Can we say that C causes E if and only if C raises the probability of E?

Hardly a day passes without yet another claim of some causal discovery. Asbestos causes cancer, some vaccines cause autism and exposure to classical music causes cows to produce better milk. Undoubtedly, the level of empirical support is variable from one case to another. Nevertheless, we are comfortable with less than a 100% rate of confirmation. After all, not everyone exposed to asbestos develops cancer. This raises a theoretical point: does it make sense to say that C causes E if this is taken to mean only that C raises the probability of E occurring? In this essay, I argue that it does not, in three main steps. First, I point out general problems surrounding the notion of cause. Second I show that causation does not necessarily entail raised probabilities of effects. Third, I hold that raised probabilities do not necessarily entail causation. C causes E As will become apparent throughout the course of the essay, there is an ordinary intuition of causation that seems to hold over and above attempts to reduce it to the language of probability. However, before moving to the problems that beset both arms of the biconditional if and only if, let us focus on the idea of causality tout court. What do we mean when we say C causes E? One answer would be to say that C is necessary for the occurrence of E (e.g. the presence of two fighters for the existence of a boxing match). Of course, it is not always the case that wherever there are two fighters there is also a match going on. Consequently, there is a different sense in which C causes E is understood as referring to sufficiency (e.g. The lit match in the gas tank caused the car to explode). Finally, there can be a conjunction of the two, whereby a cause is understood as both necessary and sufficient (e.g. Being of legal age caused him to be sold alcohol). Thus, we see that cause can be usually interpreted in at least three different senses. Moreover, to further muddle the waters, it can be seen that necessary and sufficient causes do not exist in isolation, but depend on a set of background conditions being met. For example, the lit match results in an explosion only if there is enough oxygen and gas in the tank. However, this creates another problem: in many cases we cannot definitively say what is to be relegated to the background and what is to be interpreted as the cause. After all, we can say that epilepsy causes seizures in people exposed to strobe lights, or that light causes seizures in people with epilepsy. Thus, in addition to the overall problem of

what type of causation is implied, folk usage raises questions regarding what counts as a cause and when it counts as such. Humean, all too Humean Apart from the ambiguities mentioned above, there is yet a deeper level of confusion involved in our general usage of cause. Hume is famous for having pointed this out, so it is only fitting that we follow his discussion. In the Enquiry concerning human understanding, the objects of human reason are separated into relations of ideas and matters of fact.1 Relations of ideas refer to those affirmations whose truthfulness depends on the operations of thought, and not the confirmation of experience (e.g. 2x3=10-4). Conversely, matters of fact are those issues that cannot be settled without empirical verification. For example, one cannot deduce that fire is hot to touch, one must experience this. Consequently, Hume asks, what kind of empirical support justifies our causal statements concerning matters of fact? After all, all our possible evidence for saying that C causes E can at best amount to so far, all observed instances of C have been followed by E (in similar circumstances). This, however, is different from All (observed and unobserved) Cs have been followed by Es and even more different from All Cs will be followed by Es. Thus, there is an inductive jump2 required in passing from our experience of Es following Cs to maintaining there is some causal relation between the two. This difficulty, Hume further claims, is insuperable: there is no way to prove that our future experience will resemble our past experience, given that we can only rely on past experience. At any point, it is possible that the empirical laws that we take for granted might change. Moreover, even if we could somehow prove that the future will generally resemble the past (as Kant attempts in the Transcendental Deduction and the Second Analogy in the Critique of Pure Reason) our hands would still be tied, insofar as any particular causal law could still be subject to doubt. In sum, not only is our usage of causality rather confused (as seen in the previous section), it is also essentially unjustified. This is a crucial conclusion, and it will also undermine the legitimacy of probabilistic causation, to which we now turn. If We have seen that Hume interprets causality in terms of effects regularly following from their causes. Let us now consider a probabilistic reading of causality. On this view, C causes E if and only if C raises the probability of E. Now, the first thing to
1
2

D. Hume, Enquiry concerning human understanding , Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996, IV, I, 20 A. J. Ayer, Probability and Evidence, Macmillan, 1972, p. 24

