The regularity theory of causation

Hi, everyone. I'm Marianne Talbot. Some of you know me and I know some of you, but not all of you. And I don't know anyone who's watching the podcast. So hello to everyone watching the podcast. Okay, I'm going to. I've given you six lecture titles for this series, but I'm going to be changing a few at the end. So you're going to get everything that you've signed up for, but you might get it in a different order or something. But today, we're going to look at these things.

We're going to, first of all, look at why is causation important? Because when I've talked over the summer to people about the lectures I'm writing, I'm writing lectures on causation. Lots of people said, what's causation? Why? Why is it important? So I think it's very important, actually, to have a look first. That's why we're bothering to think about causation.

Then I'm going to look about how philosophers think about causation, because there's a difference to the way philosophers think about causation, to the way that scientists, for example, think about causation. And we'll have a little look at but what that way is and why it's different. Then I'm going to look at Hume's regularity theory. And the reason I'm going to look at that is modern. Thinking about causation started with Hume. You cannot not start with Hume.

Well, you could. I mean, a people like me, I've been doing it for years, think, oh, boring old Hume. But but of course, Hume isn't boring. Hume is really, really interesting. And we are going to start with him and his regularity theory. And so I'm going to explain what the regularity theory is. Then I'm going to look at problems for the regularity theory. And I'm going to finish today with the canonical statement of RTC, the regularity theory, because it's gone through many changes since Houdin.

And I'll say which one? Those who adopt the regularity theory. And that's many, many philosophers still. Which statement of it they would accept today. So that's what we're going to do today. And I'm going to start with why is causation importance? And I'm going to start off looking at why it's important for everyone, for everyone here. And what then I'm going to look at why it's important in particular for philosophers.

And so for a start. Nearly every explanation you offer of almost anything you're trying to explain is going to be a causal explanation. And there are philosophers, David Lewis, whom you'll be introduced to next week, is someone who believes that all explanation is causal explanation, because all explanation gives some information about the causal history of an event. OK, so if you're thinking, well, why did that happen? You look for the cause of whatever that is.

So if you're wondering about the explanation of B, if you can think that A causes B or Albie's are caused by A, then and there wasn't a minute ago then you've got your explanation of B. So explanations appeal to the relation of causation, the relation of between two events. And we'll look at whether that's whether they are indeed events later. But the relation of causation is very important for the purposes of explanation. And human beings go in for explanation a lot. That's what we do, really.

Also, you cannot really predict things without appealing to the causal relation. So if you know that A is cause B, A new C, the occurrence of an A. Or you've got reason to believe whatever it is that an A. is coming. Then you'll have reason to predict a B, because knowing the T and B causally related enables you to predict to be on observation of an A. So again, it causation is is vital for explanation.

Causation is vital also for prediction. So we can predict things so well, for example, eclipses. I mean I don't know about you, but I got up at three o'clock the other night and wrapped myself in a duvet and went and sat in the garden because they told me that there was going to be a lunar eclipse and there was, you know, amazing, isn't it? But that's because we know about causal relations. So causation is essential to prediction in the same way that it's essential to explanation.

And then if we want to manipulate anything, if we know the A's Causby, if we bring about any, will also bring about a B, won't we. So so if we want to bring about a B, the way we can do it is to bring about an A. So we can manipulate the world in virtue of the fact that we know about causal relations. So causation is absolutely vital. It really is. Will say a bit more about that later. For philosophers, causation is every bit as vital. I mean, we have causal theories of knowledge.

So if anyone of you know about the Getty problems, the causal theory of knowledge is supposed to explain the Gachet problems. Now, I'd better explain that for those who don't know, the Gachet problems says that the traditional theory of knowledge, according to which knowledge, is justified. True belief. OK. So let's say Chris has a belief about me that I only tyo to Yaris and he's justified in believing that because he's seen me driving around town in a Toyota Yaris.

OK. What's more, I do own a tire to Yaris. Nice little silvery green thing. Now there's a problem with this because actually the Toyota that Chris has seen me driving around town in isn't mine. It belongs to Bob and it's a horrible Reds thing. So the Toyota, that makes true his belief that I own a Yaris and the Toyota that justifies his belief that I own a Yaris come apart, don't they? Does he know that I own a Yaris?

Most people would say, no, he doesn't, because the conditions justifying his belief come apart from the conditions that make true his belief. How do we solve this? Well, we we try and make the causal relationship between the conditions that make his belief true and the conditions that justify his belief. And so that's the causal theory of knowledge. We appeal to causation to explain what knowledge is, and we also explain to causation, to appeal what content is.

So how do I know what the content of your belief is? Could you entertain the concept of read unless a red object had caused you to have an experience of red at some time in your past? Do you think. No. Okay. If you if you think not, then there's the causal theory of content. There's got to be causal relations involved in the identification of content of your beliefs and perceptions. And, of course, the causal theory of perception and McBeth.

Is this a dagger I see before me? Well, no, it wasn't, because there is no dagger causing the experience he is having. He was having an experience as of a dagger. But there was no dagger in the causal history of that experience. And so he wasn't perceiving a dagger. So, again, do you see that causation is absolutely fundamental to the idea of what it is that your cause? What it is that you're perceiving? So David Hume called causation the cement of the universe.

Causation is the relation that holds together all the events in the universe. Every event has a cause. Perhaps not the beginning of the universe itself and the causes of God. But but otherwise, everything has a cause, is an effect. And it's the cement of the universe. As David Hume and John Carroll. And you'll find all the references, by the way. You'll find on the handouts that I've got here that I'm not handing out now because

I don't want you to have all the answers to the questions I'm going to ask. But you can take the hand out. So actually, you don't need to make Coke copious notes unless it helps you understand. It does me. So I understand if it does, you. Okay. So John Carroll says, with regard to our total conceptual apparatus, causation is the centre of the centre. You just would not understand anything if you didn't understand causation.

The philosopher Kant thought causation was one of the concepts that we have innately. We're born with the concept of cause. This is very boring. But yes, you will. Secretary. Keep the colour scheme and don't show this message. Again, that sounds right, but where's the cursor gone? Turn the volume down. We can't actually see it on the screen, so. We extended the screen, so it was sort of keep the don't share this message again. OK. One more chance. Julia, good. Right.

I didn't realise you couldn't see it, but I was also obscuring what I could see on my screen. OK. So so causation is the centre of the centre of our conceptual scheme. So let's go into how do philosophers think about causation? Well, and we want to know first what causation is. I mean, if you're going to ask does something it says, does God exist? You need to know what it is about, whose existence, your what, your questioning.

