From: Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Date: Sun Apr 11 1999 - 09:52:26 MDT
John Clark wrote:
> I think some (not all) of your [i.e. Eliezer's] questions can be answered by having
> a definition of causality that is consistent with our everyday use of
> the term and yet produces few philosophical problems:
>
> If event A causes event B that means two things and two things only:
>
> 1) If you find event A you are certain to find event B further along a
> sequence of events.
>
> 2) If you find event B you may or may not find event A
> in the opposite direction.
This does not seem to be a very good definition. What does "you are
certain to find event B" mean? Does it mean "you are convinced that
you will find event B"? Then your definition would make causal
connections dependent on what you happen to think. Or does it just
mean "Event B happens"? Then the sun's rising would be caused by the
Big Ben striking 2 am, for whenever Big Ben strikes 2 am the sun will
soon be rising (and sometimes the sun rises without Big Ben striking
2 am, e.g. when BB is broken or before it was built, so condition 2
is also satisfied).
Causation is a huge topic in contemporary analytic philosophy. Good
old David Hume had a theory of causation that looks a little
like what you might have been aiming for. According to Hume, event A
causes event B if and only if:
(1) A is prior (in time) to B.
(2) Whenever event A occurs, B occurs.
(3) A and B are contiguous (in space and time).
(You could extend this by saying that A is an indirect cause of B iff
they are connected by causal chain of events. E.g. A caused E, E
caused F, F caused G, and G caused B.)
There are several well-known problems with Hume's theory which modern
theories try to overcome.
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
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