The most serious candidates for common causes that fail to screen off and thus violate the causal Markov condition refer to quantum phenomena. In her seminal debate with Hausman and Woodward, Cartwright early on focussed on unfortunate non-quantum examples. Especially, Hausman and Woodward’s redescriptions of quantum cases saving the CMC remain unchallenged. This paper takes up this lose end of the discussion and aims to resolve the debate in favour of Cartwright’s position. It systematically considers redescriptions of ICC (...) structures, including those by Hausman and Woodward, and explains why these are inappropriate, when quantum mechanics is true. It first shows that all cases of purported quantum ICCs are cases of entanglement and then, using the tools of causal modelling, it provides an analysis of the quantum mechanical formalism for the case that the collapse of entangled systems is best described as a causal model with an ICC. (shrink)

We offer a review of some of the most influential views on the status of Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause (PCC) for genuinely indeterministic systems. We first argue that the PCC is properly a conjunction of two distinct claims, one metaphysical and another methodological. Both claims can and have been contested in the literature, but here we simply assume that the metaphysical claim is correct, in order to focus our analysis on the status of the methodological claim. We (...) briefly review the most entrenched or classical positions, including Salmon’s ‘interactive forks’, van Fraassen’s scepticism, and Cartwright’s generalisation of the fork criterion. We then go on to review the results of the ‘Budapest school’ on the existence of formally defined screening-off events for any correlation —by means of the ideas of probability space extensibility and (Reichenbachian common cause) completability. We distinguish the Budapest doctrine clearly from any of the classical conceptions, and thus present an overall framework for discussions of causal inference in quantum mechanics. The framework, however preliminary, is essential work for a thorough assessment of the conditions under which PCC may be a reliable tool for causal inference in a genuinely probabilistic (indeterministic) context. (shrink)

We offer a review of some of the most influential views on the status of Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause (RPCC) for genuinely indeterministic systems. We first argue that the RPCC is properly a conjunction of two distinct claims, one metaphysical and another methodological. Both claims can and have been contested in the literature, but here we simply assume that the metaphysical claim is correct, in order to focus our analysis on the status of the methodological claim. We (...) briefly review the most entrenched or classical positions, including Salmon’s ‘interactive forks’, van Fraassen’s scepticism, and Cartwright’s generalisation of the fork criterion. We then go on to review the results of the ‘Budapest school’ on the existence of formally defined screening­ off events for any correlation —by means of the ideas of probability space extensibility and (Reichenbachian common cause) completability. We distinguish the Budapest doctrine clearly from any of the classical conceptions, and thus present an overall framework for discussions of causal inference in quantum mechanics. We argue that this review is preliminary essential work for a thorough assessment of the conditions under which RCCP may be a reliable tool for causal inference in a genuinely probabilistic (indeterministic) context. (shrink)

This article suggests a revision of the theory of causal nets. In section 1 we introduce an axiomatization of TCN based on a realistic understanding. It is shown that the causal Markov condition entails three independent principles. In section 2 we analyze indeterministic decay as the major counterexample to one of these principles: screening off by common causes. We call SCC-violating common causes interactive causes. In section 3 we develop a revised version of TCN, (...) called TCN*, which accounts for interactive causes. It is shown that there are interactive causal models that admit of no faithful noninteractive reconstruction. (shrink)

A new etiological model is proposed for schizophrenia that combines variability‐enhancing nonspecific factors acting during development with more specific risk factors. This model is better suited than the current etiological models of schizophrenia, based on the risk factors paradigm, for predicting and/or explaining several important findings about schizophrenia: high co‐morbidity rates, low specificity of many risk factors, and persistence in the population of the associated genetic polymorphisms. Compared with similar models, e.g., de‐canalization, common psychopathology factor, sexual‐selection, or differential sensitivity (...) to the environment, this proposal is more general and integrative. Recently developed research methods have proven the existence of genetic and environmental factors that enhance developmental variability. Applying such methods to newly collected or already available data can allow for testing the hypotheses upon which this model is built. If validated, this model may change the understanding of the etiology of schizophrenia, the research models, and preventionbrk paradigms. (shrink)

