Modeling interventions in multi-level causal systems: supervenience, exclusion and underdetermination

Abstract

This paper explores some issues concerning how we should think about interventions (in the sense of unconfounded manipulations) of "upper-level" variables in contexts in which these supervene on but are not identical with lower-level realizers. It is argued that we should reject the demand that interventions on upper-level variables must leave their lower-level realizers unchanged– a requirement that within an interventionist framework would imply that upper-level variables are causally inert. Instead an intervention on an upper-level variable at the same time changes its lower-level realizer in a way that is consistent with the change in the upper- level variable. The lower-level realizer should not be regarded as a potential "confounder" of upper-level causal relations, as in "exclusionist" arguments. Several proposals for making this precise are considered and several pro-exclusionist arguments are criticized.