that although causal judgments varied with factors associated with causal strength, confidence ratings were unchanged. Overall, we found that causal judgments are multimodal and that observed gradation reflects independent effects of confidence and causal strength on causal judgments.

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‘More of a Cause’: Recent Work on Degrees of Causation and Responsibility

Cited by 25 publications

References 45 publications

Confidence and gradation in causal judgment

Confidence and gradation in causal judgment

Certainty and Singular Causal Judgment

Confidence and Gradation in Causal Judgment

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