Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Lars P. Syll — In search of causality


Causality is one of the fundamental problems in philosophy, covering epistemology, philosophy of language, semiotics, and philosophy of science. Since causality is the basis of explanation, it applies to all aspects of understanding and theorizing, as Aristotle pointed out in his Metaphysics millennia ago. Yet, there is still no complete understanding of causality that would end controversy.

There many interrogatives — who, what, when, where, how and why, for example. Description involves the facts — what what, when, where, how much and how long, etc. Explanation involves means and ends — "how" (Greek techné) and "why" (telos).

Natural science deals chiefly with the how. "Speculation" deals with the why. Aristotle opined that all speculation begins with wonder. The Greek word for "speculate" that Aristotle uses is theorein. The root is theo which means god, or divine. Speculation is contemplative rather than active. It involves reflection on experience.

An archaic English term for "to speculate" is "to divine." It means to discern the inner workings. We see the sun rise and set and still speak of the "sunrise" and "sunset," but now we know that the sun is not actually moving at all; the rotational movement of the earth is "causing" the experience.

What we wonder about is a "puzzle" to us. The Greek term is aporia. The root means "impasse." This "causes" us to speculate about how and why in search of an explanation as a "theory."

In ancient time, most of the answers to such foundational questions involved supernatural causes expressed in myths, which were largely anthropomorphisms about natural forces. At the time of the Axial Age, interest shifted toward intellectual (logical) reasoning in place of myth as storytelling became less satisfying intellectually.

Aristotle was the first person in the West to systematize knowledge largely in the form that it has been handed down through the centuries in the West. He understood that a requirement for gaining true knowledge (epistemé) through inquiry was to understand reasoning, so he wrote books on logic as a prerequisite.

Aristotle was also understood that knowledge of the world comes through the senses and so he emphasized the role of observation in gaining knowledge. He was particularly interested in biology as a science understood as theory based on observation rather than storytelling.

Aristotle also recognized the existence of foundational issues that "come before," or are "meta," as we say even today. These are properly the issues for intellectual inquiry, which we still call "philosophy." meaning love of wisdom. Here the Greek term sophia means speculative wisdom rather than practical wisdom. Speculative wisdom is concerned with the way, while practical wisdom is concerned with the how.

Aristotle seems to have gotten off on the wrong foot in some instances, but overall the paradigm of knowledge he set forth still holds sway in the West. In fact, Aristotelianism is now making a comeback.

Today, we are still arguing about causality, what counts as causal explanation, and the degree to such ultimate explanation is possible given bounded rationality.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
In search of causality
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

11 comments:

Clint Ballinger said...

Laws + Initial Conditions. [antecedent conditions at times; and boundary conditions matter].

The problem is, laws got all the attention. Everyone forgot about initial conditions

https://www.academia.edu/450987/Initial_Conditions_as_Exogenous_Factors_in_Spatial_Explanation

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Causality in economics
Comment on Lars Syll on ‘In search of causality’

Lars Syll summarizes: “In a time when scientific relativism is expanding, it is important to keep up the claim for not reducing science to a pure discursive level. We have to maintain the Enlightenment tradition of thinking of reality as principally independent of our views of it and of the main task of science as studying the structure of this reality. Perhaps the most important contribution a researcher can make is revealing what this reality that is the object of science actually looks like. Science is made possible by the fact that there are structures that are durable and are independent of our knowledge or beliefs about them.”

These structures (invariances in Nozick’s terminology) relate to the economic system and NOT to economic behavior. Hence, the lethal methodological blunder consists of thinking of economics as a social science instead of a system science.#1 The blunder started with Adam Smith and this explains why economists have achieved nothing of scientific value in the past 200+ years. Economics is a cargo cult science; economists have misspecified their subject matter from the very beginning.#2

The heterodox economist Lars Syll is no exception and part of the wholesale failure.

Systemic laws are invariances much like physical laws but do not entail the physicists’ notion of causality. So, the concept of causality has to be redefined for the economic system. There is no use to turn to philosophy and to seek help with Aristotle.

The elementary version of the economic system is formally given with the First Economic Law as shown on Wikimedia.#3

As it stands, the Law as a whole is causality-free. The systemic causality consists in the fact that if one variable is altered the others must change such that the equation is satisfied. However, it is NOT predetermined which of the other variables is altered and to what extent. The First Economic Law is an invariance with undetermined multiple inner causalities.

In order to establish a simple unidirectional causality, it is necessary that two of the four variables are fixed by the policymaker. So if, for example, rhoE and rhoX are fixed and rhoD is changed, then the change of rhoF is causally determined with absolute precision by the systemic interrelations. The problem is that the four ratios rhoF, rhoE, rhoX, rhoD consist, in turn, of multiple variables, rhoF, for example, is given as quotient of wage rate W, price P and productivity R, i.e rhoF=W/PR. This multiplies the number of variables to be controlled.

So, causality in economics is real but consists of undetermined multiple inner systemic causalities. As far as the required number of variables can be controlled, a politically defined causality can be established. Without knowledge of the systemic laws, this is impossible.

