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5.3: Causality and Scientific Reasoning

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    29609
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    The main thing to understand here is rather simple:

    Always pay close attention to the relationships between correlated events by separating causes from effects and determining which causes produced which effects.

    So what do I mean by this? First, remember that correlation simply means that two things happen together. This says nothing about how they relate – I am always around air, but I don’t cause the air to exist and air does not cause me to exist. Air is necessary for me to exist, however. Causation is concerned with one event or thing causing another event or thing. Here is an example of these concepts from a few months back when my daughter was 2 years old:

    She was coughing a lot and she knows she's sick when she coughs, so she said, “Cough make me sick.” Coughing and being sick are correlated, but does coughing make her sick? Probably not.

    Perhaps the best way of explaining how these work and their importance is through a contemporary example, that is, unfortunately, controversial. By clarifying the issues, we can carve away the bits that are uncontroversial and figure out what people get so mad about – which is really a quite simple thing, but this is a simple thing that people will disagree a lot about. Here’s my example:

    Scientists almost universally agree that the following three claims are true: (1) The world is getting warmer at a rate faster than it ever has in the past; (2) The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at a very fast rate; and (3) The burning of fossil fuels releases a lot of carbon dioxide.

    Everyone should be able to accept these as uncontroversial now, but as we know healthy skepticism is a good thing. 10 years ago, the jury was out on these – but now the jury seems to be settled. And honestly, there is no reason for someone to deny these as facts because no one should really care if any of these are true. What people care about are the relationships between these and their effects. If all of these were true and nothing else in the world changed, no one would care. Let’s examine these things and see how they might relate: are increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide causing fossil fuels to produce more carbon dioxide? Probably not – it seems like it’s the other way, and burning fossil fuels increases the amount of carbon dioxide. So what’s the main thing to examine now?

    1) Is the burning of fossil fuels causing the carbon dioxide to increase to levels that is causing the world to get warmer? - It seems that the answer is almost definitely yes, but all the impacts and sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide are still being worked out. However, none of this is even if the real issue people care about. In fact, burning fossil fuels might even be completely irrelevant to the real question people care about: 2) If global warming is happening, should people do anything about it? - The effects of global warming should be understood before we can give an answer to this. If the effects are bad, then regardless of the cause, perhaps we should do something to stop or slow global warming. Or perhaps we shouldn’t care about it and adapt to a hotter world. Now, if it turns out carbon dioxide emissions by humans are contributing to global warming and it’s bad and we think we should do something to stop these bad effects, then perhaps we should cut carbon dioxide emissions. The issue is not one directly about whether global warming is happening, and it never really was: it’s about what to do if global warming has detrimental effects and if what we can do is worth doing.

    So there you go – the global warming debate simplified by examining causes and effects. So why do people focus so much on the issue of whether or not the earth is getting hotter? Because if it isn’t, then maybe there’s nothing we need to do. But, even if it is getting hotter, that still doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something we need to do. Everyone can accept what the scientific community says about these issues because the real point of disagreement is what, if anything, should be done about the problem (if there is one). It is also important to note that in doing analyses like this, you have to appreciate when one thing is sufficient or necessary to produce to another.

    Another important thing to remember is the difference between a justification and an explanation. For example, if your car stereo is missing from your car and the window is broken, you would believe your car was burglarized. The justification for the belief your car was burglarized is that your radio is missing. The explanation for why your radio is missing is that your car was burglarized. Justifications help to support a belief whereas an explanation just gives the information necessary to explain something.

    Ockham’s (or Occam’s) Razor

    On Wikipedia at one point, the entry for Occam's razor looked like this:

    - Sentence in the introduction: “Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.” - The first sentence of the overview (which was the next sentence): The principle is often incorrectly summarized as “other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.” - Now it says: “It states that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.” Or, in other words, “don't multiply causes beyond necessity”

    Three things about this: Don’t trust Wikipedia as much as you might want to, read it carefully, and remember to not make things overly complex.

    The last definition is pretty much correct. Here’s my example that I always use to illustrate what this means: What happens when I raise my arm? My brain says “move”, tendons do things, muscles do things, bones do things, etc. Now, let’s say that all of this is true, BUT at the exact same time, invisible hot pink fairies wearing leather jackets have tied invisible string around my arms and are pulling them. Does this sound plausible to you? It better not – it’s ridiculous. Ockham’s razor says to forget that extra thing (the fairies) because the first bit of information was enough to explain how my arms move.


    This page titled 5.3: Causality and Scientific Reasoning is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Noah Levin (NGE Far Press) .

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