Interactions between an intelligent software agent and a human user are ubiquitous in everyday situations such as access to information, entertainment, and purchases. In such interactions, the ISA mediates the user’s access to the content, or controls some other aspect of the user experience, and is not designed to be neutral about outcomes of user choices. Like human users, ISAs are driven by goals, make autonomous decisions, and can learn from experience. Using ideas from bounded rationality, we frame these interactions (...) as instances of an ISA whose reward depends on actions performed by the user. Such agents benefit by steering the user’s behaviour towards outcomes that maximise the ISA’s utility, which may or may not be aligned with that of the user. Video games, news recommendation aggregation engines, and fitness trackers can all be instances of this general case. Our analysis facilitates distinguishing various subcases of interaction, as well as second-order effects that might include the possibility for adaptive interfaces to induce behavioural addiction, and/or change in user belief. We present these types of interaction within a conceptual framework, and review current examples of persuasive technologies and the issues that arise from their use. We argue that the nature of the feedback commonly used by learning agents to update their models and subsequent decisions could steer the behaviour of human users away from what benefits them, and in a direction that can undermine autonomy and cause further disparity between actions and goals as exemplified by addictive and compulsive behaviour. We discuss some of the ethical, social and legal implications of this technology and argue that it can sometimes exploit and reinforce weaknesses in human beings. (shrink)

I argue that a phenotypic trait can be an adaptation to a particular environmental condition, as against others, only if the environmental condition and the phenotype interactively cause fitness. Models of interactive environmental causes of fitness generally require that environments be individuated by explicit representation rather than by measures of environmental quality, although the latter understanding of ‘environment’ is more prominent in the philosophy of biology. Hence, talk of adaptations to some but not other environmental conditions relies on (...) conceptions of ‘environment’ importantly different from that commonly presupposed in philosophy of biology. (shrink)

The question of the holistic structure of an organism is a recurring theme in the philosophy of biology and has been increasingly discussed again in recent years. Organisms have recently been described as complex systems that autonomously create, maintain and reproduce themselves while constantly interacting with their environment. Key focal points include their autopoiesis, autonomy, agency and teleological structure. This perspective marks a significant advancement from the 20th-century viewpoint, which predominantly saw organisms as genetically programmed, randomly generated and blindly selected (...) survival-machines. However, crucial questions about the shape and development of organisms still lack answers. Shape and development are deeply interconnected and seem to require a holistic approach. Here, I will briefly outline a phenomenological perspective which could provide a framework for seeking answers to these fundamental questions. In particular, I propose a common four-fold phenomenal structure of the developing organism and the cognising consciousness, which makes it possible to observe the agential and teleological structure of the organism "from within". This fourfold structure also describes the molecular level and thus provides a general organismic concept. It furthermore corresponds to the four Aristotelian "causes" (conditions). (shrink)

Is the common cause principle merely one of a set of useful heuristics for discovering causal relations, or is it rather a piece of heavy duty metaphysics, capable of grounding the direction of causation itself? Since the principle was introduced in Reichenbach’s groundbreaking work The Direction of Time (1956), there have been a series of attempts to pursue the latter program—to take the probabilistic relationships constitutive of the principle of the common cause and use them to ground the (...) direction of causation. These attempts have not all explicitly appealed to the principle as originally formulated; it has also appeared in the guise of independence conditions, counterfactual overdetermination, and, in the causal modelling literature, as the causal markov condition. In this paper, I identify a set of difficulties for grounding the asymmetry of causation on the principle and its descendents. The first difficulty, concerning what I call the vertical placement of causation, consists of a tension between considerations that drive towards the macroscopic scale, and considerations that drive towards the microscopic scale—the worry is that these considerations cannot both be comfortably accommodated. The second difficulty consists of a novel potential counterexample to the principle based on the familiar Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) correlations in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Against the background of the creation of an EU-wide frame of reference for private law relevant to the Common Market, this study, which was requested by the EU Commission, analyses the dovetailing between contract and tort law on the one hand, and between contract and property law on the other. The study examines the legal orders of almost all the Member States of the EU, illustrates the differences between contractual and non-contractual liability and evaluates the different systems of the (...) transfer of property, of movable and immovable securities as well as trust law. The study comes to the conclusion that the intensive considerations on the creation of a model-law in the area of European private law do not allow these thoughts to be limited to contract law. Such a limitation to the scope of the regarding of this area would probably cause more problems than it would solve, or at any rate not do justice to the needs of the Common Market. (shrink)

