What's the difference between causation and correlation?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;69034 wrote:

A true description would be, "I crossed the street". A true explanation would be, "I crossed the street because I saw my friend there, and I wanted to tell him something".

So, explanations are a description of motivations? How does that work for heated metal? The metal wanted to expand because it was heated?

@Satan phil,

Satan;69035 wrote:

So, explanations are a description of motivations? How does that work for heated metal? The metal wanted to expand because it was heated?

Of course not. I also gave an explanation of why the water in the ice-cube tray turned to ice. It was because the ice-cube tray was placed inside a refrigerator, and the refrigerator's temperature was 0 centigrade.

But yes, many explanations of human action consist of motives. What else would you have thought? But not, of course of non-human happenings, since only people have motives. Metal has no wants or desires. But you know that, don't you?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;69037 wrote:

Metal has no wants or desires. But you know that, don't you?

Yes, which is why I was puzzled at your example. Can you give me an example of a true description vs. a true explanation that doesn't involve living things? Otherwise, it doesn't really help when talking about inanimate objects.

@Satan phil,

Satan;69040 wrote:

Yes, which is why I was puzzled at your example. Can you give me an example of a true description vs. a true explanation that doesn't involve living things? Otherwise, it doesn't really help when talking about inanimate objects.

I did. Description: "when I put water into the ice-tray, and put the ice-tray into the refrigerator, the water froze, and turned into ice-cubes"
Explanation: "The temperature inside the refrigerator was 0 degrees Centigrade, and water freezes at that temperature".

By the way: technically, what you are to explain is called, "the explanandum". What you explain by is, "the explanans". The explanadum, and the explanans, together is, "the explanation".

@kennethamy,

Hello,

1) In a correlation, you are saying that B(expanding) merely happens after A(Heat).

2) In a causation you are explicitly saying that A causes B.

The thing that is missing in 1 is the explicit nature contained in 2.
There is a big difference in saying that "this" happens after "that", as opposed to "this" causes "that".

2 is an assertion of a fact, and 1 is merely an observation
In 2 you would have to prove that A is in fact causing B, otherwise its a correlation.

2 is a superset of 1, not only are you saying that "this" happens after that, but are also saying that "this" causes "that".

This seems like a word game or something.

@Neil D,

Neil;69153 wrote:

Hello,

1) In a correlation, you are saying that B(expanding) merely happens after A(Heat).

2) In a causation you are explicitly saying that A causes B.

The thing that is missing in 1 is the explicit nature contained in 2.
There is a big difference in saying that "this" happens after "that", as opposed to "this" causes "that".

2 is an assertion of a fact, and 1 is merely an observation
In 2 you would have to prove that A is in fact causing B, otherwise its a correlation.

2 is a superset of 1, not only are you saying that "this" happens after that, but are also saying that "this" causes "that".

This seems like a word game or something.

Not at all. B can happen after A, and A not cause B. I might sneeze, and you might be 10 miles away, and fall and break your leg. But even if this kept happening several time, we would call it conincidence or accident, unless we could find a causal connection between the two kinds of events. But, in the case of aspirin and headaches, we already knew that aspirin has an affect on headaches, and physicians has been prescribing aspirin because they saw the effects. But they still did not know why aspirin had that those effects. It was not until fairly recently that a group of chemists and physicians finally nailed down the mechanism by which aspirin helps headaches. There is nothing word-gamey about this that I can see. We did not know something before (how aspirin helps headaches) and now we do know.

All causal connections are correlations, but only some correlations are causal connections.

@Satan phil,

Satan;68901 wrote:

Ok then I submit that I don't see any such forces. I see heat applied to a piece of metal and then I see a piece of metal expand. I don't see anything more than that. Also, the differences between your clock example and heating a piece of metal are a little bit more than you make out.

When I heat a piece of metal, that piece starts expanding, not some other piece of metal in the next room. Also, pieces of metal don't start expanding absent heat applied directly to them.

On the other hand, your two clocks can chime independantly from each other. I can smash one and the other one still chimes, destroying the correlation completely.

So far, the only difference I've seen is in how strongly and closely correlations are tied. Some are strong, like heating metal and it expanding. Some are weak, like two clocks chiming, or the death of presidents and their election years.

You stress the differences between my clock example and heating a piece of metal. So, are these differences significant? Is there an important difference between strong and weak correlations? Is there 'something more' to strong correlations than to weak ones? And if this 'something more' is not causation, what is it?

