Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome | |||
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Causation, Philosophy: It is difficult to locate influences that can be clearly defined as causes for concrete physical processes. The difficulty is also based on the fact that most authors of philosophy share an accepted skepticism concerning the observability of causality. (cf. D. Hume, An enquiry concerning human understanding, Oxford, 2000 und D. Hume, A treatise of human nature, Oxford 2007). See also single-case causation, causality, cause, causal explanation, best explanation, explanation, conditions, sufficiency, necessity, causal dependence, counterfactual dependence._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Peter Gärdenfors on Causation - Dictionary of Arguments
I 163 Causation/Vector Representation/Linguistics/Gärdenfors: (cf. Wolff, 2007, 2008, 2012)(1)(2)(3): we distinguish between forces and state changes. Then we have a result vector and a force vector. The vector representation of forces provides a natural spatialization of causation, which unites the model with other applications of conceptual space (concept space). E.g. Identity vector: has a length of zero. This does not mean, however, that the force vector must be zero. (See Croft, 1991, p. 269)(4): Causation/Croft/Gärdenfors: (Croft, 1991, p. 269)(4) Checklist for an "idealized cognitive model of a simple event": (i) Simple events are segments of the causal network. (ii) Simple events involve individuals who interact with other individuals (force transmission). (iii) force transmission is asymmetric, with separate participants (iv) Simple events non-unbranched causal chains (v) Simple events are independent, i.e. they can be isolated from the rest of the causal network. Gärdenfors: my own model fulfills most of these conditions. Yet: --- I 165 GärdenforsVsCroft: its criteria do not cover all aspects of causation: the changes to the object (patient) must also be considered. 1. Wolff, P. (2007). Representing causation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 82–111. 2. Wolff, P. (2008). Dynamics and the perception of causal events. In T. Shipley & J. Zacks (Eds.), Understanding events: How humans see, represent, and act on events (pp. 555–587). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3. Wolff, P. (2012). Representing verbs with force vectors. Theoretical Linguistics, 38, 237–248. 4. Croft, W. (1991). Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gä I P. Gärdenfors The Geometry of Meaning Cambridge 2014 |