The common cause principle states that correlations have prior common causes which screen off those correlations. I argue that the common cause principle is false in many circumstances, some of which are very general. I then suggest that more restricted versions of the common cause principle might hold, and I prove such a restricted version.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In general, understanding requires cognitive and linguistic skills, encompasses cultural, social, contextual and individual aspects, and is characterised by gradualness and dynamicity. In this study, the intertwined set of relevant components involved in the complex process of understanding space deixis will be analysed in the specific context of face-to-face interaction. In everyday conversation, this process is unavoidably mutual and may include misunderstanding (which often opens up a way to understanding), repairs, reformulations and negotiation cycles, all of which eventually lead to (...) understanding and mutual comprehension or to communication failure. Many scholars have already pointed out several elements that influence interactants’ understanding in a positive or negative way: on the one hand, shared physical context, cotext, common ground, shared knowledge and avoidance devices; on the other, ambiguity, speakers’ failures, and interactants’ asymmetric features with regard to language and culture. The interactional context, the cotext and the use of multimodal resources (resorted to as co-speech or to substitute language) play a significant role in the dynamic process of understanding spatial deixis, often helping to overcome the difficulties related to peripheral cases of spatial deictics and other causes of misunderstandings, which can either work as a starting point for understanding or lead to communication failure. (shrink)

There is no EPR-like funny business if (contrary to apparent fact)our world is as indeterministic as you wish, but is free from theEPR-like quantum mechanical phenomena such as is sometimes described interms of superluminal causation or correlation between distant events.The theory of branching space-times can be used to sharpen thetheoretical dichotomy between EPR-like funny business and noEPR-like funny business. Belnap (2002) offered two analyses of thedichotomy, and proved them equivalent. This essay adds two more, bothconnected with Reichenbachs principle of the (...) common cause, theprinciple that sends us hunting for a common-causal explanation ofdistant correlations. The two previous ideas of funny business and thetwo ideas introduced in this essay are proved to be all equivalent,which increases ones confidence in the stability of (and helpfulnessof) the BST analysis of the dichotomy between EPR-like funny businessand its absence. (shrink)

A condition is formulated in terms of the probabilities of two pairs of correlated events in a classical probability space which is necessary for the two correlations to have a single (Reichenbachian) common-cause and it is shown that there exists pairs of correlated events probabilities of which violate the necessary condition. It is concluded that different correlations do not in general have a common common-cause. It is also shown that this conclusion remains valid even if one weakens (...) slightly Reichenbach's definition of common-cause. The significance of the difference between common-causes and common common-causes is emphasized from the perspective of Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

A partition $\{C_i\}_{i\in I}$ of a Boolean algebra Ω in a probability measure space (Ω, p) is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlation between a pair A,B of events in Ω if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement; the cardinality of the index set I is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any non-strict correlation in (Ω, p), and (...) given any finite natural number n > 2, the probability space (Ω,p) can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size n for the correlation. (shrink)

According to Reichenbach’s principle of common cause, positive statistical correlations for which no straightforward causal explanation is available should be explained by invoking the action of a hidden conjunctive common cause. Hofer-Szabó and Rédei’s notion of a Reichenbachian common cause system is meant to generalize Reichenbach’s conjunctive fork model to fit those cases in which two or more common causes cooperate in order to produce a positive statistical correlation. Such a generalization is proved to be (...) unsatisfactory in the light of a probabilistic conception of causation. Accordingly, an alternative model for systems of multiple common causes is offered, which is capable of emulating the explanatory efficacy of Reichenbachian common cause systems, while overcoming their major conceptual shortcomings at the same time. (shrink)