@ACB,

kennethamy;69053 wrote:

Description: "when I put water into the ice-tray, and put the ice-tray into the refrigerator, the water froze, and turned into ice-cubes"
Explanation: "The temperature inside the refrigerator was 0 degrees Centigrade, and water freezes at that temperature".

So you're saying that the water froze because water freezes at that temperature? That sounds like a classic example of virtus dormitiva and doesn't tell us anything at all. It's tautological that water freezes at the freezing temperature of water whatever that is. That's not an explanation.

ACB;69171 wrote:

Is there 'something more' to strong correlations than to weak ones?

There's no evidence that there is.

@Satan phil,

Satan;69208 wrote:

There's no evidence that there is.

What about statistical evidence? Is it mere coincidence, for example, that almost everyone who jumps out of a high-flying aircraft without a parachute is killed? If there is no evidence that causation exists, why go to the trouble of using a parachute? Why act (as everyone does all the time) as if past correlations will continue to apply in the future?

@ACB,

ACB;69228 wrote:

What about statistical evidence? Is it mere coincidence, for example, that almost everyone who jumps out of a high-flying aircraft without a parachute is killed? If there is no evidence that causation exists, why go to the trouble of using a parachute? Why act (as everyone does all the time) as if past correlations will continue to apply in the future?

As Hume pointed out, there is no rational way to prove that the future will resemble the present. It's a matter of convention and it's unavoidable for us. Even skeptics go grocery shopping and even solipsists run from fire but that doesn't prove anything is caused. Even if you flip a coin for a year and get nothing but heads, that doesn't prove causation. It could just be a lucky streak and I don't know how to rule out the impossibility of such lucky streaks. There's no way to establish a priori that getting heads for a year is unlikely. The only reason why we consider it unlikely now is because it's never happened. If it was a common occurrence, we wouldn't be skeptical. All of this is simply a reflection of our current knowledge and biases. I doubt you could get only heads from a year's worth of coin flips based on my own experience. I don't know how to go beyond that. I predict that I will die if I jump out of an airplane without a parachute because most people do. I can't see any reason why they have to die as opposed to say, landing gently. Such things just never happen.

@Satan phil,

Cause seems to me a psychological, anthropocentric sort of concept. I know the reason for my actions on a at least superficial level, so I try to find analogs in nature.

If I have seen that a stone is hard, and verified it a million times, I could still entertain the idea that next time it will be soft, but there is no reason to. It is a matter of practicality that I should assume a rock is hard and not soft and will always be so for I have observed it to be true, and I have seen no indication that it has ever not been true.

Occham's razor might be a good tool to apply here, what does the sort of cause you are talking about really mean, and is it really necessary? I know that if I lift my finger and push over a can, there are neurons that fire, muscles that contract and surfaces that touch. I know that one has more force behind it and displaces the other one. I know that this always happens if I think in practical terms. Where is the sort of causation you are talking about?

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235;69264 wrote:

Cause seems to me a psychological, anthropocentric sort of concept. I know the reason for my actions on a at least superficial level, so I try to find analogs in nature.

If I have seen that a stone is hard, and verified it a million times, I could still entertain the idea that next time it will be soft, but there is no reason to. It is a matter of practicality that I should assume a rock is hard and not soft and will always be so for I have observed it to be true, and I have seen no indication that it has ever not been true.

Occham's razor might be a good tool to apply here, what does the sort of cause you are talking about really mean, and is it really necessary? I know that if I lift my finger and push over a can, there are neurons that fire, muscles that contract and surfaces that touch. I know that one has more force behind it and displaces the other one. I know that this always happens if I think in practical terms. Where is the sort of causation you are talking about?

You don't mean that there is nothing that causes that rock to be hard, do you? You would be mistaken if you thought so. The rock is constituted of molecules that act in a certain way so that the rock is hard. A sponge's molecular structure is much different, which is why the sponge is soft. You must have taken some basic science sometime in your educational career, and already know this. If not, you can easily look it up.

Why you believe the rock is hard is one thing. But why the rock is hard is quite a different thing. Don't confuse them.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;69313 wrote:

The rock is constituted of molecules that act in a certain way so that the rock is hard.

It's amazing that you can't see how that doesn't actually explain anything.

@Satan phil,

Correlation is more indirect that causation. If an event was caused by an action then it is a direct result and effect of that action. If there is a correlation between an action and an event that just means that there is some evidence to support that the action contributed to that event but did not cause it. If an action was correlated to an event it is related and i supposed correlation is nothing more than relation. Correlation just have less of an impact in the outcome of an event than reason and cause.

