Causal Premises Research Articles

The evolution of moral belief: support for the debunker's causal premise.

The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker's case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion(s). Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature has been that the causal premise is likely false due to the seemingly persuasive evidence that our moral beliefs are in fact not the result of natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Specifically, I advocate the Innate Biases Model, which contends that there is not only compelling evidence for an evolved cognitive capacity for acquiring norms but also for the existence of an evolutionarily instilled set of cognitive biases that make it either more or less likely that we adopt certain moral beliefs.

Deny the Kalam’s Causal Principle, Embrace Absurdity

One objection against the kalam is that while the standard arguments for its causal premise (everything that begins to exist has a cause) apply to things in the universe, they do not apply to the universe itself. Thus, universes could come into existence uncaused from nothing. This objection, however, creates a situation where an absurd universe is as likely to come into existence uncaused as a normal universe is. This then generates serious skepticism about the reliability of our cognitive faculties, the truth of our sensory inputs, and our past knowledge, thus creating a reductio ad absurdum against the objection.

Mental Models, Meta-Narratives, and Solution Pathways Associated With Socio-Hydrological Risk and Response in Mexico City

Cities are far more than the people who reside within them, the activities that drive urban dynamism, and hard and soft infrastructure that create urban structure and form. Cities are also composed of stories -- narratives -- that emerge from the experiences, ideas, knowledge and agendas of urban residents, administrators, and individuals with stakes in the city’s future. These narratives collectively not only reflect how the material landscape is perceived and socially and culturally appropriated, but also, by motivating and rationalizing human actions, contribute to shaping that material world, including the behavior and attitudes of humans within it. Here, we explore the narratives and associated solution pathways that have emerged and consolidated around the issue of water scarcity and flooding in the megalopolis of Mexico City. Effective and sustainable management of water resources has long been considered essential to the city’s future, yet many scholars consider the city “stuck” in path-dependent development trajectories that seems unable to address pervasive social inequity, infrastructure fragility, and the city’s precarious supplies. Through mental model data elicited from qualitative interviews and workshops with a cross section of urban stakeholders, we identify dominant narratives that articulate distinct causal premises and consequences associated with water related risk in the city. We juxtapose these narratives with the current and proposed solution pathways proposed by the interviewees. Our analysis demonstrates how, on the one hand, dominant narratives may quell innovation, and on the other, narratives collectively can foster the seeds of urban sustainability transformation.

Reasoning from an incompatibility: False dilemma fallacies and content effects.

In the present studies, we investigated inferences from an incompatibility statement. Starting with two propositions that cannot be true at the same time, these inferences consist of deducing the falsity of one from the truth of the other or deducing the truth of one from the falsity of the other. Inferences of this latter form are relevant to human reasoning since they are the formal equivalent of a discourse manipulation called the false dilemma fallacy, often used in politics and advertising in order to force a choice between two selected options. Based on research on content-related variability in conditional reasoning, we predicted that content would have an impact on how reasoners treat incompatibility inferences. Like conditional inferences, they present two invalid forms for which the logical response is one of uncertainty. We predicted that participants would endorse a smaller proportion of the invalid incompatibility inferences when more counterexamples are available. In Study 1, we found the predicted pattern using causal premises translated into incompatibility statements with many and few counterexamples. In Study 2A, we replicated the content effects found in Study 1, but with premises for which the incompatibility statement is a non-causal relation between classes. These results suggest that the tendency to fall into the false dilemma fallacy is modulated by the background knowledge of the reasoner. They also provide additional evidence on the link between semantic information retrieval and deduction.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION AND FOLK THEISTIC BELIEF

AbstractCognitive scientists of religion promise to lay bare the cognitive mechanisms that generate religious beliefs in human beings. Defenders of the debunking argument believe that the cognitive mechanisms studied in this field pose a threat to folk theism. A number of influential responses to the debunking argument rely on making two sets of distinctions: (1) proximate/ultimate explanations and (2) specific/general religious beliefs. I argue, however, that such responses have drawbacks and do not make room for folk theism. I suggest that a detour through the literature in the philosophy of mind regarding the problem of mental causation regarding nonreductive physicalism can provide a way for preserving folk theism without doing violence to the way cognitive science of religion is being practiced today. More specifically, I believe there is a way of responding to the debunking argument that does not require a rejection of the causal premise.