So what is God? What is this thing that you're asking, whether it exists or not? And the same thing is true of causation. And if we want to know whether causation exists and what it is, we need to know first what causation is. So we start by analysing the concept and to analyse the concepts is to. For example, we reason using the concept of causation. So we say if A causes B and an A occurred, we can follow on that by saying a B will occur.

That's the prediction I was talking about earlier. So we look at how the we reason with the concept of causation, what it entails. What we infer from it and so on. That's what it is to analyse a concept. But then we want to know whether it exists. So we turn to metaphysics. So is there anything that satisfies this role? The role that something plays in our reasoning. So if God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, he got that right.

Then we want to know whether there is anything that satisfies those three things. And if we think that the problem of evil shows that it's a contradiction that anything could suffer to satisfy those things. We're going to conclude that God doesn't exist. And it's the same with causation. We will look at its role in reasoning and then we'll ask whether it exists. So we are interested in the nature of causation of causation itself.

But we start by looking at the concept of causation, the way we work with causation in our reasoning. So let's have a have a little go at that. Okay. So much. My tomato plants have died. They look terrible, don't they? And if the queen had watered my tomato plants, they would not have died. I mean, this is true. Well, the queen is not washing my tomato plants, therefore caused them to die. Did it not? And here's the queen failing to water my tomato plants.

I couldn't find one with her watering tomato plants. But what do you think about that? I mean, it is true, isn't it, that if the queen had watered my tomato plants, they wouldn't have died? And it's also true that if I had watered them, they wouldn't have died. But if the queen had watered them, given that I didn't, they wouldn't have died. So it's the queen, the cause of the death of my tomato plants.

Well, yes, but that's true, isn't it? If the queen had watered them, that he wouldn't have died. Yes, you could you could substitute anyone else in there. Anyway, we won't worry about that now because we will look at that later. But that's the sort of thought experiment that we might go into to say, well, OK, if that's true and that's true, then isn't that true? And if it isn't true, none of us think it's true. Why isn't it true?

What's the difference between the Queen's failing to water my tomato plants and my failing to most of them or perhaps the the neighbourhood promise to water them or something like that? Oops. We're going around, so in analysing our concept of causation, we hope to do one of three things. So we either hope to reduce causation to non causal relations and matters of fact. So we hope to understand causation by cashing it out in terms that we do understand that don't appeal to causation.

Otherwise we'd have something circular or we hope to eliminate causation. Maybe causation doesn't really exist. But there's some other relation that that does the job that we think is causation. Or we might want to admit that causation is primitive. In other words, that it can't be reduced and it can't be eliminated. Causation is part of the furniture of the universe. It's it. It is sui generous. It exists in and of itself.

And for example, can you think of anything else that might be of that kind? Truth is, maybe suy generous. But so we do one of these things will either reduce it or will eliminate it all will admit it as primitive as a result of our conceptual analysis. Okay, now let's have a look at how science thinks about causation. Scientists used the concept of causation all the time. They relying on the concept of causation, but they very rarely think about causation.

That's not their job. The science says that think about causation tend to be the sciences that think about thinking. So psychology, for example, is very interested in the concept of causation because I, for example, do babies have a concept of causation. So you'll have seen some of these videos of babies that, you know, you do something and try and work out whether the baby realises that one thing causes another.

So psychologists are interested in causation. Neuroscientists are interested in causation. They like to know what it is in the brain that realises thoughts about causation. And applied robotics is particularly interested in causation. So there's a paper by Judea Pearl on your reading list, which is very inj. I mean, if you want for instance, if you want a domestic robot or a caring robot, then you want it to understand.

If it leaves the child's skateboard in the middle of the floor, the person its caring for is likely to trip over it or something. So you'll you want to give the robot some idea of causation. And actually that's that's you'll see if you watch the video by Judea Pearl. That's much easier said than done. So those are the sciences that are really concentrating on causation. But of course, it's it does appear in every science. How can it not? If it's so central to explanation and prediction. Okay.

His very handsome chap, Hume, Scottish philosopher 1711 to 1776. And he's the author of The Regularity Theory. It's Hume's regularity theory that really started off thinking about causation. It's not entirely true. I mean, Aristotle thought about causation, too. And I've give new references on your handout as to who thought about causation before Hume. But Hume really started the modern discussion of causation, and it was in this book that he claimed fell stillborn from the press.

In other words, nobody was interested in this book. So he wrote this book, which is basically this book with a few things at it and a few things taken away. And it's in there that he discusses causation. And again, you'll get all the references and you can also find these texts. All his texts are available freely online. You can look at what he actually said himself.

Okay. Right. We're going to look first at the traditional interpretation of Hume and you'll see later that it becomes important that there are different interpretations of Hume. Then we're going to look at two key problems for the traditional interpretation of Hume, and then we're going to look at these solutions to these problems, leading to the version of Hume's theory that's used today. So will end. As I said before, with the canonical statement of the regularity theory of causation.

But before I go on to its traditional interpretation of Hume, any questions about what I've said so far? The particular example you said about the care home of leaving escapable in the middle of the room as a potential cause of potential effect. You have not mentioned the probability. At all, that is that is. There is a possibility. Well, I shall see that we could probability does become important later.

Causation could be either always deterministic or it could be sometimes deterministic, sometimes probabilistic or always probabilistic. And there are those three possibilities. And there are philosophers who who adopt each of those views. Are you going to see this is actually less important than you might think? Because although the traditional interpretation of Hume treat it as deterministic, because in those days they did.

You'll see that there is a probabilistic version. And ditto for every other theory of causation that we're going to be looking at. So A causes B might be A necessitates B if determinism is true or A makes B more probable. If causation is probabilistic. OK. Any other. David, you said A causes B, you said that if A. If a cause is BS and if if an A cause, then a B will occur. Yes. That C with some probability. But it could be because.

No, because if A causes B doesn't necessarily mean that AIDS the only cause of B. So there might be a B without any. If A causes B, but there won't be any without a B. Did I say that the right way round, I could suddenly hear myself getting confused? But OK, I make a distinction. Maybe more in psychology between causation and. Ability of a human mind to connect? No, no, no causality causation.