@Satan phil,

Satan;69483 wrote:

It's amazing that you can't see how that doesn't actually explain anything.

Why do you think that?

---------- Post added at 08:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:21 PM ----------

Yogi DMT;69491 wrote:

Correlation is more indirect that causation. If an event was caused by an action then it is a direct result and effect of that action. If there is a correlation between an action and an event that just means that there is some evidence to support that the action contributed to that event but did not cause it. If an action was correlated to an event it is related and i supposed correlation is nothing more than relation. Correlation just have less of an impact in the outcome of an event than reason and cause.

Correlation is just what David Hume called, "constant conjunction" between two classes of events. For example, I put water into ice-cube trays, and put the ice-cube trays into the refrigerator. After a while, the ice-cube trays are filled with ice. So, there is a constant conjunction (or correlation) between putting water in ice-cube trays which I put into the refrigerator, and the ice in the trays after a while. Those two classes of events are correlated.

But, now, we would like to have an explanation of that constant correlation between those two classes of events. The explanation is, as you know, that the temperature of the refrigerator is 0 degrees centigrade, and 0 degrees centigrade is the freezing point of water.

So now we know why the water froze into ice-cubes.

That is all there is to it.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;69494 wrote:

Why do you think that?

When you say, "X is Y because X is constituted of molecules that act in a certain way so that X is Y", all you've really said is, "X is Y and X is constituted of molecules".

Opium is sleep inducing because it is made of molecules that cause it to induce sleep.

@Satan phil,

Great discussion. I think what this comes down to is that only a philosopher can sit down and talk about things like pure proof, or unimpeachably proven causality.

But "in the real world", we have functional truths and functional causation. As Satan said in his reply to me, "negligible" means that something can be ignored, but that does not make it disproved. That is correct. But if all our decisions and assertions were beset by negligible (but not disproved) doubts, we couldn't function. In other words, there needs to be a functional, "useful" concept of causation whether or not it measures up in the most abstract, exacting terms.

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 PM ----------

Satan;69208 wrote:

So you're saying that the water froze because water freezes at that temperature? That sounds like a classic example of virtus dormitiva and doesn't tell us anything at all. It's tautological that water freezes at the freezing temperature of water whatever that is. That's not an explanation.

But you're playing the reductio ad absurdum here, where all explanations will fail unless you extrapolate back with omniscience to the will of god or whatever else set this chain of causality in motion.

But I dispute that we really need that in order to have a concept of cause.

@Aedes,

Aedes;69520 wrote:

Great discussion. I think what this comes down to is that only a philosopher can sit down and talk about things like pure proof, or unimpeachably proven causality.

But "in the real world", we have functional truths and functional causation. As Satan said in his reply to me, "negligible" means that something can be ignored, but that does not make it disproved. That is correct. But if all our decisions and assertions were beset by negligible (but not disproved) doubts, we couldn't function. In other words, there needs to be a functional, "useful" concept of causation whether or not it measures up in the most abstract, exacting terms.

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 PM ----------

But you're playing the reductio ad absurdum here, where all explanations will fail unless you extrapolate back with omniscience to the will of god or whatever else set this chain of causality in motion.

But I dispute that we really need that in order to have a concept of cause.

If this were a discussion about how to get water up a hill I would agree with you but I'm not here to argue about practicalities. I'm just trying to gain a better understanding of our concepts. It seems to me that the only difference between correlation/causation and description/explanation, is subjective.

If you explain one thing in terms of another which is unexplained, how can you say without qualification that you have explained anything? You're just shuffling our ignorance around.

@Satan phil,

opium induces sleep because it is made of molecules that induce sleep?
Fascinating, I would like to know more. What kind of molecules? What are they called? What do they look like? What is the difference between these molecules and the molecules of water? between these opium molecules and milk, alcohol? What kind of sleep does opium induce? Is it deep sleep? Restful sleep?

Sure, you can try to answer these questions without telling me anything. but more than likely I'll learn something about the nature of opium and why it induces sleep. It won't be shuffling ignorance.

@Satan phil,

Satan;69524 wrote:

If this were a discussion about how to get water up a hill I would agree with you but I'm not here to argue about practicalities.

Our use of the word "cause" in anything but abstract philosophical banter IS a practicality. If someone goes to the mechanic and ask why your "Check Engine" light turned on, they are inquiring about cause. If the police investigate a murder, they are trying to discover the human whose volitional agency caused a death. Our actions and are conversations are riddled with the concept of cause. So cause, therefore, has a functional meaning that does not require that it be absolute.

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