note is that Humes problem applies a fortiori here. If empirical certainty (based on all observed instances) cannot ground causality, how could a mere probability justify our usage of the word?3 After all, the Trojan horse of disconfirmation is already inside our theoretical city, once we admit that the probability is less than 100%. Nonetheless, let us leave Hume aside for now, and investigate the alleged interdependence between causation and raised probabilities. This section shall focus on the direct implication, from causation to raised probability, and the next one will look at the reverse. To say that the probabilities are raised is to say that P(E|C) > P (E) (the probability of the effect happening, knowing the cause is present, is greater than the probability of the effect happening without knowing anything about the presence of the cause). Alternatively, this is the same as saying that P(E|C) > P(E|~C)4 (the probability of the effect happening, knowing the cause is present, is greater than the probability of the effect happening, absent the cause). Intuitively, this does ring true. For example, the probability of smelling smoke, given that I see something burning is higher than the probability of smelling smoke given that I can see nothing burning, since the first type of cases are far more numerous than the second type. Nonetheless, despite the intuitive plausibility, it cannot be said that the relationship holds in all cases when we say C causes E. Consider the following scenario (originally due to Wesley Salmon): an atom can decay into another atom in two ways: it can first decay into atom 2 and then further decay into atom 4, or it can first go to atom 3, and then to 4. The probabilities attached to these paths are as follows: P(2|1) = P(3|1) = 0.5; P (4|2) = 0.1; P(4|3) = 1 (i.e. there is a half-half probability that the atom will decay into either atom 2 or 3; there is a 0.1 chance that atom 2 will decay to atom 4; and there is certainty [probability 1] that atom 3 will decay to atom 4). Now, we can say that the decay from 1 to 2 caused the production of atom 4. However, the probability of the effect appearing, given this cause (P(4|2)) is smaller than the probability of the effect appearing, absent the cause (P(4|3)), since 0.1 < 1. Thus, contrary to our initial thesis, we have a case in which a causes lowers the probability of the effects. Perhaps, however, one might wish to challenge this conclusion. Nevertheless, we shall follow Phil Dowes discussion5 of why such attempts are bound to fail. Broadly
3 4

Of course, we can express certainty as a probability (=1), but this is not crucial here. see N. Cartwright, Causal Laws and Effective Strategies, Nos, 13: 419437 5 Phil Dowe Chance-lowering causes, in Dowe and Noordhof (eds.) Cause and Chance. Causation in an Indeterministic World, Routledge, 2003, pp 32-34.

speaking, one strategy would be to try to argue that our analytic grid is too coarse, i.e. that by fully specifying all the relevant factors about the causes and effects, the probability would be raised, not lowered. Now, given that atomic decay can occur spontaneously, through quantum tunnelling, by specifying the probability of decay we have taken into account all the relevant information regarding the cause. Maybe, then, it is the effect that is too broadly interpreted. Indeed, if we restrict our definition of effect to reaching atom 4 via 2, then the presence of the cause (atom 1 decaying into atom 2) will raise the probability of the effect from 0 (had the atom decayed to 3) to 0.1. However, Dowe has offered a modified version of this example, where this strategy does not work.6 A different counterargument would try to find intermediate stages of causation, such that the probability might indeed be lowered between the start and end points, while it would still be raised from one step of the chain to the next. However, we can again modify the example, specifying the two decays occurring in successive instances of time (which is assumed to be discrete). Thus, by default, there would be no way to interpolate any other causal stage. To sum up, we can see that C causing E does not entail C raising the probability of E. Only if Let us now move to the reverse implication. On this view, to say that the probability of C raises the probability of E entails that C causes E. In this form, however, this is simply not true. For example, one might note a positive correlation between eating healthy and having an expensive car. Thus, the probability of owning a car will be increased by the probability of eating healthy. Are we to say that eating healthy causes one to have expensive cars? No, for we can trace both to a common cause, e.g. income: wealthier people tend to eat healthier food, and they also tend to have expensive cars. Hans Reichenbach has attempted to meet this difficulty with his notion of screening off. Thus, income would be said to screen off healthy eating because the probability of owning an expensive car given that one is wealthy and eats healthy is (roughly) the same as the probability of owning a car given that one is wealthy. Thus, he offered a principle of the common cause:

Ibid, p. 33

If variables A and B are probabilistically dependent then one causes the other or there is a set U of common causes *+ which screen off A and B, i.e. render them probabilistically independent7 This, however, is insufficient. As Williamson noted, Reichenbachs principle is oversimplifying, reducing all probabilistic dependencies to causal claims. Yet these variables may be related logically (when assigning a value to A logically implies assigning a value to B), mathematically (e.g. mean and variance variables, which are related through an equation), semantically etc. One might also be faced with purely accidental probabilistic relationships, such as the positive correlation between British bread prices and the Venetian sea level.8 We thus see that the mere existence of a probabilistic relationship is no guarantee of causation, since there can be many intervening factors driving the results. Alternatively, one might try to further specify the situation, holding all other intervening factors constant, apart from the potential cause under consideration (Nancy Cartwright offers an argument in this vein 9). However, in a sense, this only amounts to saying that C causes E if C increases the probability of E and other causes have been accounted for. Such a definition is clearly circular, bringing us back to the point that mere probabilities cannot bear the weight of a causal edifice on their own. Conclusion All in all, the notion of causality is, I believe, hopelessly muddled. First, we have noted the imprecisions in our ordinary usage of the word. Moving far beyond this lexical level of confusion, Hume has shown that any empirical statement of causality is fundamentally groundless. Turning to a probabilistic interpretation, we see that causality and probability-raising are not equivalent, given that some cases of (what we tend to interpret as) causation lower the probabilities of their effects and some cases of raised probabilities do not involve causation. One can only be left wondering, paradoxically, to what causes do we owe such a problematic conception of cause. Iancu S. Daramus

Jon Williamson Probabilistic theories, in Beebee, Hitchcock & Menzies (eds.) - Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press, 2006 p. 186 8 Ibid, pp. 186-187 9 Cartwright, op. cit.