They use pretty much interchangeably. I'm sure I could think of a distinction if you really want me to, but I don't think I want to in your possible versions of what you might mean by understanding causation. One thing which seems to be missing is the person is not quite concept of different things. We could be alone together. Yes. Okay. So. So I said that in analysing the concept of causation, we hope either to reduce it or to eliminate it or to.

Make it primitive. Yes, I suppose there is a fourth. The fourth one is that what we show is that there's there's there are different relations of causation, that it's not a univocal relationship, that there are different types of causation. So. Yes. Yes. If that's a forth, then there is a fourth. Okay. Let's move on. Let's go on to the traditional interpretation of human.

OK. There is. I don't usually believe in putting lots of words up on screen, but but having not have a look at that, because that's the quotation that starts it all. Okay, so that's what Humes says about causation, but how should we understand that? Well, let's look at Hume's negative argument to start off with. We'll look at what he thinks causation isn't and then we'll have a look at what he thinks.

Causation is so huge. Negative argument. The first premises are idea of causation seems to be the idea of necessary connexion. So if we think that A causes B. Well, you've already mentioned probably ism, but but in fact, that we tend to think that if A causes B, then A is sufficient for B, i.e. if any happens, then B will happen. So that was the start of Hume's argument. And we'll have a look later. I've got a little sort of movie that will show you more about what that means.

Premise two is and this is an important premise as empiricists, we should accept that all our ideas come from impressions. And again, I'll explain this more later. But the an idea is a concept. A concept is a constituent of thought. So if you're thinking Marianne's wearing blue, you're entertaining your concept of blue. Now, I want you to imagine that this is yellow. Okay. You doing that or you're entertaining your concept of yellow at that point?

And you must be entertaining your concept because it's not yellow, is it? It's so. So you're thinking about this. You're not seeing that the shirt is yellow. Your your imagining that the shirt is yellow. But on the other hand, you can see that it's blue. So you have a perception of my shirt. And you also have a thought about my shirt. And one of the entertaining uses an impression. You see this, it's blue and the other one uses an idea. You imagine that it's yellow.

So, for example, and you're all thinking about elephants right now, but there isn't an elephant anywhere near this room that I know of. And even if there is, you can't see it. And so your entertain your concept of elephant, but not your percept of elephant. For that, you'd have to go to a zoo. Okay. So I'll say something more about that later on. On premise three, says Hume, we do not and cannot.

He says have any experience of necessary connexion and so experience and impressions go together because when we're having an experience where we're having impressions of something and so his conclusion is our idea of causation is not an idea of necessary connexion. And I think you'll agree that that argument is is a good argument. The conclusion follows from the premises. And so if the premises are true, then the conclusion will also be true.

Is everyone happy with that? Does anyone want to as I sound and say more about this later. But does anyone want to ask anything about that? As it stands. As usual, really. This is a standard scientific view of evolution. Well, can we leave that to. Because that's a substantive question rather than a question of clarification. Okay. So. That's humour, negative argument. Now let's have a look at premiss, too, so premise two got what premise two was false, premise two as empiricists.

We should accept that all our ideas come from impressions. OK, well, Hume's theory of ideas. Let's have a look at that, because that's absolutely crucial to his theory of causation. Hume is an empiricist. I mentioned Kant earlier. Kant isn't an empiricist, can't is a nativist. Kant thinks that we have innate ideas. We're born with our minds already stocked with certain concepts.

Hume and Locke and Berkeley, the three British empiricists all believed that we are born tabula rasa as Hume, as Locke put it. So we're born with our minds as blank slates. We have nothing in our minds when we're born. Instead, we acquire all our thoughts and all our ideas from experience. And people have a great tendency these days to be empiricists because they tend to think that that's the scientifically respectable thing to be.

But we're going to leave that open. But Hume was definitely empiricist. So that's an impression. Let's pretend. Okay. So. So you're experiencing a cat. A very handsome ginger cat. And as a result of experiencing things like that. And black ones and ginger ones. And three legged ones. And tailless ones. And female ones. Male ones and so on. You form an idea of a cat. Okay. So you have a percept and this enables you to form a concept. And this. Sorry, this is me trying to be clever here.

If it's going to work. No, it's not going to work. Dan? If I could play that, it would miaow, because I want you to to understand that ideas are not always visual. A lot of your climbing, your idea of a car operator isn't visual or auditory, is it, on your idea of feminism or austerity? None of those things are ideas that come directly from impressions.

But the if you are going to have an idea of a cat, it's got to be an idea of something that could be Ginger or Blackhall to Dodge Dart, but also makes the certain sound and. Unfortunately, I can't play you the sound it would make. Okay. So that's that's his theory of ideas. Any questions about that? Before we move on, because that's a. Crucial. Element. No. Does Hugh specify any sort of medium through which the idea manifests itself, could it be a. You know, it needn't be a picture at all.

I mean, Locke thought it was a picture. But Hume did. I don't think Hume specified. I might be wrong about that. But but it's certainly the case that these days we would say it's not necessary for it to be a picture. I mean, you might or might not have a picture of what feminism means or what austerity means. And if you have a picture. But yours is different. And yet the two of you mean the same thing by austerity, let's say.

But the pictures you associate with it, if you do associate any with it, might be different. Can you have something totally abstract, say something that's informed by equations, social science. Yes, or love. That's pretty abstract or justice. So Hume would have to say that you acquired the idea of justice by seeing instances of justice.

So when a mother is fair to her children, for example, you see her being just when a teacher is fair to the pupils, you see the teacher being just and through experiences of justice like that, you form your idea of justice might not experience a say. Well, string theory is not not an idea, it's a multitude of ideas, isn't it? I mean, it's a theory, string theory. A theory is, if you like, a web of beliefs that go together in a coherent whole.

OK. It may be a cold call. Some people would question that, but. So. So a theory is a multitude of beliefs. And each belief has a content that's made up of concepts and an idea is a concept. So an idea is a constituent of a thought. So every thought has content and every content will be made up of concepts. And string theory is made up of beliefs, multitude of beliefs. Each belief has a content and each content is made up of concepts.

Okay, so now we're going to look at his empiricism, the idea of causation. OK. Now here's a billiard ball. OK. And this billiard ball. Is going to go off when the first one hits it. But what what makes us think that it's going to do that? Because it could be. It does that, couldn't it? I mean, why would you expect? Because I bet you do expect the first thing to happen. Rawdon's second thing to happen. Is there a necessary connexion? Could it do the second thing or not?