Outcome Evidencing

This article describes the development and use of a rapid evaluation approach to meet program accountability and learning requirements in a research for development program operating in five developing countries. The method identifies clusters of outcomes, both expected and unexpected, happening within areas of change. In a workshop, change agents describe the causal connections within outcome clusters to identify outcome trajectories for subsequent verification. Comparing verified outcome trajectories with existing program theory allows program staff to question underlying causal premises and adapt accordingly. The method can be used for one-off evaluations that seek to understand whether, how, and why program interventions are working. Repeated cycles of outcome evidencing can build a case for program contribution over time that can be evaluated as part of any future impact assessment of the program or parts of it.

In the beginning stages: Conditional reasoning with category based and causal premises in 8- to 10- year olds

Understanding the development of conditional (if-then) reasoning is critical for theoretical and educational reasons. Previous results have shown that there is a clear qualitative transition between reasoning with true causal conditionals and reasoning with either with contrary-to-fact and fully abstract premises. We examine the further idea that there is a similar developmental transition between reasoning with category-based premises (If an animal is a dog, then it has a tail) and with familiar causal conditionals (If a rock is thrown at a window, then the window will break). A total of 585 students between 8 and 10 years of age received priming conditions designed to encourage use of an alternatives generation strategy and reasoning problems with category based premises and causal premises in a counterbalanced order (with many or few potential alternatives). Results show that reasoning with category based premises is less difficult than reasoning with causal premises, at all ages, and that reasoning first with causal premises causes a global decrease in logical reasoning compared to reasoning first with category based premises. However, no effect of priming was observed. Results support the idea that there is a transition in the reasoning processes in this age range associated with the nature of the alternatives generation process required for logical reasoning with category based and with causal conditionals. However, this transition is less qualitatively extreme than that between reasoning with familiar premises and reasoning with premises that have no empirical basis.

On the road toward formal reasoning: Reasoning with factual causal and contrary-to-fact causal premises during early adolescence

Understanding the development of conditional (if–then) reasoning is critical for theoretical and educational reasons. Here we examined the hypothesis that there is a developmental transition between reasoning with true and contrary-to-fact (CF) causal conditionals. A total of 535 students between 11 and 14years of age received priming conditions designed to encourage use of either a true or CF alternatives generation strategy and reasoning problems with true causal and CF causal premises (with counterbalanced order). Results show that priming had no effect on reasoning with true causal premises. By contrast, priming with CF alternatives significantly improved logical reasoning with CF premises. Analysis of the effect of order showed that reasoning with CF premises reduced logical responding among younger students but had no effect among older students. Results support the idea that there is a transition in the reasoning processes in this age range associated with the nature of the alternatives generation process required for logical reasoning with true and CF causal conditionals.

Training interpretation biases among individuals with symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder

The current study tested the causal premise underlying cognitive models of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that negative interpretations of intrusive thoughts lead to the distress and impairment associated with symptoms of OCD. Specifically, we sought to determine: (a) whether it was possible to train healthier (defined as more benign/less threatening) interpretations regarding the significance of intrusive thoughts; and (b) whether there was a link between modifying negative interpretations and subsequent emotional vulnerability to an OC stressor. A nonclinical sample of students high in OC symptoms completed either a Positive (n = 50) or Neutral (n = 50) interpretation training procedure designed to alter OC-relevant interpretations and beliefs. As expected, participants in the Positive (versus Neutral) training condition endorsed healthier OC-relevant interpretations and beliefs following training. Additionally, when controlling for baseline affect, participants in the Positive (versus Neutral) training condition reported less negative affect during the OC-stressor task (at the level of a non-significant trend) and reported less desire to perform neutralizing activities. In general, results provide some support for cognitive models of obsessions and suggest that negative interpretations of intrusive thoughts may be causally related to symptoms of OCD.

