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

Mike Steiner — Causes in Real Life – How Organizations Perform a Root Cause Analyses (RCA)

Not a priority but of interest if for those who want to know more about how organizations deal with causation by analyzing the concrete in terms of the abstract. 

This is related to what Hegel called "concrete universal, and Marx defined as "concrete abstraction." This is the basis of the dialect for Hegel and Marx's adoption and adaptation of it.

A Philosopher's Take
Causes in Real Life – How Organizations Perform a Root Cause Analyses (RCA)

Mike Steiner | Strategic Initiative Specialist at TransCanada

Brian Romanchuk — Money Demand Has Very Little To Do With Recessions

One often encounters assertions that recessions are the result of an excess demand for money (or some variant), based on various equilibrium arguments. Although one could superficially interpret recessions in such a fashion, the issue is that this interpretation does not help analyse the business cycle. In other words, it is a non-falsifiable statement that offers no useful information. In my view, discussions involving "money" or "safe assets" provide us an example regarding the limited usefulness of mainstream economic theory for business cycle analysis.

Bond Economics
Money Demand Has Very Little To Do With Recessions
Brian Romanchuk

Daniel Little — Social science or social studies?

This list of legitimate objects of empirical study in the social world, resulting in legitimate and evidence-based knowledge and explanation, can certainly be extended. And if being scientific means no more than conducting analysis of empirical phenomena based on observation, evidence, and causal inquiry, then we can reasonably say that it is possible to take a scientific attitude towards empirical problems like these.

But the hard question is whether there is more to social science than a fairly miscellaneous set of results that have emerged through study of questions like these. In particular, the natural sciences have aspired to formulating fundamental general theories that serve to systematize wide ranges of natural phenomena -- the theory of universal gravitation or the theory of evolution through natural selection, for example. The goal is to reduce the heterogeneity and diversity of natural phenomena to a few general theoretical hypotheses about the underlying reality of the natural world.

Are general theories like these possible in the social realm?….

Here is one possible answer to the question posed above, consistent with the points made here. Yes, social science is possible. But what social science consists in is an irreducible and pluralistic family of research methods, observations, explanatory hypotheses, and mid-level theories that permit only limited prediction and that cannot in principle serve to unify the social realm under a single set of theoretical hypotheses. There are no grand unifying theories in the social realm, only an open-ended set of theories of the middle range that can be used to probe and explain the social facts we can uncover through social and historical research.

In fact, to the extent that the ideas of contingency, heterogeneity, plasticity, and conjuncturality play the important role in the social world that I believe they do, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there are very narrow limits to the degree to which we can aspire to systematic or theoretical explanation in the social realm. And this in turn suggests that we might better describe social inquiry as a set of discrete and diverse social studies rather than unified "social science". We might think of the domain of social knowledge better in analogy to the contents of a large and diverse tool box than in analogy to an orrery that predicts the "motions" of social structures over time.

Understanding Society
Social science or social studies?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

Daniel Little — Why emergence?

Little argues that emergence is unnecessary to evoke in order to avoid reductionism, methodological individualism, and microfoundations. There is reason to hold that causal explanation stems from the macro (system) level as well as the meso (institutions, sub-systems) level, in addition to the micro (individual) level.

Understanding Society
Why emergence?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

Daniel Little — Causal concepts

Summary of causation in social science, with link to paper, "Causal Explanation in Social Science" by Daniel Little (1995). Little also wrote a book on social causation entitled, Varieties of Social Explanation.

Understanding Society
Causal concepts
Daniel Little | Chancellor, University of Michigan at Dearborn

See also Little's "Current issues in causation research"