It could. It could. Okay. It said there's absolutely nothing necessary about the fact that the second ball will roll off when the first ball hits it, as opposed to turning purple and doing a little spirit pirouette. And that's what Hume notices. And he's actually very because if we think the causation is necessary connexion, then we're saying that when the billiard ball hits, when the first billiard ball hits the second billiard ball, it's necessary that the second billiard ball rolls off.

But Hume was the first one to notice that there's nothing necessary about it. It's certainly not logically necessary. We can imagine. I mean, there are logically necessary things. For example. A bachelor is an unmarried man. John is a bachelor. Therefore. John is an unmarried man. Yep. I mean, there's a logical necessity. These two sentences entail the conclusion an entailment is the relation of logical necessity.

Well, there's no logical necessity that when this billiard ball comes in and hits the Alza, that the other will roll off in the opposite direction. There's nothing logically necessary about that. You can imagine it doing all sorts of things like spinning, turning purple and spinning off. So if we're going to say that there is a necessity of any kind. We've got to introduce a new notion of necessity. We've got to talk about metaphysical necessity.

All we've got to talk about empirical necessity or something like that. We've got to introduce a new concept, if you like. But Hume says. But how do we experience something necessary? Think about that for a second. If something's necessary, it must happen. OK. Every time one billiard ball hits another, the billable will roll off. It must happen. It's not just does it happen that way? It must happen that way. Could you experience that? That must. Do you think?

But must not happen. What if you've been given anaesthetic? Well, obviously, there's some limiting conditions, but for most purposes it will. For most purposes, it will hurt. Yes, fine. But we're talking about it must hurt. There's nothing necessary about it, is there? That. That's the thing that we're thinking. Is something great. Is everything going great? No. Okay. Same the same way if I strike a match, it will only light if there's oxygen around.

So it's got to be all sorts of. OK. We're going to be looking at this in some detail later on. But but at the moment, what I want to get hot is the idea, the fact that we cannot experience something necessarily something that must be the case or that can't be the case. We can experience that as something isn't the case or that it's not often the case or this is nearly always not the case. We can't experience that. It cannot be the case.

So if if I use possible world talks to talk just for a moment to say that something must be the case, to say that two plus two equals four. And that that's a necessary condition. I'm saying that there is no possible world in which two plus two don't equal four. Okay, I can do it in this case because that's a logical necessity. You've got the same condition. So. Because otherwise, to do. No, no, no, I don't have to specify that because two has a normal meaning in English and so does plus.

And so does the equals. And so just for. And so it's only because your requiring your being cleverer and thinking, if I if I interpret it differently, it wouldn't be. It wouldn't. There is a possible world in which two plus two equals four. But I'm assuming that you're not interpreting it differently. That's it now is arguably your second or third dynamics. Oh. Thank you, you you unda undermined your what you said by adding in a physical well in a felt world like this, et cetera.

I mean if there are worlds in which the second law of thermodynamics doesn't hold and might there be. Then then I might rest my case again. Necessity is a very strong relationship. If something is necessary, there is no possible world in which it doesn't happen. And if something is is possible, there is one possible world in which there is at least one possible world in which it does happen.

So could we experience necessity? Answer no. Because we would have to experience every single possible worlds and we couldn't do that. So Huba has a real problem with the idea of necessity. You cannot experience necessity. So as as logicians, we can believe that something is necessary. But the idea that you could experience it is a very different claim. So where do we get this idea of necessary connexion or where do we think we get it from? Okay, let's. Oh, it's not working as well as I thought.

In fact, it's not working at all. Sold. It worked on my home computer. OK. What? What do you think that we get our idea of necessary connexion from is constant conjunction. So we see one billiard ball hitting another. And the other rolling off. And we see one billiard ball hitting another. And the other rolling off. And we see one billiard ball hitting another. And the other rolling off. We see this often enough that we start to expect it.

And it's that expectation that gives us the idea of necessary connexion. So, OK, if our idea is idea of causation is not an idea of necessary connexion, what is it? An idea of. And secondly, why are we so certain this idea of causation is an idea of necessary connexion? Okay, I've sort of answered that. But let's let's go on. Okay. So can you see that his negative argument. This is what causation isn't. We think that causation is the idea of necessary connexion.

If it is the idea of necessary connexion. This must have come from experience because all our ideas come from experience. But we can't experience necessity. Therefore, it can't be the idea of necessary connexion. So that's negative argument I see now. But I'd like to continue just for a minute. The negative argument leaves us with two questions. If Hume is right, if Hume's negative argument is right that the idea of causation is not an idea of necessary connexion,

then we're left thinking, well, what is it then? What is this idea of causation that's so important? And we'd also like to ask. Well, given that we think it is necessary connexion, why are we shows sure of that when you've just shown us. Hume. If you have shown us that, it can't be. So those are the two questions. So his answer to question one is that our idea of causation is and wait for it. Because this is the regularity theory, temporal priority. So the cause comes before the effect. Okay.

It's spatial contiguity, the scores and the effect are spatially contiguous. And if they appear not to be, there's something in between that makes them there's no action that's a distance as cause that says Hume. And finally, its constant conjunction. When we see A and B constantly conjoined, we start to think that A causes B. So the correlation between A and B causes us to expect B when we see DNA. And that expectation is projected by us onto the world and becomes the idea of causation.

So Hume thinks there is no more to our idea of causation than these three things. Now, that should be making you feel quite uncomfortable. But I'm not going to take any questions just at the moment. I'd like to just go on a little bit more. Okay. This is the regularity theory of causation. There's no more to causation than these three things. And Hume's answer to question two is it is just habit.

It's because we see A and B correlated. And we form the expectation of seeing a B whenever we see any that we think that A and B causally related. And it's that expectation that we spread on the world, that we project onto the world uncool, necessary connexion. But in fact, there is no necessary connexion. All there is is a habit of mind. So in a way, Hume is saying, if you're saying that causation is necessary connexion, then Hume is saying there isn't any causation.

But actually, what he's saying is not that causation is necessary connexion and there isn't any. He's saying causation isn't necessary connexion at all. Causation is just temporal priority, spatial contiguity and constant conjunction. Hence the regularity theory and regularities. OK, let me see where I am, because. Okay, the key characteristics of the regularity theory of causation are, firstly, it's reductive. Okay. So do you remember I said that what we hope to do as a result of.

Conceptual analysis is either to reduce or to eliminate or to make primitive RTC is reductive. He's reducing the idea of causation to temporal priorities, spatial contiguity and constant conjunction. So it reduces causation to regularity and it prioritises causal regularities over singular causal relations. If you only ever see one billiard ball hitting another and the other rolling off once, you'll never think that the first caused the second, says Hume.