Russell (1948), Reichenbach (1956), and Salmon (1975, 1979) have argued that a fundamental principle of science and common sense is that "matching" events should not be chalked up to coincidence, but should be explained by postulating a common cause. Reichenbach and Salmon provided this intuitive idea with a probabilistic formulation, which Salmon used to argue for a version of scientific realism. Van Fraassen (1980, 1982) showed that the principle, so construed, runs afoul of certain results in quantum mechanics. (...) In this paper a new formulation of the principle is offered that emerges from its use in evolutionary theory. This characterization identifies fairly general conditions in which postulating common causes will be more explanatory than postulating separate causes. (shrink)

A partition $\{C_i\}_{i\in I}$ of a Boolean algebra $\cS$ in a probability measure space $(\cS,p)$ is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlated pair $A,B$ of events in $\cS$ if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement, the cardinality of the index set $I$ is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any correlation in $(\cS,p)$, and given any finite size $n>2$, (...) the probability space $(\cS,p)$ can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size $n$ for the correlation. It also is shown that every totally ordered subset in the partially ordered set of all partitions of \cS$ contains only one Reichenbachian common cause system. Some open problems concerning Reichenbachian common cause systems are formulated. (shrink)

My Ph.D. dissertation written under the supervision of Prof. Tomasz Placek at the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In one of its most basic and informal shapes, the principle of the common cause states that any surprising correlation between two factors which are believed not to directly influence one another is due to their common cause. Here we will be concerned with a version od this idea which possesses a purely probabilistic formulation. It was (...) introduced, in the form of a general principle, by Hans Reichenbach in his posthumously published book "The Direction of Time". The central notion of the principle in Reichenbach's formulation, and of the current essay, is that of screening off: two correlated events are screened off by a third event if conditioning on the third event makes them probabilistically independent. Reichenbach's principle marks also the beginning of a new field of philosophy: namely, that of ``probabilistic causality''. For the most part, the current essay can be seen as an effort at checking how far one can go with the purely statistical notions revolving around Reichenbach's idea of common cause. In short, the answer is ``surprisingly far''; in some classes of probability spaces all correlations between ``interesting'' events possess explanations of such sort. However, this fact lends itself to opposing interpretations; more on that in the conclusion. Chapters 6 and 7 contain mathematical results concerning these issues. The screening-off condition requires an equality of a probabilistic nature to hold; chapter 8 is a short discussion of slightly weakened versions of the condition, which hold if the sides of the above mentioned equality differ to a small degree. In chapter 2, after some mathematical preliminaries, we study the various formulations of the principle which might be said to stem from the original idea of Reichenbach. We also examine a few of the most salient counterarguments, which undermine at least some of the formulations. Chapter 3 is of a formal nature, dealing with various probabilistic notions which can be thought of as generalizations of Reichenbach's concept of common cause. The next chapter concerns the relationship between the idea of common causal explanation and the Bell inequalities. In chapter 5 we briefly present the form of Reichenbach's principle which can be found in the field of representing causal structures by means of directed acyclic graphs. (shrink)

A probability space is common cause closed if it contains a Reichenbachian common cause of every correlation in it and common cause incomplete otherwise. It is shown that a probability space is common cause incomplete if and only if it contains more than one atom and that every space is common cause completable. The implications of these results for Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle are discussed, and it is argued that the principle is only falsifiable (...) if conditions on the common cause are imposed that go beyond the requirements formulated by Reichenbach in the definition of common cause. (shrink)