Modifying interpretations among individuals high in anxiety sensitivity

To examine the causal relationship between cognitive biases and anxiety, a bias modification paradigm was used to reduce negative interpretation biases in participants with high anxiety sensitivity (AS). Participants ( N = 75) were assigned to a Positive training condition or to one of two Control conditions (Neutral or No training). During training, participants imagined themselves in ambiguous scenarios related to AS. Positive training required participants to resolve the scenarios’ ambiguity positively and was hypothesized to result in more positive and less negative subsequent interpretations related to AS, fewer self-reported AS symptoms, and less emotional vulnerability on AS stressors (compared to the Control conditions). As expected, Positive training shifted interpretations of novel scenarios and self-reported AS symptoms in the anticipated direction. Evidence was mixed for the effect of Positive training on emotional vulnerability (small effect for less fear, but not for avoidance). Findings support the causal premise underlying cognitive models of anxiety.

Is inferential reasoning just probabilistic reasoning in disguise?

Oaksford, Chater, and Larkin (2000) have suggested that people actually use everyday probabilistic reasoning when making deductive inferences. In two studies, we explicitly compared probabilistic and deductive reasoning with identical if-then conditional premises with concrete content. In the first, adults were given causal premises with one strongly associated antecedent and were asked to make standard deductive inferences or to judge the probabilities of conclusions. In the second, reasoners were given scenarios presenting a causal relation with zero to three potential alternative antecedents. The participants responded to each set of problems under both deductive and probabilistic instructions. The results show that deductive and probabilistic inferences are not isomorphic. Probabilistic inferences can model deductive responses only using a limited, very high threshold model, which is equivalent to a simple retrieval model. These results provide a clearer understanding of the relations between probabilistic and deductive inferences and the limitations of trying to consider these two forms of inference as having a single underlying process.

Conditional reasoning with causal premises: Evidence for a retrieval model

This study examined the hypothesis that a key process in conditional reasoning with concrete premises involves on-line retrieval of information about potential alternate antecedents. Participants were asked to solve reasoning problems with causal conditional premises (If cause P then effect Q). These premises were inserted into short contexts. The availability of potential alternatives was varied from one context to another by adding statements that explicitly invalidated one or more of these alternatives (i.e., other causes that lead to the effect (Q). The invalidated alternatives differed in the degree of their semantic association to the consequent term (Q). The results show that the effect of invalidating one or more potential alternatives on the two uncertain logical forms, AC and DA, was largely determined by their relative associative strength. These results strongly support a model for conditional reasoning with causal premises that supposes that a key element in responding to the uncertain logical forms is on-line retrieval of at least one potential alternative antecedent.

Efficiency of retrieval correlates with “logical” reasoning from causal conditional premises

In two experiments, we examined the prediction that there should be a relation between the speed with which subjects can retrieve potential causes for given effects and their reasoning with causal conditional premises (if cause P, then effect Q). It was also predicted that when subjects are given effects for which there exists a single strongly associated cause, speed of retrieval of a second potential cause should be particularly related to reasoning with invalid logical forms--namely, affirmation of the consequent and denial of the antecedent. In the first experiment, 49 university students were given both retrieval tasks and conditional reasoning problems. The results were generally consistent with the predictions. The second experiment, involving 57 university students, replicated the first, with some methodological variations. The results were also consistent with the predictions. An analysis of the combined results of the two experiments indicated that individual differences in efficiency of retrieval of information from long-term memory did predict performance on the invalid logical forms in the predicted ways. These results strongly support a retrieval model for conditional reasoning with causal premises.