Actually, you would, because you've seen so many other similar things. But if you only see one case, there can't be causation, according to Hume, in the individual case. Now, many philosophers have quarrels about that, but that's what Hume thinks. He reduces causation to regularity. And he also is a realist. So the regularity theory of causation is a realist theory about causation. Causation really exists. And that's because there really are regularities.

There really are correlations between events. And that's what causation is. So there is something that satisfies the conditions that it would have to satisfy. If causation were to exist. So regularities are real. And their mind independent. Even if we weren't here to see these correlations, they would be there. So causation is realist, realistic. And finally, regularity theory of causation is austere. And what I mean by that is Hume rarely is saying there's no explanation.

There's no relation that is this constant conjunction of sorry that underpins the constant conjunction or the regularities. All there is. Is the regularities. So if a scientist is trying to find out whether A causes B, he sees the constant conjunction between A and B, and he sees yes, A causes B, what explains that? He'll look. And if he's lucky, he'll find a deeper correlation. OK. So. So C causes A and D causes B. And that's why. And Bear can conjoined because see India conjoined.

And then if he looks a bit harder he might look a bit. And he'll find another correlation. And another correlation. And Hume will think that's all he'll ever find all the way down. So it's correlation all the way. There is no such thing as an metaphysically necessary connexion. That explains these constant conjunctions. And if that's making you very uncomfortable, don't worry. You're not alone. So it eliminates the idea of necessary connexion, is it?

It says you want this idea of there being a metaphysical necessity there. Okay. You recognise it's not a logical necessity, but you want to introduce this idea of a metaphysical necessity. But you shouldn't because we can explain everything to do with causation without appealing to necessary connexion. Therefore, necessary connexion is redundant. We don't need it. And we should be austere in our theories of causation.

So OK. Well, before I look at the problems that everyone else has sought, what are the problems that you think? What? Is there anything you don't like about this theory? Mike, it's not so much from the studio, but I can't see the point of. The temporal aspect, obviously, and others will not criticise the temporal aspect of the sea and it does not seem to agree at all, is take example of colliding with billiard balls.

You might as well say that for a start, because of all these action and direction, which is not okay. Well, it's interesting that you went for that one first. I mean, it's certainly true that the humans theory makes temporal priority of the cause of the effect and analytical condition of causation. And we might say, well, is that true? I mean, could it not be that the effect comes before the cause?

Couldn't there be backwards causation? And lots of philosophers have looked at the possibility of backwards causation. But Hume doesn't. I mean, that's one thing he did. That's actually probably the least examined from by Humes of his theory. He just assumes that causes come before effects. And actually, so do most of us. Most of the time. So if we see a correlation, it's that the prior event that we think of as the cause and the second event that we think of as the effect.

Oh, sorry. They're two people talking. I'm sorry, David, I was talking to the gentleman further back just to start with. Abuse is the concept of necessity because it doesn't seem that we should have access to. Well, that's a bit unfair. I mean, the question was, does Hume justify his use of the concept of necessity because he doesn't seem to have access to the concept of necessity. And what he thinks is that the knee jerk concept of causation is that of necessary connexion.

And he claims to have shown that it's not necessary connexion. So I don't think it's Hume who needs to justify his use of the concept of necessitates everybody else. Well, no, because logical necessity is permitted. I mean, we all understand logical necessity and we logical necessities is explicable in in the reasoning that we do. But what he's questioning is whether this the second sort of necessity, namely metaphysical or empirical necessity.

And he's the one who shows that. Everyone assumes that. But actually, we don't need to. Or so he says. When we talk about a cause, most things that we can think of have multiple. Well, we'll look at that in more depth later. That's the same question is the one that came earlier and when so when you strike a match. The strike of the match causes the lighting of the match. Well, it wouldn't if there weren't any oxygen in the room.

So. So the strike hit. The match can't be a sufficient condition for the lighting of the match. You've got to take into account other things. So we'll have a look at that in a minute. I'm struggling to speak up. Sorry. Because of all these. But then he calls himself. Well, we may be dead. Well, no know we can see a constant conjunction because a constant conjunction doesn't necessarily mean an exception, this conjunction. Nor does it necessarily mean a conjunction that goes on forever and a day.

It just means if I see A's causing B's, I think for a second about the concept of causation. If you're going to claim A causes B. Firstly, what's your evidence? Secondly, what would falsify it? Well, perhaps we'll just stick with those two at the moment. So if we can say that, make a claim, not A causes B, what's going to be your evidence for this? Of what? I mean, you're directly perceiving me, but that doesn't give you evidence that A causes B.

OK. And what is it? Well, you'll see, give me a shot. And that is a particular case. Can we go back to the everyday thought of causation? So when people are doing the psychological experiment with the children, seeing whether children have the idea of causation, what do they tend to show children in the hope that they form the belief A causes B? Yes. Okay. So you switch the switch and the light goes on.

You switch, switch the other way and the light goes off. You switch it that way and the light goes on. Switch that when the light goes off and so on. And the child will very quickly pick up what to do. So what you're doing is you're showing a constant conjunction, aren't you? You're saying that putting the switch that way turns the light on and putting the switch that way turns the light off. And so the evidence for causation is always going to be a correlation or a constant conjunction.

So Hume is certainly right from that point of view. We don't have evidence for causation other than correlations or constant conjunctions. And what would falsify the claim that A causes B? But what would you make? You think it's not true that A causes B? So you see an A and not a B, so you break the constant conjunction. You break the correlation. If you think that A causes B and you see an A without to be, you know, you've got something wrong.

So, OK, it's not true that A causes B deterministically, you might think. OK, so you C, C, A and not be so you know that it's not the case A causes B, there's something wrong with that. Maybe it's only a certain type of A's that cause B's. Maybe it's only a store's calls BS. So you when they say that you saw that isn't followed by a B actually isn't in a stall. Or maybe this is a case of probabilistic causation. Maybe a dust causby, but not deterministically, only with a certain probability.

So there will be exceptions. The constant conjunction. It'll be only certain constant to a certain extent, servants'. Do you see the correlation? Constant conjunction is is absolutely essential to our idea of causation. But Hume, of course, is claiming that that's all there is. There is no more to causation than constant conjunction. And that's quite counterintuitive. I remember when I first understood this theory as an undergraduate, I just thought, how could it possibly be the case?

