Origins III :: Intervention, Time and Physics
Sydney, 19-21 July 2006
Timetable : Abstracts : Venue : Registration : Accommodation : Transport : Enquiries
Themes
This is the third workshop in the series The Origins
and Functions of Causal Thinking, and will focus on the topic
'Intervention, Time and Physics'. Issues to be discussed will
include:
- Origins and nature of interventionist concept. What
is nature of the concept of an intervention into a system? Where does
the concept have its origins? Is it necessarily tied to our experience
as agents acting in the world?
- Interventionism and use of causal notions in physics.
Does interventionism tell us anything interesting about causal and
counterfactual reasoning in physics?
- Interventionism and time-asymmetry. What are the
relations between interventionism, the issue of causal and
counterfactual asymmetry, and the physics of time asymmetry?
- Interventionism and other causal concepts. Can
interventionism explain features of causal concepts such as the
concepts of counterfactuals, laws, capacities and causal influence?
- Interventionism and realism. To what extent is
interventionism committed to subjectivism or anti-realism about
causation? Are these commitments problematic?
- Causation and context. In what ways is the causal
concept context-dependent? Does this have any implications for
interventionism?"
This workshop will be followed by a conference on Time and Consciousness, organised jointly with the Centre for Consciousness at ANU; the sessions on Friday 21 July are intended to provide an overlap between the two meetings. Details of the Time and Consciousness conference are available here.
Provisional timetable
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Wednesday 19 July |
Thursday 20 July |
Friday 21 July |
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9:30 - 11:00 |
9:30 - 11:00 |
9:30 - 11:00 |
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Morning Tea |
Morning Tea |
Morning Tea |
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11:30 - 1:00 |
11:30 - 1:00 |
11:30 - 1:00 |
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Lunch |
Lunch |
Lunch |
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2:30 - 4:00 |
2:30 - 4:00 |
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Afternoon Tea |
Afternoon Tea |
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4:30 - 6:00 Chris Hitchcock |
4:30 - 6:00 |
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Abstracts
The
Difference Between Buses and Trams
Jenann Ismael
and Huw Price (University
of Sydney)
Tram drivers know where their vehicles are bound, and don't have to
decide to take them there, rather than somewhere else; the tramlines
take care of it. Bus drivers know where their vehicles are headed, too,
but without the benefit of the rails. In this talk we explain how this
difference offers both bad news and good for bus drivers. It make them
less noble, less god-like creatures than their tram-driving cousins,
for their epistemic perspective is necessarily degenerate in
comparison; but degeneracy sets them free.
We propose that this discursion on public transport throws
important new light on the foundations of interventionist causation:
roughly, it suggests that the causal perspective is an inevitable
by-product of an epistemic degeneracy.
Two
Varieties of Causal Anti-Realism
Brad Weslake
(University of Sydney)
Agency theories of causation have often been criticised for
not being sufficiently realist about causation. In my view recent
agency theories have not been dialectically effective in addressing
this charge. On the one hand there are those such as Huw Price and
Peter Menzies, who have appealed to analogies with mind-dependent
properties such as secondary qualities (Menzies and Price) and
perspectives (Price), have emphasised the experience of agency, and
have aimed for reductionòencouraging (despite their disavowals) the
view that the agency theory amounts to a kind of subjectivism. On the
other hand there are those such as Judea Pearl and Jim Woodward, who in
reaction have distanced themselves completely from the centrality of
agency (Pearl), or who have sought refuge in non-reductionism, hoping
the question of realism can thereby be evaded (Woodward). In this paper
I describe a minimal agency view of causation, and place it with
respect to issues of realism and anti-realism. I argue that it is
confusion over two forms of anti-realism, encouraged by inessential
aspects of the mind-dependent analogies, that has seen Pearl and
Woodward shy away from endorsing the anti-realist elements in the
agency theory.
