Causal Regularities Research Articles

Historical Kinds in the Social World

This paper makes a distinction between ahistorical causal-functional kinds and historical kinds, which include both type- and token-historical kinds, some of which are “copied kinds.” After showing how these distinctions play out in various social sciences, a number of reasons are put forward for the historical individuation of some social kinds. As in the natural sciences, historical individuation in the social sciences can enable us to infer common causes, explain synchronic causal properties, and discover exceptions to causal regularities, among other epistemic aims.

Between Global History and Microhistory: Rethinking Histories of “Small Spaces” and Cities

AbstractHow can historians of “small spaces” and cities focus on local events and issues and at the same time carry on conversations with peers in a disciplinary mode marked by the spatial expansiveness of global history, on one hand, and a focus on objects and individuals of microhistory on the other? At stake here are key questions connected with the intellectual value of place-based knowledge and detailed single-site historical case studies. I argue that as long as we are caught between the positivist idea that causal regularity and time-place independence of explanatory mechanisms are the hallmark of theory, and the postmodernist resistance to generalizations, histories of cities and other small spaces will suffer from “defanged empiricism.” This problem is particularly debilitating for non-global histories of small spaces and cities of the global South, which often “do not travel well.” Is there a way out? I argue that a critical engagement with the stratified ontologies of critical realism— in particular, a version that I call “soft critical realism”—and Charles Tilly’s “deep order” can enable historians of small spaces and cities to re-situate their research at the heart and center of social theory, and simultaneously strike a better balance between attention to local details, the narrative form, and engagement with larger processes, concepts, and theories. Finally, I concretize the discussion by offering the example of how my own research on late colonial and early postcolonial Calcutta has benefitted from this approach.

A New Minimality Condition for Boolean Accounts of Causal Regularities

A New Minimality Condition for Boolean Accounts of Causal Regularities

Capability Development in Infrequent Organizational Processes: Unveiling the Interplay of Heuristics and Causal Knowledge

AbstractWe investigated the role of heuristics in decision‐making in infrequent and heterogeneous organizational processes. In our multiple‐case study, we tracked individual managers' knowledge, how managers collectively articulated and codified knowledge, and how they used it in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decision‐making. We developed a process model that explains (a) the evolution and the interplay between heuristics and causal knowledge and (b) the implications of these processes for decision‐making. More precisely, we found that some managers possessed and used rough heuristics – heuristics developed via limited or non‐existent firsthand experience. Because rough heuristics were often faulty, they led to errors if used in a different context. In contrast, other managers possessed and used causal knowledge – knowledge explaining causal regularities in the environment. Causal knowledge was associated with higher quality decision‐making and better performance in subsequent acquisitions. The problem that our focal companies faced was that causal knowledge often evaporated during attempts at collective articulation and codification, causing the conversion of causal knowledge into rough heuristics. We contribute to the organizational heuristics literature by improving our understanding of the role of heuristics in infrequent and heterogeneous organizational processes. At a more general level, we contribute to the capabilities development literature by identifying three paths that capabilities development can take. We also offer important implications for managers.

Miraculous, magical, or mundane? The development of beliefs about stories with divine, magical, or realistic causation.

Children's naïve theories about causal regularities enable them to differentiate factual narratives describing real events and characters from fictional narratives describing made-up events and characters (Corriveau, Kim, Schwalen, & Harris, Cognition 113 (2): 213-225, 2009). But what happens when children are consistently presented with accounts of miraculous and causally impossible events as real occurrences? Previous research has shown that preschoolers with consistent exposure to religious teaching tend to systematically judge characters involved in fantastical or religious events as real (Corriveau et al., Cognitive Science, 39 (2), 353-382, 2015; Davoodi et al., Developmental Psychology, 52 (2), 221, 2016). In the current study, we extended this line of work by asking about the scope of the impact of religious exposure on children's reality judgments. Specifically, we asked whether this effect is domain-general or domain-specific. We tested children in Iran, where regular exposure to uniform religious beliefs might influence children's reasoning about possibility in non-religious domains, in addition to the domain of religion. Children with no or minimal schooling (5- to 6-year-olds) and older elementary school students (9- to 10-year-olds) judged the reality status of different kinds of stories, notably realistic, unusual (but nonetheless realistic), religious, and magical stories. We found that while younger children were not systematic in their judgments, older children often judged religious stories as real but rarely judged magical stories as real. This developmental pattern suggests that the impact of religious exposure on children's reality judgments does not extend beyond their reasoning about divine intervention. Children's justifications for their reality judgments provided further support for this domain-specific influence of religious teaching.