How could somebody really think that? And you might be thinking the same thing and thinking that you've misunderstood the theory, but you haven't. The theory really is that there is no more to causation than constant conjunction. So you're saying that that whatever it is is necessary for tuberculosis, okay, but it must also be sufficient for it to be a. We usually think of a cause being sufficient rather than being necessary. But it's sufficient in that it necessitates it.

Let's come to look at Caltech two more quite quickly and then I'll go and look at the problems. What are you going to say? Well, it's not just humour, it's also the rest of us, because all of us take constant conjunction as evidence for causation. But some of us are more inductively bold than others of us. And those of us who are inductively bold may take just two cases and then extrapolate from there. Others of us will want to say, well, hang on, I've only seen two.

I won't see a few more. And so on. So it's so it depends how inductively bold you are as to how. So one more done here. Sorry, I will take questions later, but one more one that is lies on the inside. It doesn't look like experiment is obviously denies. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If, if we've seen A causing B, if we've seen A and B in constant conjunction. Forever and ever and always. And everyone else we've ever spoken to has seen it.

Then we see an A. without a B. We're much more likely to think that we can't believe our eyes because a miracle is like that, isn't it? A miracle is an exception to the laws of nature. And you don't make something a law of nature unless you've seen it happen very, very often. So the idea that you can say there's been an exception to it, just because you think you've seen an exception on one occasion is a big problem.

Humour is very good on miracles because he thinks that, epistemologically speaking, you can never justify the claim that there's been a miracle because a miracle is an exception to a law of nature and the epistemology. The evidence that we need to make something, a law of nature could never be undermined by one experience of a of a country case. But we can talk about that more in the Question Time, if you like. Let's have a look at the problems that philosophers have found for this.

Okay. One problem might be the whole thing relies on Hume's empiricism. Hume thinks that the idea of causation must come from experience and that the idea of necessary connexion cannot come from experience. So the idea of causation cannot be necessary connexion. But that relies on this empiricist idea. And if you're can't, you say, well, sod that, let's throw empiricism out.

Let's say that we're born with the idea of causation. And then we can say that the idea of causation is the idea of necessary connexion. We don't need to be empiricists so we can reject Hume's bedrock theory, which is his theory of ideas, his empiricism. We don't have to accept that. We can easily accept another theory. There are other people who think, well, who might ask, is there really no impression from which we might get our idea of necessary connexion?

So you mentioned the shot. Shot. Is it a psychologist? I think, who tried to show that we do see causation in the individual case. And he. Well, actually, there have been other philosophers. So when you cut a slice of bread, says Elizabeth Anscombe, when you're slicing the loaf of bread, can't you feel that you are causing the bread as you push the knife through the bread? That is not causation, something you're experiencing directly.

That this is a necessary connexion. That the bread could not not be cut, as you slice it. And Davidson also thinks that we see causation in the individual case. So human. Do you remember I said the regularity theory? He thinks that causal regularities are prior to the causation causation in the individual case. Well, we can reject that. We can say that's not true. We do see causation in the individual case. When we see one with billiard ball hitting another, we actually see a case of causation.

And we call that necessary connexion. So we can reject that. And we can say that correlations do not have a direction. I mean, this is what. Well, we're talking about spatial contiguity or temporal priority. If we see A and B constantly conjoined. There isn't that way. Then the correlation doesn't have a duration, does it? If A is correlated with B, then B is correlated with A. What makes us think that A causes B rather than the other way round?

This is the point that Mike was making a minute ago. We might also ask, how can a relation that depends on similarity be objective? So do you remember that quotation I gave you from A Causes? Let's see if I can if I've got it written here. No, I haven't. And he talks about a cause is where you see one event and another event and then similar events in the same constant conjunction. So you've got to notice that the relation that the events that are correlated are similar to each other.

So A causes B, A causes B, A causes B, A and B are in constant correlation. You've got to have the idea of the similarity between the A's and the similarity between the B and the idea of similarities. A very human centred concept, isn't it? So we think of causation as objective. But how can it be objection objective, if that's what we're talking about.

If we rely on similarity and the last two objections are absolutely key, surely regularity isn't sufficient for causation and surely with there are regularities that are not causal. So if a pilot, if every time a pineapple has dropped from a tree, Marianne's coughed. Is that a causal regularity or is it just a coincidence? And if it's just a coincidence and we can imagine I mean, imagine in this room, every male in this room is his second son.

Okay, that that is possible. It could be the case that just by coincidence, every male in this room is his second son. Would you think it's causal because there's a correlation between being a male in this audience and being a second son? Answer no. It's surely a coincidence. So if if there can be irregularities that are not sufficient for causation, then how can causation be regularity? It can't be. And it gets worse, surely regularity is not necessary for causation.

The Big Bang caused the universe. Well, there that only happened once, didn't it? And if it did only happen once. Well, okay. Oh, God. Multiverses. But if you think that causation can happen in the individual case, then regularity isn't necessary for causation. And it's also not sufficient. So over the years since Hume developed his regularity theory, there've been hundreds of objections to it. And I've just given you a selection here. And these have been discussed ad nauseum.

But we're going to look at that one and that one. As you see, I spent my summer learning powerful interest. OK, so let's let's have a look at the claim that regularities are not sufficient for causation. Okay. If every male in this audience has a second son, that's not enough to make it. I mean, are they were they cause to be a second son by being in this audience or is there being a second son causing them to be in this audience?

No. Is the answer to that. Well, what about the barometer falling every time a storm is about to start? Well, there's a there's a correlation, isn't there? So does the falling of the barometer caused the storm to start? Does this storm starting cause the barometer to fall? Not really. No. It goes far. I mean, what you've got is a drop in the atmospheric pressure is that a drop in the atmospheric pressure causes both the sawm to start and the barometer to fall.

So you've got one thing. So you've got something like this, a structure like this. Um. A and B are correlated. But that's because both are caused by sea. So this cut, this relation is a correlation, but not a cause. This is a cause and this is a cause, but this isn't do you see so a correlation cannot be sufficient for further causation, can it? So humans got to be wrong, surely.

And so sometimes correlations are coincidental and sometimes coincidences, correlations come about because they are both the result of a common cause. So how before Hume's theory can really be taken seriously? We've got to exclude accidental generalisations and other non causal regularities from the regularity theory, of course, of causation. Do you see that? Okay. What about the claim that regularities are not necessary for causation?

