Nick, you must have known you would eventually provoke me: -Correlation is not causation Sometimes you can infer a causal direction from observational data. Interested readers can see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5340263/ By my former colleagues Scheines and Ramsey.
-Hume After writing a long alternative to the counterfactual definition of causation, he concluded with a statement that A causes B if B would not have occurred unless A had occurred. Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Nov 19, 2017 3:28 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Thanks, Roger. I LIKE it. > > > > When people say, “Correlation is not causation” they are living in a > momentary illusion that they know what causation is. AT the very least, > causation consists of the results of some number of experiments in which > the second correlate is denied by a failure to produce the first, but not > vv. But most people want more from causal statements. They want > METAPHYSICS. As I guess Hume was fond of pointing out, Causes are > attributions we make to experiences, not things experiences do to one > another. For someone to deny the existence of downward causality, that > person has first to state what it is s/he imagines that s/he is denying. > In my world, where “causes” are just “prior necessary or sufficient > correlates”, if we can show that demands on the bean plant as a whole lead > to changes in its parts, we have “downward causation”. And there is no > juicier form of downward causation to be had, or to be denied. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Roger > Critchlow > *Sent:* Sunday, November 19, 2017 10:31 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation > > > > Nick -- > > > > Sure, bean plants growing in time lapse is an excellent example of coarse > graining. And you can imagine an animator making a cartoon of the same > time lapse, in fact, I remember a classic cartoon doing this, even to the > point of giving the plant hands to reach with and a face. While the video > might be taken to be caused by underlying microscopic dynamics too detailed > to be specified except in imagination, the cartoon clearly is the > animator's expression of a coarse grained understanding of the plant. > > > > So this may be a dodge, but it seems an interesting dodge. It seems that > everyone knows that correlation is not causation, yet all causal > explanations start with correlation, and only become causal when someone > tweaks the causal levers to get the predicted effects and describes how to > do it in a way that can be replicated. > > > > So when you manipulate the source of light to manipulate the plant's > growth, the plant depends on the coarse grained result to live. The plant > does not depend on a microscopic trajectory to live because any particular > microscopic trajectory is impossibly improbable, the plant depends on vast > numbers of trajectories which all lead to the required coarse grained > result, or something close enough for jazz. The plant is organized in such > a way that it marshalls sufficient microscopic resources to accomplish its > coarse grained purposes. > > > > -- rec -- > > > > On Sun, Nov 19, 2017 at 11:49 AM, Nick Thompson < > nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > Ahh! Thanks Roger. That blows some life into it for me. Is watching a > bean plant grow in time lapse an example of coarse-graining? So let’s > imagine we are watching such an image and we notice that the plant “reaches > for the sun”. (I.e., we move the light around and the plant follows it as > it grows.) Now let’s also imagine (ex hypothesis, mind you!) that the > plant puts out extra roots on the opposite side to stabilize it. I would > call that top-down causation, I guess. > > > > I dunno. Anything that comes out of SFI is kind of ink-blots for me. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Roger > Critchlow > *Sent:* Sunday, November 19, 2017 3:01 AM > > > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation > > > > I looked at the abstract and thought, of course, if you "coarse grain" the > visual field, then you synthesize objects out of groups of pixels that > cohere together in time and space. In time you might even come to blame > the imputed objects for their presumed effects in the world. Perhaps it's > an illusion, or a hallucination, or a tautology, but once you summon a > coarse grained entity into existence it will have coarse grained > consequences, including changes of behavior in the summoner which are > explained as reactions to coarse grained observations. > > > > So I didn't read as hard as Nick, I just took the operational view laid > out in the abstract and imagined it. Causation is at root a tool that > helps an organism to live long and to prosper. The observation and > reaction which saves a life or facilitates reproduction or helps progeny > mature is primary. > > > > -- rec -- > > > > On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 11:25 PM, Nick Thompson < > nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > Hi, Roger, > > > > Can you say what you thought was “nice” about it. (As you know, it makes > me nervous to disagree with you about stuff). I struggled with the > article. I thought at one point she confused aggregate with emergent > properties. Emergent properties are properties of the whole that are > dependent on the temporal or spatial arrangement of the parts. Thus the > enzymatic properties of proteins, which depend on the arrangement of their > amino acids, are emergent properties. Also, the standard definition of > materialism is the believe that everything real consists of *matter and > its relations. * So entertaining the notion that relations are not > material (and therefore incapable of being causal) is … well … silly. > Finally, I have always suspected that downward causation is an example of > a “mystery” i.e., confusion that arises when words are applied to a > situation where they aren’t equal to the task. (“What is the sound of one > hand clapping?”) I think whenever we talk about causes we are trying to do > with physical events what we do with social and legal ones … we are trying > to assign responsibility for event so we can blame or praise the thing that > “caused” it. It’s a form of animism. To say that A is a cause of B is > only to say that variations in A have been shown, experimentally, to be > necessary and or sufficient for variations in B. Causal statements ALWAYS > come with an “other things being equal” clause, *ceteris paribus*. To > the extent that emergent properties can be shown to be necessary or > sufficient for some change in the property of some parts of the whole, we > have downward causation, no? Now the shape of the hemoglobin molecule is > an emergent property of that molecule which determines whether it binds > oxygen in its active site. Whether or not it has oxygen bound to its > active site determines its shape. Surely one of these is downward > causation. I am just no sure which. (};-|) > > > > Nick > > > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Roger > Critchlow > *Sent:* Saturday, November 18, 2017 6:15 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Downward causation > > > > Nice. > > > > -- rec -- > > > > > > On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:29 PM, Carl Tollander <c...@plektyx.com> wrote: > > Of interest, also the whole issue... http://rsta. > royalsocietypublishing.org/content/375/2109/20160338 > > > > C > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
