Park, Brett (2023) Causation Beyond Manipulation. [Preprint]
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Abstract
In this essay, I examine the mathematical underpinnings of the butterfly effect to interrogate its putatively causal status. Chaotic systems are mixing, meaning that bundles of initial conditions eventually spread out over phase space. This has two consequences. First, counterfactual dependence becomes ubiquitous between temporally distant states; slight changes anywhere in the system can lead to large changes anywhere else. Second, all events become probabilistically independent of one another. When we map these properties onto the butterfly effect, we notice a situation of counterfactual dependence and probabilistic independence. In this case, our two normal criteria for causation --- the counterfactual and the probabilistic --- contradict each other in an unexpected way. Rather than ruling in favor of one of these criteria, I argue that we should view the butterfly effect's causal status as indeterminate.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Chaos Theory, Causation, Manipulation, Physics, Classical Mechanics | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Depositing User: | Mr Brett Park | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 07 Jun 2023 12:22 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 07 Jun 2023 12:22 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 22199 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Date: | 6 June 2023 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22199 |
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