Well, some smokers don't get cancer. You know, we say that smoking causes cancer, but everyone can tell the story of my dad, which is that he didn't die till 84 and yet he smoked 60 cigarettes a day since he was 16. And I mentioned the existence of the universe were brought about by a big bang. There seemed to be at least there are exceptions. Sorry, there are causation is correlations to which there are exceptions that we think of as causation.

And also, we looked at miniskirt. Do we not observe causation in the individual case? And so we've got to include this type of non regular causation in our accounts of causation. And how can you do that if he says that causation is regularity? OK. So the solution, okay. So it's woo overdone. So going back to problem one, regularities are not sufficient for causation. How does Hume account for that? Okay, so. He appeals to the well. He doesn't.

We appeal on his behalf to the laws of nature to distinguish between those regularities that are causal and those that aren't. So no law of nature ensures that any male in this audience is a second son. But there is a law that underpins the fact that every child is born with Down syndrome, has Trisomy 21, has a third or a partial third copy of chromosome 21. So it's by appeal to the laws of nature that we say actually it's only regularities that are underpinned by the laws of nature.

Now, if you'll thinking what's the law of nature, that's good. The laws of nature also underpin relations between fall in the atmospheric pressure and a falling barometer. And between the fall and atmospheric pressure and the onset of the storm, no separate law relates these two. So in order for a relation to for a correlation to be a causal correlation, it's got to be underpinned by a law of nature. That's what's so we can distinguish between accidental correlations and causal correlations.

And we can get rid of the first really quite serious problem for Hume's theory. So it's only regularities underpinned by a law of nature that are causal. And for the second problem, the one that says that that regularity isn't necessary for causation. We can insist that it only appears to be the case that this causation without regularity. So Mitchell says and couple of you have already given voice to this objection.

Whatever we identify as the cause of a given effect is in fact only part of the cause. So when we say that the match lit because it was struck. And you rightly point out that actually it wouldn't have lit even though it was struck if there was no oxygen around. Mill says quite right. The striking of the match was only part of the cause. An oxygen was another part of the cause. Another part of the cause was how hard you struck the match.

And so on. So everything that's needed to make the cause sufficient for the effect has got to be in there as part of the cause. So we're partially describing the cause. So we pick out something is the cause when actually it isn't the cause. It's just part of the cause. And Davidson Donald Davidson says whenever we observe a case of causation, we always believe that there is a law. But we don't know what that law is. So we see one thing causing another.

We see causation in the individual case. And we think that if a so you see an individual case of A causing B, but that makes you think that there is a law that somehow means that A was sufficient. Fibi. There's some law that underpins that's happening. If A did cause B, then there's some law of nature that makes it the case that if you were to repeat that a. Exactly. And the same exactly the same circumstances, you would again get a B.

That's what causation is. So we see causation in an individual case or in a few cases, and then later through observation and experiment, i.e. science will discover a regularity. If it's true that A causes B, then if we look hard enough, we will find that there's a regularity underpinning that, a law of nature underpinning of it. Okay. Now how are we doing time wise? OK, now John Mackey argued that individual causes must be at least illness conditions for their effects.

OK. A cause is an illness condition. If and only if that's not a misprint. It means if and only if the former i.e. the cause is an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition of the effect. Now, if you think about again, then the think of a short circuit causing a fire, which is one that he was using.

OK. The short circuit was not sufficient for the fire because there also had to be the flammable material that was sitting around it and the oxygen in the air and things like that. Okay. So the short circuit was insufficient, but it was necessary in that had the short circuit not occurred, the fire would not have occurred. OK, but it was an unnecessary but sufficient condition. It was sorry. Insufficient but necessary part of.

Okay, so the short circuit was part of a set of conditions that were not themselves necessary because the fire might have started for other reasons, but that were, in fact, sufficient for the effect. Can you see how this would work out? I mean, it is very complicated trying to put it like that.

But if you work through this yourself. So you say a short circuit caused a fire and you can work out why the short circuit is insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition of the fire. We can talk about that in a minute. So this is the canonical statement of RTC as used today. C is a cause of V if and only if for some time early as an E notice, we're getting the temporal priority in there.

Causes come before their effects. C belongs to a set of events that occurred at T. That non redundantly suffices for E! In other words, it is sufficient for the effect. And what's more, it was necessary for the effect. And that is a cause of causing to the regularity theory of causation. And next week, we're going to look at a completely different theory of causation. That was for years considered to be a rival to the RTC. So lots of people didn't like the RTC.

But this one came along instead. And what a relief. It's so much better. Or so we thought. Okay, I'm going to stop there and let's. See if we can make sense of that. OK? Is that thoroughly bamboozled you? Oh, yes, that would that would be good, actually. Douglas is going to go around with that with a microphone, if we can find the. Well, actually, there isn't a mike here. Don't worry. People asking questions just have to shout. We'll do that at the end.

So just to recap, what we've done is we've looked at what the causation is, a concept that we have that is absolutely essential to our ability to explain, predict or manipulate the world. And so it's quite simple. What is this causation? What is this causal relation? Hume comes along and says, well, okay. If we look at the way we use the notion of causation in ordinary language, we treatises the concept a necessary connexion.

So if A causes B, then A is sufficient for B, it necessitates B. And then Hume says, but it can't be because we must experience necessity in order to have this idea of metaphysical necessity. Well, if it can't be, what is causation? And he looks at the evidence for causation and what we think and points out that actually it's only a constant conjunction or correlation that we ever use and we could ever use as evidence for causation. And he thinks there is no more to causation than correlation.

No more than constant conjunction. There's no metaphysical underpinning of that constant cause, constant conjunction. Okay, let's let's have a few questions. To go back to your last slide, the last statement, and I wonder if you could just explain what you've done. That one. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's use it again with the short circuit. So there's a fire in a warehouse and the. Where's my pen? And the fireman comes in and he says the short circuit. Caused the fire. OK.

We can, we can. That makes sense to us. We would accept that, especially as the firemen said it. But the and short circuit was that it was not itself sufficient for the fire. Okay. It was insufficient for the fire because if there hadn't been that that flammable material next to it. So that when the short circuit occurred, the flammable material caught fire and uncertain. Okay. So the short circuit caused the fire. But it was not sufficient for the fire.

All these other things were needed as well. But it was necessary for the FA. In other words, had the shot, had the short circuit, not a curve occurred. The fire would not have occurred. Okay. On this day. So. So the reason the farm is saying the short circuit caused the fire is because it's true according to the farm. And that had the short circuit not occurred, the fire would not have occurred. So it's necessary. But it's a.

