Some Empirical Results Concerning Causal Learning and Representation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23755156 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Woodward (0000-0002-6402-2554, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Pages | 169-226 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Causation with a Human Face (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0005 |
| OpenAlex | W3209690856 |
| ISBN | 9780197585412 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 105 |
This chapter explores some empirical results bearing on the descriptive and normative adequacy of different accounts of causal learning and representation. It begins by contrasting associative accounts with accounts that attribute additional structure to causal representation, arguing in favor of the latter. Empirical results supporting the claim that adult humans often reason about causal relationships using interventionist counterfactuals are presented. Contrasts between human and nonhuman primate causal cognition are also discussed, as well as some experiments concerning causal cognition in young children. A proposal about what is involved in having adult human causal representations is presented and some issues about how these might develop over time are explored.
Associative property · Causal model · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Empirical research · Epistemology · Normative · Representation (politics) · Child and Animal Learning Development · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Psychology
Expert Political Judgment
Counterfactuals and Causal Inference
Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance
Causation, Prediction, and Search
The Philosophy of Philosophy
Causation as Influence
The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs
Grounding in the image of causation
Building machines that learn and think like people
Two accounts of laws and time
The simulation heuristic
Causation in biology
Causes That Make a Difference
Semantics, cross-cultural style
From covariation to causation
Intentional action in folk psychology
A Theory of Causal Learning in Children
Resource-rational analysis
Nonreductive Physicalism and the Limits of the Exclusion Principle
Metaphysics as modeling
Causal–explanatory pluralism
Two Concepts of Causation
Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies.
Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants
Models of man, social and rational
Philosophy Without Intuitions
Causal Cognition
Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds
The Metaphysics Within Physics
Causal exclusion and the limits of proportionality
Experiments on causal exclusion
The Acquisition and Use of Causal Structure Knowledge
The ‘conjunction fallacy’ revisited
Causes and Explanations
Actual causation
The physics of representation
Causal concepts and temporal ordering
The problem of variable choice
Methodology, ontology, and interventionism
How Explanatory Reasoning Justifies Pursuit
Causal Inference of Ambiguous Manipulations
When Is a Brain Like the Planet
Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence
Causation by Disconnection
Causal Complexity, Conditional Independence, and Downward Causation
Two Notes on the Probabilistic Approach to Causality
Interventions and Causal Inference
Counterfactuals and Temporal Direction
Intuitions and Experiments
Interventionism and Causal Exclusion
The Instability of Philosophical Intuitions
Against Counterfactual Miracles
Sensitive and Insensitive Causation
Learning what to change
Causal learning mechanisms in very young children
Serious fun
Causality in Macroeconomics
Pavlovian conditioning
High-Level Explanation and the Interventionist’s ‘Variables Problem’
The Worldly Infrastructure of Causation
A Probabilistic Analysis of Causation
Explanation and Invariance in the Special Sciences
Explanatory Abstraction and the Goldilocks Problem
Independence, Invariance and the Causal Markov Condition
Causation as a Secondary Quality
Fact, fiction, and forecast
Designing social inquiry
The Scientific Model of Causality
The Instrumental Value of Explanations
Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |