Quantifying Proportionality and the Limits of Higher-Level Causation and Explanation

Abstract

Supporters of the autonomy of higher-level causation (or explanation) often appeal to proportionality, arguing that higher-level causes are more proportional than their lower-level realizers. Recently, measures based on information theory and causal modelling have been proposed that allow one to shed new light on proportionality and the related notion of specificity. In this article we apply ideas from this literature to the issue of higher versus lower-level causation (and explanation). Surprisingly, proportionality turns out to be irrelevant for the question of whether higher-level causes (or explanations) can be autonomous; specificity is a much more informative notion for this purpose. 1 Introduction 2 Proportionality, Specificity, and Their Relevance for Higher-Level Causation and Explanation 3 Specificity and Proportionality Quantified 4 On the Limits of Higher-Level Causation and Explanation 4.1 On proportionality as an empirical matter 4.2 On how common proportional higher-level causes are 4.3 On the autonomy of higher-level causes 4.4 On the autonomy of higher-level causal explanations 5 Conclusion Appendix

Building Compressed Causal Models of the World

“…In our framework, we consider two dimensions along which causal models can vary, corresponding to the following two questions about variable choice in building a causal model: i) At what level of granularity should a variable be defined?, and ii) Which variables should be included in a causal model? These two questions correspond to two graded dimensions that have been discussed in the philosophy literature on causation, especially by Woodward (2008Woodward ( , 2010Woodward ( , 2016Woodward ( , 2021aWoodward ( , 2021b, though by others as well (e.g., Bourrat, 2021;DiMarco, 2021;Franklin-Hall, 2016;Gebharter and Eronen, 2021;Harbecke, 2021;Hoffmann-Kolss, 2014;List and Menzies, 2009;Ross, 2015;Weslake, 2013). These dimensions are proportionality and stability.…”

Coherent causal control: a new distinction within causation

“…But the term is also used to characterize a relation between the values of causal variables (Bourrat, 2019;Ross, 2021). One such notion is value-specificity of a cause for its effect, which is present in a causal relation, according to Gebharter and Eronen (2021), when each value of the effect is caused by a different value of the cause, thus enabling fine-grained control of the effect by the cause variable. Another kind of value-specificity that has particularly interested philosophers of biology is known simply as "causal specificity" in the philosophical literature.…”

“…Such distinctions This article belongs to the Topical Collection: EPSA21: Selected papers from the biennial conference in Turin Guest Editors: A.C. Love, C. Marchionni, M. Redei, J. Williamson are thought to be important in order to make sense of the scientific practice of causal selection. This term designates the process of singling out, from the totality of conditions that jointly cause a phenomenon, such causal variables or levels that have explanatory relevance (e.g., Waters, 2007;Woodward, 2010;Ross, 2018, forthcoming;Baxter, 2019;Lean, 2020;Gebharter & Eronen, 2021;Weber, 2022). The basic premise of this debate is that all causal relations are not alike.…”