Hang on. Have I got this the right way round? I'm actually going back to this one. Insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary okay. The total calls. Was sufficient. OK. Because if you combine the short circuit carrying when it did the flammable material beside it, the fact there was oxygen in the air, etc., all of that was sufficient. But the total cause wasn't necessary because the fire might have occurred if some vandals had got in and started it with a match or something like that.

So when the man says the short circuit caused the fire, it's shorthand, if you like, for the short circuit was not itself sufficient for the fire, but it was necessary. And the thing that was sufficient for the fire was the totality of conditions that caused the fire, which, of course, were not necessary for the fire because the fire might have started in other ways. OK. So it's all getting very complicated, but it's only when you get all those conditions in.

OK, so it's so moving. How did that get translated into this? Sometime earlier than see. So the short circuit caused the fire. The fire happened at TI. And the short circuits caused at T minus one. Okay. So the short circuit occurred at T minus one. And the fire occurred at T. So this is set of events. The total cause that occurred t that non redundantly suffices for E. In other words the. Short circuit was necessary.

It wasn't redundant. Don redundantly crucifies go with C on the set of events centres it C builds. Oh, I see, occurring to see. Yes, it's the set of events that non redundantly suffices for tea. But don't worry too much about this canonical statement. And they only I mean, I used to get very fed up reading Macchi. The only thing that you need to note to remember really are these three things. Okay, let's make it really easy for you. Quite properly.

There's no I'm not dumbing down. This is going up too far. You don't need it. Although I've got to say, it says three things you need. What are they? Okay, so Hume says that causation is regularity and also temporal priority and spatial contiguity. But but regularity is the important thing. The problem is that regularity and no causation. And causation and no regularity. OK, that's causation isn't sufficient for regularity and causation isn't necessary for regularity.

Sorry. All the way round. So if your insisting that there's an identity between those two things, then it shouldn't be the case that you have can have one without the other. Should it? Okay. And so the solution is regularity and no causation. The solution is the laws of nature. When you have a regularity that isn't causal, it's because it's a coincidence or something like that. So in order to be causal, it needs to be underpinned by laws.

Law of nature and the other one. You've got to think of total causes. And partial causes, so you may think says causation and no regularity. Because the short circuit has occurred, not every short circuit causes a fire. So why do you think this short circuit causes the fire if it's supposed to be a regularity here? Well, answer you've got to look at the total cause, the whole set of conditions that were sufficient for the effect. Does that help a bit? Surely it's a regular co-occurrence RVO.

The man was the point. Should go. Excellent. You are absolutely right. And I said the point. I introduced it, I said, if you're wondering what a law of nature is. That's a it's a very good question. So if if we were appealing to laws of nature to distinguish causal correlations and non causal correlations, i.e. accidents or two effects of the same cause or something like that. Well, then a law of nature ought to be something different from a regularity, oughtn't it?

And interestingly, the type of account of law of nature doesn't really distinguish between this. What it does is it science will come in and say, okay, every male in this room is a second son and is there a causal relationship there? Now, if all they looked at was the correlation between second sons and here, you would have to say there is a causal relation. But what you would do is you say, well, okay, if there's a law of nature there, it must be the same outside this room.

And so they would try and do it elsewhere. They would try and see. And so actually a law of nature has got to be implicated in our best deductive systems. That's what a law of nature is. So it's a correlation that works over and over again in different places of the world, at different times of the world with different observers, et cetera. So you picked up a very good point.

And it's it's interesting whether it's answered properly by saying that, because do you see that there's nothing but correlations there? It's just the correlations have got to work more generally. You don't need any mechanism. Once again, you're going back to a human idea that there is no more to causation than regularity, but the regularity must be, if you like, scientifically respectable. So Sorensen's has got to establish it happens more often than just in this room.

Does every male in this room is his second son? Could be coincidence. But if every male who ever goes to a lecture anywhere is a second son, that starts to look really quite interesting. I mean, you might start thinking of possible explanations for that. But but if you do find an explanation, it'll be a correlation at a lower level. You can't go straight, speak up in the economical statement of gravity theory. What is it? C which occurs in relation to.

The first billiard ball hitting the other one. And the second one rolling off. Well, surely they're secure simultaneously. Why didn't they do, do they? Well, I mean, there is a question whether there can be I mean, if you miss right, they cannot be simultaneous causation. And lots of people have asked, you know, why there couldn't be simultaneous causation. Is this statement modifiable possibility of simultaneous causation? Because I can't see if if.

Well, you could just say see below. See is the cause of. If and only if C belongs to a set of events, that's non redundantly suffices free. What you could just take the temporal reference out, because in such a case you are describing the totality of the situation in which case cause becomes indistinguishable from the effect. Well, you could say that, yeah. Bob, speak up. Did. Is it thought that Hume had any answers to the questions somebody might have asked him?

What is it that causes the laws of nature to be what they are? Well, you it would be. I mean, Hughan himself didn't talk about laws of nature. It was it was M. who introduced laws of nature in explanation of regularities that are not causal. So you can't really ask him that question. But you could say, well, what is the explanation of this law of nature? And you would look further down and all you would find, if humour is right, is yet another correlation.

So you might be able to find an explanation of one. Correlation in terms of another correlation, and you might be able to find an explanation for that lower correlation in terms of lower correlation. But what you will never find if you miss right, is is a relation that isn't just a regularity. So you'll never find a physical relation, for example. So science will never say are this physical relation is the causal relation?

Because Hume thinks that's doesn't make sense. OK, one more, then we better finish, you know, cause. Well, that that statement make makes. I mean, you can use that in so many different contexts. And I mean, it could be a moral claim or or. But I don't see why he would be saying that. Well, he is saying that that all our ideas come from impressions. But that's not the same as saying that everything is relative. Nothing is absolute.

I mean, I don't know why you would want to say that in this context information. Okay, and you're saying that that means that everything's relative, everything's relative to. Okay. If you want to think of it that way, I would rather not. But I'm not quite sure how you're understanding it, so I'm not quite sure. If I if I can if I can say that you're wrong or indeed that you're right. Okay, let's let's finish there.

Next week, I'll look at the counterfactual theory and you'll find that as we go through looking at the different theories, we'll give you a better grip on what causation is. Altogether. I mean, I hope you won't go away from these lectures knowing what the causation is.