An important distinction is that between selective abductions, which select an optimal candidate from given multitude of possible explanations, and creative abductions, which introduce new theoretical concepts and models. The article focuses on creative abductions, which are essential for scientific progress, although they are rarely discussed in the literature. Scientifically, fruitful creative abductions are demarcated from purely speculative abductions by means of three virtues which are possessed by the former but not by the latter: (i) providing unification, (ii) detecting (...) class='Hi'>common causes and (iii) generating novel predictions by means of which they can be independently tested. Based on historical examples it is demonstrated that common cause abduction from correlated dispositions is the fundamental abductive operation by which new theoretical concepts and models are scientifically generated. Statistical factor analysis can be regarded as a statistical generalization of common cause abduction. (shrink)

Suppose that two geysers, about one mile apart, erupt at irregular intervals, but usually erupt almost exactly at the same time. One would suspect that they come from a common source, or at least that there is a common cause of their eruptions. And this common cause surely acts before both eruptions take place. This idea, that simultaneous correlated events must have prior common causes, was first made precise by Hans Reichenbach (Reichenbach 1956). It can (...) be used to infer the existence of unobserved and unobservable events, and to infer causal relations from statistical relations. Unfortunately it does not appear to be universally valid, nor is there agreement as to the circumstances in which it is valid. (shrink)

The principle of the common cause demands that every pair of causally independent but statistically correlated events should be the effect of a common cause. This demand is often supplemented with the requirement that said cause should screen-off the two events from each other. This paper introduces a new probabilistic model for common causes, which generalises this requirement to include sets of distinct but non-disjoint causes. It is demonstrated that the model hereby proposed satisfies the (...) explanatory function generally attributed to common causes and an existential proof is offered. Finally, the model is compared to other known structures intended to perform a similar function, such as Reichenbachian Common Cause Systems and Bayesian Networks. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Some Common Cause vs. a Particular common Cause Type vs. Token Common Cause Information Preservation and the Inference of the Existence of Some Common Causes The Meaning of the Existence of Some Common Cause Likelihoods of the Variational Group given Common and Separate Causes Alternative Common Cause Hypotheses Bibliography.

Within the last decade, thousands of studies have described communication processes in and between organisms. Pragmatic philosophy of biology views communication processes as rule-governed sign-mediated interactions (rsi's). As sign-using individuals exhibit a relationship to following or not-following these rules, the rsi's of living individuals dier fundamentally from cause-and-effect reactions with and between non-living matter, which exclusively underlie natural laws. Umwelt thus becomes a term in investigating physiological influences on organisms that are not components of rsi's. Mitwelt is a term for (...) the investigation of all rsi's of organisms. Living organisms are never solus ipse subjects of semioses, but share common sets of rules and signs. Life depends decisively on symbiotic communities. Serial Endosymbiotic Theory proved that the evolution of the eukaryotic super-kingdom was a merger of anchestral bacteria. The integration of bacterial genomes into eukaryotic genomes was also a step from analog to symbolic genetic codes. Now we know, that so-called ‘junk DNA’ has higher order regulatory functions on genome architecture and protein coding DNA plays only the role of a structural vocabulary. (shrink)

One of us (Eells 1982) has defended traditional evidential decision theory against prima facie Newcomb counterexamples by assuming that a common cause forms a conjunctive fork with its joint effects. In this paper, the evidential theory is defended without this assumption. The suggested rationale shows that the theory's assumptions are not about the nature of causality, but about the nature of rational deliberation. These presuppositions are weak enough for the argument to count as a strong justification of the evidential (...) theory. (shrink)

We prove new results on common cause closedness of quantum probability spaces, where by a quantum probability space is meant the projection lattice of a non-commutative von Neumann algebra together with a countably additive probability measure on the lattice. Common cause closedness is the feature that for every correlation between a pair of commuting projections there exists in the lattice a third projection commuting with both of the correlated projections and which is a Reichenbachian common cause of (...) the correlation. The main result we prove is that a quantum probability space is common cause closed if and only if it has at most one measure theoretic atom. This result improves earlier ones published in [1]. The result is discussed from the perspective of status of the Common Cause Principle. Open problems on common cause closedness of general probability spaces (L, ϕ) are formulated, where L is an orthomodular bounded lattice and ϕ is a probability measure on L. (shrink)