It holds: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

To this day, neither orthodox nor heterodox economists have more to offer than common sense blather.#4, #5

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Economics is NOT a science of behavior (III)
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2015/12/economics-is-not-science-of-behavior.html

#2 The economics Cargo Cult Prize
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-economics-cargo-cult-prize.html

#3 Wikimedia, First Economic Law
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC06b.png

#4 The Law of Economists’ Increasing Stupidity
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-law-of-economists-increasing.html

#5 Brief history of soapbox economics
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/11/brief-history-of-soapbox-economics.html

Clint Ballinger said...

"To this day, neither orthodox nor heterodox economists have more to offer than common sense blather"
You are nothing BUT blather Egghead! You have never once been able to say a single thing your "genius" system means for anything. Nothing but hot-air and your own weird delusions of mattering at all. I've asked before: 1 paragraph, no links, no formulas: what would your "system" imply should be done to make wellbeing higher?

Matt Franko said...

“Aristotelianism is now making a comeback.”

Its Aristotle vs Plato all over again ie It’s empiricism vs the dialectic .... ie it’s Christ vs anti Christ... ie authority vs libertarianism (anti authority) ie creationism vs evolutionism ...

Dialectic in Philosophy context is Satanism in Scriptural context... with Satanism being over dramaticized by Christendumb...

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Clint Ballinger

You ask “… what would your ‘system’ imply should be done to make wellbeing higher?”

The axiomatically correct economic theory implies that the well-being of humanity is greatly increased if all stupid/corrupt political agenda pushers are expelled from economics. Draining the economic swamp is the precondition for scientific progress and should be done immediately. Scientific progress is, as everybody remembers from the Neanderthal, the only way to increase the physical and cultural well-being of humanity.

Political, religious, psychological, sociological, and philosophical blather has produced nothing positive throughout human history.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Unknown said...

I can't but agree with Clint Ballinger on the so called 'comments' with which E K-H pollutes this and other blog sites. E K-H is a troll. He should be banned.

S400 said...

“Political, religious, psychological, sociological, and philosophical blather has produced nothing positive throughout human history.”

EHK is a very lonely person...

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Lars Syll

What has become of Lars Syll? He writes: “I can’t but agree with Clint Ballinger on the so called ‘comments’ with which E.K-H pollutes this and other blog sites. E.K-H is a troll. He should be banned.”

What has become of the man who does not get tired of praising unconquerable freedom fighters on his own blog site?#1

What has become of the man whose evening prayer is Rosa Luxemburg’s “Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

What has become of the tireless fighter for pluralism in economics?#2, #3

What has become of the man who has been refuted on all counts with regard to Keynesianism, Post-Keynesianism, and methodology?#4

What has become of the man who has quietly censored/manipulated his own blog site for a long time?#5

This good and honest man now forgets himself and desperately demands that E.K-H is banned from Mike Norman Economics.

In fact, nothing has changed. Behind the idealistic kitsch, Lars Syll has always been a scientifically incompetent political agenda pusher.#6

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Nelson Mandela — the captain of my soul
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/nelson-mandela-the-captain-of-my-soul/

Nelson Mandela In Memoriam
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/nelson-mandela-in-memoriam/

The captain of an unconquerable soul
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/the-captain-of-an-unconquerable-soul/

An unconquerable soul
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/an-unconquerable-soul/

Edward Snowden — unbroken and unconquerable
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/edward-snowden-unbroken-and-unconquerable/

Unbroken and unconquerable
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/unbroken-and-unconquerable/

For my unconquerable soul
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/for-my-unconquerable-soul/

#2 Heterodoxy and pluralism in economics
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/heterodoxy-and-pluralism-in-economics/

#3 On the importance of pluralism
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/on-the-importance-of-pluralism-2/

#4 Kalecki and Keynes: The double macroeconomic false start
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/11/kalecki-and-keynes-double-macroeconomic.html

#5 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Lars Syll’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-lars-sylls-spam.html

#6 Feynman Integrity, fake science, and the econoblogosphere
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/05/feynman-integrity-fake-science-and.html

Clint Ballinger said...

I have mentioned here before, in some ways he is ahead of mainstream economists - He embodies what they say they want (axiomatically correct). His "work" is probably significantly less harmful than theirs is. If they did what they say they want to do, (not what they actually do) they would end up with stuff much like his

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Clint Ballinger

Again: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

Neither you nor Lars Syll has the true economic theory. You do not even get the elementary mathematics that underlies macroeconomics right. You have not produced one tiny bit of sound economics.

Next time you board an airplane with the expectation to land safely at a distant place be aware that this is possible due to the work of scientists/engineers and not to political, religious, psychological, sociological, and philosophical blather and certainly not to the brain-dead agenda pushing of stupid/corrupt economists since Smith/Marx.

Your and Lars Syll’s contribution to the welfare of humanity is less than zero.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

S400 said...

Next time Egmont Kakarot-Handke board an airplane with the expectation to land safely at a distant place be aware that this is possible due to the work of scientists/engineers and NOT Egmont Kakarot-Handtke and his theories which to this day has produce nothing of value.
In fact Egmont Kakarot-Handtke blathering has a cost, that is a energy cost.

That makes Egmont Kakarot-Handtke contribution to humanity less than zero.