Elusive
Causation
Cei
Maslen (Victoria University, Wellington)
David Lewis claimed that knowledge is elusive. "That is how knowledge is elusive. Examine it, and straightway it vanishes..." He argued that epistemology robs us of our knowledge: "Maybe epistemology is the culprit. Maybe the extraordinary pastime robs us of our knowledge. Maybe we do know a lot in daily life; but maybe when we look hard at our knowledge it goes away."
The aim of this paper is to answer the question: might causation be elusive in a similar sense to that in which knowledge has been claimed to be elusive? Might there be pastimes that rob us of causation too? I will argue for a contextual account of causation and present detailed mechanisms for fixing truth values from the context.
Folk
Physics, Intervention and the Concept of Cause
Chris
Hitchcock (California Institute of Technology)
Our interventions in
the world are guided by our folk physical theories of how the world
works. For example, we know that we can move an object by pushing it
with a stick, but not by pushing it with a rope. Nothing could seem
more natural. Yet recent research on primates suggests that this kind
of reasoning is far from trivial. Making use of an account of
theoretical concepts due to Hempel and Carnap, I argue that one of the
central roles of our concept of cause is to mediate inferences between
interventions and folk physical theories.
Entropy,
Interventions and Causation
Mathias
Frisch (University of Maryland)
Possible connections between thermodynamics and the causal asymmetry.
Causal
Asymmetry and Culpability
Doug
Kutach (Brown University)
In developing an adequate explanation for causal asymmetry it is
important to distinguish two importantly different applications of the
concept of causation. One role for causation is in prediction.
Knowledge of causal generalities allows us to predict how likely
various effects will follow, given some alleged cause. In this
prediction-permitting role, facts about causation can be empirically
checked, e.g. whether this particular planetary probe will land on
Venus. Another role for causation is assigning culpability for certain
facts, i.e. the chunks of physical stuff that are responsible for the
effect occurring. Although we humans sometimes have strong intuitions
about how causal responsibility is properly allocated, there is no
independent or objective check on whether our intuitions are correct.
The asymmetry presumably present in manipulation, influence, and
control involve a mixture of both roles. I will try to sort out what
the distinction means for our understanding of causal asymmetry.
Causation
and Reductive Explanation
Richard
Corry (University of Tasmania)
One of the most powerful tools in science is the method of
reductive explanation, where we explain the behaviour of a complex
system in terms of the behaviour of the parts from which it is
composed. In order to employ this method we observe the behaviour of
the parts in isolation and use this information to tell us how the
parts will contribute the behaviour of the whole. Clearly then,
the method assumes that something in what we learn when we observe the
parts in isolation remains true when the parts are part of a larger
whole. In particular, since all but the most trivial complex systems
will involve causal interactions between their component parts, we must
assume that something about these causal relations remains constant
from one situation to another. Nancy Cartwright points out that we
certainly donÇt assume that it is the behaviour of the parts that
remains constant from one situation to another. Not only would such an
assumption be false, it would trivialise the notion of reduction.
Standard analyses of science try to avoid this kind of problem by
turning their attention from actual behaviour to laws of nature,
dispositions, and counterfactual truths. But we will see that these
approaches cannot make sense of reductive explanation either: the facts
they point to will either not remain constant from one situation to
another, or else they will be useless in predicting the behaviour of
complex systems. In response to this kind of problem Cartwright
introduces the notion of a causal capacity and suggests that it is a
systemÇs capacities that remain constant from one situation to another.
However, I will argue that although Cartwright is on the right track,
when it comes to understanding reductive explanation, her notion of
capacities is no better off than the standard analyses it was set to
replace. I will argue that what is assumed to be constant in reductive
explanation are component causal influences. These influences sit
somewhere between CartwrightÇs capacities on the one hand and the
dispositions and counterfactuals that appear in standard analyses on
the other. I finish by considering whether standard counterfactual,
interventionist, or agency analyses of causation have the
resources available to make sense of these component causal influences.
If they do not, then it would seem that they cannot capture a
notion of causation that is fundamental to scientific practice.