Developmental and Content Effects in Reasoning with Causal Conditionals

Two predictions derived from Markovits and Barrouillet's (2001) developmental model of conditional reasoning were tested in a study in which 72 twelve-year-olds, 80 fifteen-year-olds, and 104 adults received a paper-and-pencil test of conditional reasoning with causal premises (“if cause P then effect Q”). First, we predicted that conditional premises would induce more correct uncertainty responses to the Affirmation of the consequent and Denial of the antecedent forms when the antecedent term is weakly associated to the consequent than when the two are strongly associated and that this effect would decrease with age. Second, uncertainty responding to the Denial of the antecedent form (“P is not true”) should be easier when the formulation of the minor premise invites retrieval of alternate antecedents (“if something other than P is true”). The results were consistent with the hypotheses and indicate the importance of retrieval processes in understanding developmental patterns in conditional reasoning with familiar premises.

Conditional reasoning, causality, and the structure of semantic memory: strength of association as a predictive factor for content effects

Available evidence indicates that responses to conditional inferences using concrete causal premises is affected by the relative number of available alternate causes (Cummins, D.D., 1995. Memory and Cognition 23 (5), 646–658). We propose that another important factor that may influence the kinds of inferences made to causal conditionals is the relative strength of association between such causes and the consequent term. We present a study with adult participants that examines the effect of strength of association on performance on a conditional reasoning task using causal premises for which there exist one highly associated potential cause for the given consequent term. We predicted that adults would produce a greater proportion of biconditional responses to invalid forms with strongly associated premises than weakly associated ones, while valid forms would not be affected by strength of association. The results are consistent with this hypothesis.

The Development of Conditional Reasoning and the Structure of Semantic Memory

The present article examines 2 predictions concerning conditional reasoning in children derived from a revised version of Markovits's model of conditional reasoning. The first study examined the prediction that younger children (8 years of age) would have greater difficulty in responding correctly to premises where the antecedent was strongly associated with the consequent than to premises where the association was weaker; for example, "If something is a car, then it has a motor" should be more difficult than "If something is a refrigerator, then it has a motor." A total of 55 children in grades 2 and 3 (average age: 8 years) and 49 children in grades 5 and 6 (average age: 11 years) were given either 2 strongly associated problems or weakly associated counterparts. Results indicated that 8-year-olds did better on the weakly associated problems than on the strongly associated problems, but there was no difference among the 11-year-olds. The second study examined the prediction that younger children (8 years of age) would have greater difficulty in responding correctly to causal premises ("If a rock is thrown at a window, the window will break") than to corresponding ad hoc premises ("A rock is something that can be used to break a window"). A total of 53 children in grades 2 and 3 (average age: 8 years) and 49 children in grades 5 and 6 (average age: 11 years) were given either 2 causal problems or ad hoc counterparts. Results indicated that 8-year-old did better on the ad hoc problems than on the causal problems, but there was no difference among the 11-year-olds. These studies are interpreted as consistent with the idea that 1 major factor in the development of reasoning in this age level is the development of children's ability to explore their own knowledge base.

The Development of Conditional Reasoning and the Structure of Semantic Memory

The present article examines 2 predictions concerning conditional reasoning in children derived from a revised version of Markovits's model of conditional reasoning. The first study examined the prediction that younger children (8 years of age) would have greater difficulty in responding correctly to premises where the antecedent was strongly associated with the consequent than to premises where the association was weaker; for example, “If something is a car, then it has a motor” should be more difficult than “If something is a refrigerator, then it has a motor.” A total of 55 children in grades 2 and 3 (average age: 8 years) and 49 children in grades 5 and 6 (average age: 11 years) were given either 2 strongly associated problems or weakly associated counterparts. Results indicated that 8-year-olds did better on the weakly associated problems than on the strongly associated problems, but there was no difference among the 11-year-olds. The second study examined the prediction that younger children (8 years of age) would have greater difficulty in responding correctly to causal premises (“If a rock is thrown at a window, the window will break”) than to corresponding ad hoc premises (“A rock is something that can be used to break a window”). A total of 53 children in grades 2 and 3 (average age: 8 years) and 49 children in grades 5 and 6 (average age: 11 years) were given either 2 causal problems or ad hoc counterparts. Results indicated that 8-year-olds did better on the ad hoc problems than on the causal problems, but there was no difference among the 11-year-olds. These studies are interpreted as consistent with the idea that 1 major factor in the development of reasoning in this age level is the development of children's ability to explore their own knowledge base.