The common cause principle says that every correlation is either due to a direct causal effect linking the correlated entities or is brought about by a third factor, a so-called common cause. The principle is of central importance in the philosophy of science, especially in causal explanation, causal modeling and in the foundations of quantum physics. Written for philosophers of science, physicists and statisticians, this book contributes to the debate over the validity of the common cause principle, (...) by proving results that bring to the surface the nature of explanation by common causes. It provides a technical and mathematically rigorous examination of the notion of common cause, providing an analysis not only in terms of classical probability measure spaces, which is typical in the available literature, but in quantum probability theory as well. The authors provide numerous open problems to further the debate and encourage future research in this field. (shrink)

The concept that alterated communications between the gut microbiome and the brain may play an important role in human brain disorders has recently received considerable attention. This is the result of provocative preclinical and some clinical evidence supporting early hypotheses about such communication in health and disease. Gastrointestinal symptoms are a common comorbidity in patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), even though the underlying mechanisms are largely unknown. In addition, alteration in the composition and metabolic products of the gut (...) microbiome has long been implicated as a possible causative mechanism contributing to ASD pathophysiology, and this hypothesis has been supported by several recently published evidence from rodent models of autism induced by prenatal insults to the mother. Recent evidence in one such model involving maternal infection, that is characterized by alterations in behavior, gut physiology, microbial composition, and related metabolite profile, suggests a possible benefit of probiotic treatment on several of the observed abnormal behaviors. (shrink)

Traditional, quantitative behavioral geneticists and developmental psychobiologists such as Gilbert Gottlieb have long debated what it would take to create a truly developmental behavioral genetics. These disputes have proven so intractable that disputants have repeatedly suggested that the problem rests on their opponents' conceptual confusion; whilst others have argued that the intractability results from the non-scientific, political motivations of their opponents. The authors provide a different explanation of the intractability of these debates. They show that the disputants have competing interpretations (...) of the concepts of reaction norm, genotype-environment interaction, and gene. The common thread that underlies each of these disagreements, the authors argue, is the relevance of potential variation that is not manifest in any actual population to the understanding of development. (shrink)

Despite the platitude that analytic philosophy is deeply concerned with language, philosophers of science have paid little attention to methodological issues that arise within historical linguistics. I broach this topic by arguing that many inferences in historical linguistics conform to Reichenbach's common cause principle (CCP). Although the scope of CCP is narrower than many have thought, inferences about the genealogies of languages are particularly apt for reconstruction using CCP. Quantitative approaches to language comparison are readily understood as methods for (...) detecting the correlations that serve as premises for common cause inferences, and potential sources of error in historical linguistics correspond to well-known limitations of CCP. (shrink)

We prove that under some technical assumptions on a general, non-classical probability space, the probability space is extendible into a larger probability space that is common cause closed in the sense of containing a common cause of every correlation between elements in the space. It is argued that the philosophical significance of this common cause completability result is that it allows the defence of the Common Cause Principle against certain attempts of falsification. Some open problems concerning (...) possible strengthening of the common cause completability result are formulated. (shrink)

The common cause principle states that common causes produce correlations amongst their effects, but that common effects do not produce correlations amongst their causes. I claim that this principle, as explicated in terms of probabilistic relations, is false in classical statistical mechanics. Indeterminism in the form of stationary Markov processes rather than quantum mechanics is found to be a possible saviour of the principle. In addition I argue that if causation is to be explicated in (...) terms of probabilities, then it should be done in terms of probabilistic relations which are invariant under changes of initial distributions. Such relations can also give rise to an asymmetric cause-effect relationship which always runs forwards in time. (shrink)