The role of mechanism knowledge in singular causation judgments

Singular causation queries (e.g., “Did Mary's taking contraceptives cause her thrombosis?”) are ubiquitous in everyday life and crucial in many professional disciplines, such as medicine or law. Knowledge about general causal regularities is necessary but not sufficient for establishing a singular causation relation because it is possible that co-occurrences consistent with known regularities are in an individual case still just coincidental. Thus, further cues are helpful to establish a singular causation relation. In the present research we focus on information about mechanisms as a potent cue. While previous studies have shown that reasoners consider mechanism information as important when it comes to answering singular causation queries, no formal model has been proposed that explains why this is case. We here present a computational model that explains how causal mechanism information affects singular causation judgments. We also use the model to identify conditions that restrict the utility of mechanism information. We report three experiments testing the implications of our formal analysis. In Experiment 1 we found that reasoners systematically use mechanism information, largely in accordance with our formal model, although we also discovered that some people seem to rely on simpler, computationally less demanding reasoning strategies. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that reasoners have a tentative understanding of the conditions that restrict the utility of causal mechanism information.

Children's Ideas About What Can Really Happen: The Impact of Age and Religious Background.

Five- to 11-year-old U.S. children, from either a religious or secular background, judged whether story events could really happen. There were four different types of stories: magical stories violating ordinary causal regularities; religious stories also violating ordinary causal regularities but via a divine agent; unusual stories not violating ordinary causal regularities but with an improbable event; and realistic stories not violating ordinary causal regularities and with no improbable event. Overall, children were less likely to judge that religious and magical stories could really happen than unusual and realistic stories although religious children were more likely than secular children to judge that religious stories could really happen. Irrespective of background, children frequently invoked causal regularities in justifying their judgments. Thus, in justifying their conclusion that a story could really happen, children often invoked a causal regularity, whereas in justifying their conclusion that a story could not really happen, they often pointed to the violation of causal regularity. Overall, the findings show that children appraise the likelihood of story events actually happening in light of their beliefs about causal regularities. A religious upbringing does not impact the frequency with which children invoke causal regularities in judging what can happen, even if it does impact the type of causal factors that children endorse.

Free Will and Determinism: Resolving the Tension

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and determinism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Furthermore, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biological framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the behavioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number generator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implications of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably together in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame.

District heating networks: enhancement of the efficiency

During the decades the district heating's (DH) advantages (more cost-efficient heat generation and reduced air pollution) overcompensated the additional costs of transmission and distribution of the centrally produced thermal energy to consumers. Rapid increase in the efficiency of low-power heaters, development of separated low heat density areas in cities reduce the competitiveness of the large centralized DH systems in comparison with the distributed cluster-size networks and even local heating. Reduction of transmission costs, enhancement of the network efficiency by optimization of the design of the DH networks become a critical issue. The methodology for determination of the key drivers of the cost-efficiency of the DH networks to implement the most efficient (cost-minimal) thermal energy transmission was developed in this study. An inductive benchmarking modelling was applied; the general causal regularity is based on the observations of specific cases, thus determining the relationships between the network's design and thermal indicators as predictors and transmission costs as the target variable. The key drivers of the network efficiency were disclosed-the network length and the largest inner diameter of the pipes. The methodology is applicable for use by municipalities and heat providers for the heating planning of the new housing developments as well as renovation and/or expansion of the existing DH networks.

Time and frequency analysis of Vostok ice core climate data

The periodicity of Vostok ice core climate temperature and gas concentration data indicate inherent long term past regularity of Earth’s climate, with a period of around 100,000 years, warming around 15,000 and cooling of around 85,000 years. At this point we are at the top of one of the warming periods. Vostok data cover around 430,000 years, ie 4 climate cycles (warming-cooling), of similar but not quite the same duration. In this paper we perform a detailed time and frequency analysis of these data for each of the cycles as well as their various combinations, including a full tested period of 430,000 years. Time correlation analysis allows for more accurate time lag estimate in each cycle already noted between temperature change and carbon dioxide content. We estimate these lags to lie between 1000-2500 years, longer than previously concluded. On the frequency side we perform Fast Fourier Analysis and identify full spectrum of harmonics for various cycles, and then perform energy analysis to identify which of the harmonics contributes the most. The idea is to reduce the computational load for further modeling and analysis using Kalman Filter based prediction method. Once the prediction model is defined (a follow up paper) data will be split into two segments, Learning and Testing, in preparation of a Machine Learning fine tunning methodology. We can use last three or last two or even just last cycle to learn on, and then the current on going cycle to test on. This will result in real time prediction of relevant climate data. Assuming causal time regularity, more of these cycles are employed in training, more the prediction error for the next cycle should be reduced. Hence it is critical to perform very detailed time and frequency analysis of Vostok data as a solid data base for the prediction model to follow.

ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS, UNIVERSITIES AND UKRAINIAN INNOVATION POLICY

Introduction. Today, the important issue of cooperation between small businesses and universities is the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems, the increasing role of universities in the formation of high growth firms, and the introduction of the concept of knowledge exchange between universities and entrepreneurship, which is not yet sufficiently presented in the documents of the domestic state policy.Formulation of the problem. The research and representation in the conceptual state documents of the entrepreneurial ecosystems formation problem in Ukraine with the participation of universities is required.The purpose of the article is to study the possibilities and obstacles for the formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in Ukraine with the participation of universities, as well as study the aspects of the introduction of bilateral knowledge exchange between institutions and firms and the development of relevant proposals for public policy documents.The research methods are the problematization of socio-economic phenomena, the analysis of publications, statistical data and information on the sites, the search for causal relationships and regularities in stimulating the development of small entrepreneurship with the participation of universities.The main material. It is shown that domestic universities, as a rule, adhere to the traditional innovative approach of cooperating with entrepreneurship on the basis of technology transfer and obtaining a direct financial result. The provisions of the Strategy for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises and the role of universities in these aspects of state policy remain uncertain.Results and discussion. The methods and means of increasing the role of the universities of the country in the entrepreneurial ecosystems formation on the basis of more productive cooperation with small business, in particular on the basis of bilateral knowledge exchange, are substantiated.Conclusions and recommendations. It is proposed to the project of the Strategy of Innovative Development of the country for the period up to 2030 to pay more attention to the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems with the participation of universities, as well as to introduce an exchange of knowledge between universities and business.

Ecological Interdependence via Constraints

AbstractAlthough ecological theory has historically focused on negative interactions among populations, like competition and predation, ecologists and conservation biologists highlight the significance of interdependence. It is not clear, however, what is asserted in the causal hypothesis that one population is interdependent on others. This essay argues that the most informative causal regularities for representing dependencies are those connecting populations through environmental constraint variables. Interdependence among populations can thus be understood as constraint-mediated dependency relations connected in a circuit.

Practice makes perfect? Skillful performances in veterinary work

Is vetting a craft that must be learned owing to the limitations of scientific discipline, or simply a question of practice makes perfect? This question arose from our empirical research on veterinary surgeons (vets), who we found were often struggling with the divergence between the precise and unambiguous knowledge underlying the training and the unpredictability and imprecision of their everyday practices. These are comparatively underexplored issues insofar as the literature on vets tends to be descriptive and statistical, focusing primarily on clinical matters and associated human-animal interactions. Our cliché title has a question mark because while many vets remain embedded in the disciplined ‘certainties’ and causal regularities within their training, in practice this ordered world is rarely realized, and they are faced with indeterminacy where the ‘perfect’ solution eludes them. Vets often turn these unrealistic ideals of expertise back in on themselves, thus generating doubt and insecurity for any failure in their practices. In analysing vets’ experiences, we pay attention to the anatomical models of science, where linear causal analysis is expected to provide orderly and predictable outcomes or ‘right’ answers to problems, as well as notions of expertise that turn out to be illusory.

True-to-Hume laws and the open-future (or Hypertemporal Humeanism)

Take open-future Humeanism to comprise the following four tenets: (T1) that truth supervenes on a mosaic of local particular matters of fact; (T2) that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences; (T3) that there is a dynamic present moment; and (T4) that there are no future facts; that is, contingent propositions about the future obtain truth values only when their referents are actualised. Prima facie this is a deeply problematic metaphysic for the Humean, since given that the widely accepted Humean conception takes all truths (inclusive of nomological truths) to supervene on an omnitemporal mosaic of local particular matters of fact, if there are no future facts, then the Humean can neither provide laws of nature, nor justify many everyday inductive inferences. However, I argue that this eternalist metaphysic is in tension with at least one of Hume’s central metaphysical claims concerning causation, e.g. that causal regularities may cease to hold at any time. In this paper I propose and defend one possible open-future Humean metaphysic which admits of “true-to-Hume” causal and nomological facts. Furthermore, although I am happy to concede that induction is problematic for the open-future Humean, I demonstrate that it poses no greater threat to the open-future conception than it does to the popular Lewisian conception of natural law.

Why things happen – Developing the critical realist view of causal mechanisms

Events happen within the organizational world not by chance but for reasons. It is surely the task of management research to try to explain why these events occur. This requires us to understand the nature of causality but, in general, this is seldom discussed in the management or IS literature. The standard, positivist view underlying statistical analysis is the Humean one of constant conjunctions of events leading to universal laws. Against this, many constructivists find the whole idea of external causality implausible. In this paper we explore a third alternative that is developing strongly within the philosophy of science, social theory and critical realism – the mechanisms view. This proposes that events are generated through the interaction of specific mechanisms endowed with causal powers that may or may not be triggered, and may or may not be countervailed. In particular, the paper develops some of the fundamental concepts such as the nature of events, emergent properties, the difference between properties and powers, casual interactions between levels, absences as causes, event causality and generative causality, and abstracting causal regularities. The paper concludes by illustrating these ideas with a series of empirical case studies.