Hume's Conditions for Causation: Further to Gray and Imlay

119. HUME'S CONDITIONS FOR' CAUSATION: FURTHER TO GRAY AND IMLAY As part of his second proof of the existence of God, Descartes in Meditations III argues a causal premise derived from the nature of time. He argues it follows from the nature of time "that, in order to be conserved in each moment in which it endures, a substance has need of the same power and action as would be necessary to produce and create it anew, supposing it did not yet exist; so that the light of nature shows us clearly that the distinction between creation and conservation is solely a distinction of reason." The nature of time to which he refers allows only a finite divisibility into durationless moments, each of which is entirely independent of every other. In the ultimate analysis , nothing true of one moment is deducible from what is true of any other, even what happens to be eternally true. The doctrine of the creation of the eternal verities is of a piece with this conception of time, and following with it from the conception of the divinity as sheer omnipotence, points to Hume's view that experience is the only guide to the world. It would seem to be Descartes' view, that nothing at a given time can stand in the necessary relation it must have to be a cause of something at another time; or, only something outside time can be a cause, for whose operation things in time can serve as but occasions. To what extent this dialectic in fact led to later occasionalist views is an historical question we need not consider. My only suggestion here concerns Hume's réponse to the occasionalists . With all but psychological necessity eliminated from his analysis of causation, Hume effectively argues the familiar case that occasional causes are the only causes by arguing the finite divisibility of time. In the literature only Laporte has held that for Descartes time is infinitely divisible and in this sense continuous. The separability of the parts of time, he 120. thought, suffice for their independence and contingency. But if time is continuous, its parts are inseparable; as Gueroult correctly observes, by discontinuity is meant con2 tingence, independence and separability. In addition, if a moment had duration, light would not be propagated instant aneously, thus according to Descartes upsetting his entire 3 physics. Gueroult maintains, rather, that Descartes' view of time is determined by his view of motion. Whatever the historical and logical priorities, there clearly is a connection between the above and what Bergson called the cinematographic conception of motion as a succession of static objects. It is a conception that precludes events as such. Motion occurs only in time, never at the moment, and occurs as a result of the re-creation of matter with regularly differing spatial relations. Due to metaphysical consideration expressed in theological terms, especially with reference to the immutability and simplicity of divine ways, this recreation of matter is constrained in certain ways, some of which we pick out as conditions for what was later called occasional causation. Put very simply, only what is constantly conjoined can stand in this relation; and that there should be instances of constant conjunction follows from the metaphysical considerations. With Hume's elimination of these metaphysical considerations, the status of the conditions , which he takes over as conditions for causation simpliciter, becomes problematic. But a recent challenge to Hume's program is still more problematic. The contention is that there is a case in which Hume's conditions necessary fo constant conjunction cannot all be satisfied. Even worse, i is a case in which his analysis ought to be conspicuously successful, viz. collision, which Hume like Descartes con4 ceives in cinematographic terms. The aim of this paper is to show that Hume's analysis stands against the challenge. Consider the following diagram which illustrates the positions (A3, A_...) of two balls (x,y) at successive moments (t_, t.,...)· 121. A3 A2 A1 A B -B1 B2 B3 fc0 T T T ©© © G®©T©T h fc3 fc4 fc5 H Robert Gray's thesis is that in at least one case of causation, collision which results in...

Developing Marketing Strategy through Multiple Regression

The author used the terminology that certain variables explain the behavior of certain other variables. Thus, he used the results of his correlation study to select marketing strategy based on an implicit causal premise. Instead, the philosophy should be one of recognizing that an association exists and of selecting a strategy to take advantage of that association. Note, however, that no implication of causation is made. All that is required is pragmatic action based on analysis of existing associations.