It is common to note that social environment and cultural formation shape mental disorders. The details of this claim are, however, not well understood. The paper takes a look at the claim that culture has an impact on psychiatry from the perspective of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Its aim is to offer, in a general fashion, partial explications of some significant versions of the thesis that culture and social environment shape mental disorders and to highlight some of (...) the consequences social constructionism about psychiatry has for psychiatric explanation. In particular, it will be argued that the alleged dependence of facts about particular mental disorders and about the second order property of being a mental disorder on social facts amounts to a robust form of constructivism, whereas the view that clinician–patient interaction is influenced by cultural facts is perfectly compatible with an anti-constructivist stance. (shrink)

Europeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in _The Common Cause_, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism—an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of (...) moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antifascist practices devoted to ordinariness and abnegation that ranged from doomed mutinies in the Indian military to Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual discipline. Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought and offers it to us as a key to democracy’s future. In doing so, she defends democracy as a shared art of living on the other side of perfection and mounts a postcolonial appeal for an ethics of becoming common. (shrink)

The principle of the common cause claims that if an improbable coincidence has occurred, there must exist a common cause. This is generally taken to mean that positive correlations between non-causally related events should disappear when conditioning on the action of some underlying common cause. The extended interpretation of the principle, by contrast, urges that common causes should be called for in order to explain positive deviations between the estimated correlation of two events and the (...) expected value of their correlation. The aim of this paper is to provide the extended reading of the principle with a general probabilistic model, capturing the simultaneous action of a system of multiple common causes. To this end, two distinct models are elaborated, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence are determined. (shrink)

Standard derivations of the Bell inequalities assume a common common cause system that is a common screener-off for all correlations and some additional assumptions concerning locality and no-conspiracy. In a recent paper (Grasshoff et al., 2005) Bell inequalities have been derived via separate common causes assuming perfect correlations between the events. In the paper it will be shown that the assumptions of this separate-common-cause-type derivation of the Bell inequalities in the case of perfect correlations (...) can be reduced to the assumptions of common-common-cause-system-type derivation. However, in the case of non-perfect correlations a non-reducible separate-common-cause-type derivation of some Bell-like inequalities can be given. The violation of these Bell-like inequalities proves Szabó's (2000) conjecture concerning the non-existence of a local, non-conspiratorial, separate-common-cause-model for a delta δ-neighborhood of perfect EPR correlations. (shrink)

In this paper we give a positive answer to a problem posed by Hofer-Szabó and Rédei (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 43:1819–1826, 2004) regarding the existence of infinite Reichenbachian common cause systems (RCCSs). An example of a countably infinite RCCS is presented. It is also determined that no RCCSs of greater cardinality exist.

This article aims to analyze the scope and limits of common cause abduction which is a version of explanatory abduction based on Hans Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause. First, it is argued that common cause abduction can be regarded as a rational inferential mechanism that enables us to accept hypotheses that aim to account for the surprising correlations of events. Three arguments are presented in support of common cause abduction: the argument from screening-off, the argument (...) from likelihood, and the argument from simplicity. Second, it is claimed, that common cause abduction is a defeasible reasoning, i.e., common cause abductive hypotheses are not always more plausible than separate cause abductive hypotheses. Finally, it is outlined what factors should be taken into account in order to use common cause abduction in a reasonable way. (shrink)

Reichenbach's principles of a probabilistic common cause of probabilistic correlations is formulated in terms of relativistic quantum field theory, and the problem is raised whether correlations in relativistic quantum field theory between events represented by projections in local observable algebrasA(V1) andA(V2) pertaining to spacelike separated spacetime regions V1 and V2 can be explained by finding a probabilistic common cause of the correlation in Reichenbach's sense. While this problem remains open, it is shown that if all superluminal correlations predicted (...) by the vacuum state between events inA(V1) andA(V2) have a genuinely probabilistic common cause, then the local algebrasA(V1) andA(V2) must be statistically independent in the sense of C*-independence. (shrink)