[back to timetable]
Intervention
and Contrastivity
Jonathan
Schaffer (University of Massachusetts)
Jim Woodward has suggested that that interventionism presupposes a
conception of causation that is contrastive for both cause and effect.
I will discuss the extent to which contrastivity is presupposed in the
notions of intervention and causation.
Time
is the Simplest (and Strongest) Thing
Craig Callender
(University of California, San Diego)
What is the difference between time and space? This paper
proposes an answer: the temporal direction is that direction on the
manifold of events in which our best theories can tell the strongest,
most informative "stories." Put another way, time is that
direction in which our theories can obtain as much determinism as
possible. I make two arguments. The first is a general one
defending the idea that strength determines what is temporal. The
second is a more specific technical illustration of the first:
understanding 'strength' as having a well-posed Cauchy problem, I show
that for a wide class of equations, namely, linear second-order partial
differential equations, the desire for strength does indeed distinguish
the temporal direction. After assessing how general the second
argument is, the paper explores the ramifications of this theory for
various problems in the philosophy of time.
Nonlocal
causation in Maxwell theory
Steven Weinstein
(University of Waterloo)
Maxwell's equations were the inspiration for special relativity and the
principle of relativistic "causality", whereby spacelike-separated
events are understood to be causally independent. In this talk, I
will show that one of Maxwell's equations actually implies a form of
nonlocal causation - causation between what are nominally causally
independent events - and show that this sort of causation, while not
susceptible to an interventionist or counterfactual analysis, is
crucial for many everyday attributions of causal connectedness.
Venue
The conference will be held at historic Tusculum mansion, 3 Manning St, Potts Point. (Manning St can be seen in the centre of this map. Tusculum is the square-shaped property just south of the double-n in "Manning".)
Registration
Full-fee registration is $50, or $70 for both this meeting and Time and Consciousness, provided you register by Thursday 13 July 2006. An additional late registration fee of $10 applies to all registrations received after that date. Student/unwaged registration is $20 (which covers both meetings) or $30 for late registrations. Registration includes morning and afternoon refreshments.
To register, simply download this form and follow the instructions.
(Speakers at either meeting get free registration at both.)
Accommodation
A limited number of rooms at the Macleay Apartments have been reserved for conference attendees and are available at the special conference rate of $125 per night. These are within (very) easy walking distance of the conference. (Please contact John Cusbert at john.cusbert@gmail.com if you would like to make a booking.)
There is also plenty of other accommodation in Potts Point and
Kings Cross, within walking distance of the conference. Listed below
are some options. For those on a very tight budget, there are also
numerous backpacker's hostels on Victoria Street.
Other options |
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Challis Lodge |
$55 per night for a single room (shared bathroom) Stay seven nights for the price of five!
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Holiday Lodge Hotel |
$55-$100 per night for a single room
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Victoria Court Hotel |
Rates on enquiry
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Transport
The best way to get around downtown Sydney is on foot or via public transport. The conference venue and the accommodation listed on this site are all within a 5-10 minute walk from Kings Cross railway station.
From the Airport
You can catch a train from the Airport to Kings Cross station, though you will need to change trains at Central station. The train fare from the Airport is $10. A taxi from the Airport to Potts Point costs about $28. There are also regular shuttle buses from the airport to accomodation in Potts Point. "Kingsford Smith Airport Bus Service" runs one such service, which costs around $8 per person and departs from outside the arrival hall every half hour. There is no need to make a booking.
Parking
Streetside parking is very limited in this area. Listed below are some commercial parking lots within 5-10 minutes walk from the conference venue. Parking charges are around $13 per day.
Kings Cross Car Park Pty Ltd
Ward Ave Kings Cross NSW 2011
ph: (02) 9358 5000
Bayswater Parking Station
33 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross NSW 2011
ph: (02) 9357 7343
Enacon Parking
Cathedral St Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
ph: (02) 9380 8850
Enquiries
Please direct all enquiries to John Cusbert at the following
email address:
john.cusbert@gmail.com