Kritický realismus a ekologická ekonomie: neintuitivní protivníci nebo zřejmí spojenci?

The paper questions the compatibility of critical realism with ecological economics. In particular, it is argued that there is radical dissonance between ontological presuppositions of ecological economics and critical realist perspective. The dissonance lies in the need of ecological economics to state strict causal regularities in socio-economic realm, given the environmental intuitions about the nature of economy and the role of materiality and non-human agency in persistence of economic systems. Using conceptual apparatus derived from Andrew Brown’s critique of critical realism and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, the paper refuses ontological nature/society dualism employed by critical realism, and stresses the role of non-humans in practical production and reproduction of socio-economic networks on the one hand, and in broadly defined ecological economic research on the other hand.

A logic for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities

We present a logic, $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ , for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities starting from empirical data. Our approach is inspired by Mackie’s theory of causes as INUS-conditions, and implements a more recent adjustment to Mackie’s theory according to which the left-hand side of causal regularities is required to be a minimal disjunction of minimal conjunctions. To derive such regularities from a given set of data, we make use of the adaptive logics framework. Our knowledge of deterministic causal regularities is, as Mackie noted, most often gappy or elliptical. The adaptive logics framework is well-suited to explicate both the internal and the external dynamics of the discovery of such gappy regularities. After presenting $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ , we first discuss these forms of dynamics in more detail. Next, we consider some criticisms of the INUS-account and show how our approach avoids them, and we compare $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ with the CNA algorithm that was recently proposed by Michael Baumgartner.

Exclusions, Explanations, and Exceptions: On the Causal and Lawlike Status of the Competitive Exclusion Principle

The lawlike and explanatory status of ecologists’ Competitive Exclusion Principle (CEP) is a debated topic. It has been argued that the CEP is a ceteris paribus law, a non-lawlike regularity riddled with exceptions, a tautology, a causal regularity, and so on. We argue that the CEP is an empirically respectful and testable strict law that is not riddled with genuine exceptions. Moreover, we argue that the CEP is not a causal explanans in explanations, because it is a coexistence law, not a causal law. Rather than being an explanans, the CEP acts as a contrastive principle sharpening causal explanations. These results contrast with previous analyses of the CEP by Eliot (2011) and Weber (1999), which are also discussed. As a more general conclusion, we suggest that accounts of causal explanation in biology have neglected some of the roles that non-causal laws play in restricting, sharpening, and facilitating causal explanations.

What's in a mechanism? Development of a key concept in realist evaluation.

BackgroundThe idea that underlying, generative mechanisms give rise to causal regularities has become a guiding principle across many social and natural science disciplines. A specific form of this enquiry, realist evaluation is gaining momentum in the evaluation of complex social interventions. It focuses on ‘what works, how, in which conditions and for whom’ using context, mechanism and outcome configurations as opposed to asking whether an intervention ‘works’. Realist evaluation can be difficult to codify and requires considerable researcher reflection and creativity. As such there is often confusion when operationalising the method in practice. This article aims to clarify and further develop the concept of mechanism in realist evaluation and in doing so aid the learning of those operationalising the methodology.DiscussionUsing a social science illustration, we argue that disaggregating the concept of mechanism into its constituent parts helps to understand the difference between the resources offered by the intervention and the ways in which this changes the reasoning of participants. This in turn helps to distinguish between a context and mechanism. The notion of mechanisms ‘firing’ in social science research is explored, with discussions surrounding how this may stifle researchers’ realist thinking. We underline the importance of conceptualising mechanisms as operating on a continuum, rather than as an ‘on/off’ switch.SummaryThe discussions in this article will hopefully progress and operationalise realist methods. This development is likely to occur due to the infancy of the methodology and its recent increased profile and use in social science research. The arguments we present have been tested and are explained throughout the article using a social science illustration, evidencing their usability and value.

Causal patterns and adequate explanations

Causal accounts of scientific explanation are currently broadly accepted (though not universally so). My first task in this paper is to show that, even for a causal approach to explanation, significant features of explanatory practice are not determined by settling how causal facts bear on the phenomenon to be explained. I then develop a broadly causal approach to explanation that accounts for the additional features that I argue an explanation should have. This approach to explanation makes sense of several aspects of actual explanatory practice, including the widespread use of equilibrium explanations, the formulation of distinct explanations for a single event, and the tight relationship between explanations of events and explanations of causal regularities.