In the paper it will be shown that Reichenbach’s Weak Common Cause Principle is not valid in algebraic quantum field theory with locally finite degrees of freedom in general. Namely, for any pair of projections A, B supported in spacelike separated double cones ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ , respectively, a correlating state can be given for which there is no nontrivial common cause (system) located in the union of the backward light cones of ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ and commuting with (...) the both A and B. Since noncommuting common cause solutions are presented in these states the abandonment of commutativity can modulate this result: noncommutative Common Cause Principles might survive in these models. (shrink)

Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle is the claim that if two events are correlated, then either there is a causal connection between the correlated events that is responsible for the correlation or there is a third event, a so called common cause, which brings about the correlation. The paper reviews some results concerning Reichenbach’s notion of common cause, results that are directly relevant to the problem of how one can falsify Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle. Special emphasis will (...) be put on the question of whether EPR-type correlations can have an explanation in terms of Reichenbachian common causes. Most of the results to be recalled indicate that falsifying Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle is much more tricky than one may have thought and that, contrary to some claims in the literature, there is no conclusive proof yet that the EPR correlations predicted by ordinary, non-relativistic quantum mechanics cannot have a common cause; furthermore, recent results about possible Reichenbachian common causes of correlations predicted by quantum field states between spacelike separated local observable algebras in algebraic quantum field theory strongly indicate that there may very well exist Reichenbachian common causes of superluminal correlations predicted by quantum field theory. (shrink)

The principle of the common cause, which gets its justification from the miracle arguments, probably constitutes the best reason for being a scientific realist. However, results in quantum mechanics steming from the work of Bell raise difficulties which anti-realists have been quick to seize. The author tries to overcome the problem and save scientific realism by reformulating the principle of the common cause so that a distinction is made between a priori and a posteriori correlations.

The principle of common cause asserts that positive correlations between causally unrelated events ought to be explained through the action of some shared causal factors. Reichenbachian common cause systems are probabilistic structures aimed at accounting for cases where correlations of the aforesaid sort cannot be explained through the action of a single common cause. The existence of Reichenbachian common cause systems of arbitrary finite size for each pair of non-causally correlated events was allegedly demonstrated by Hofer-Szabó (...) and Rédei in 2006. This paper shows that their proof is logically deficient, and we propose an improved proof. (shrink)

According to the traditional view of the causal structure of a coincidence, the several parts of a coincidence are produced by independent causes. I argue that the traditional view is mistaken; even the several parts of a coincidence may have a common cause. This has important implications for how we think about the relationship between causation and causal explanation—and in particular, for why coincidences cannot be explained.

This paper argues that Aquinas and other scholastic theologians offer unexpected resources for a moral theology that is fully engaged with today’s pluralistic societies. In order to do so, it is necessary to bring Aquinas into a conversation with these diverse perspectives, rather than treating his thought as a closed system, and to extend his insights through original, constructive analysis.

It is shown that, given any finite set of pairs of random events in a Boolean algebra which are correlated with respect to a fixed probability measure on the algebra, the algebra can be extended in such a way that the extension contains events that can be regarded as common causes of the correlations in the sense of Reichenbach's definition of common cause. It is shown, further, that, given any quantum probability space and any set of commuting (...) events in it which are correlated with respect to a fixed quantum state, the quantum probability space can be extended in such a way that the extension contains common causes of all the selected correlations, where common cause is again taken in the sense of Reichenbach's definition. It is argued that these results very strongly restrict the possible ways of disproving Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

This article advances our understanding of the well-documented trade-off between welfare and prisons by analyzing US congressional hearings on welfare and criminal justice policies in two periods: the “Great Society” of 1961–67 and the “neoliberal” era of 1981–96. Comparing policymakers’ conceptions about the causes of poverty and crime, about poor and criminal populations, and about the proper role of government, the findings show that conceptions across policy domains are similar in each period and have changed in similar ways over (...) time. These changes correspond to markedly different policy responses to poverty and crime in the two periods, favoring welfare over prisons in the earlier period and prisons over welfare in the later period. The article discusses the implications for an understanding of the punitive turn in public policies, for theories of social control, and for research on the role of ideas in policymaking. (shrink)