The illusion of causation

Taken by me at the Strassenindustriemuseum-in Ennepetal, Germany

Causation is only in the mind. That is what Hume thinks, as we have seen in my blog three weeks ago. As Hume states (see my blog): “When we say … that one object is connected with another, we mean only, that they have acquired a connexion in our thought…” and we have no idea, whether in reality such a connection is a causal one or something different. This made me conclude my blog by saying: When the vase falls to the ground just at the moment that the crow caws, it is only in our mind that the latter causes the former (or the other way round). This conclusion does not only summarize Hume’s view but it suggests also that the mind tends to construct causal connections between events that in fact haven’t any relation at all. Indeed, as psychology has shown, humans have a predilection for causal thinking, even between events that have nothing to do with each other, such as that at the same moment that a crow caws a vase falls to the ground. It will be clear that this predilection can lead to serious mistakes. It is also the basis for much superstition and for conspiracy theories as well.
Read, for instance, this sentence (the next passage is mainly based on Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp. 74-78; 114-118):
After spending a day exploring beautiful sights in the crowded streets of New York, Jane discovered that her wallet was missing.
Many people will think that there is a causal connection between the crowd in the streets of New York and that Jane was missing her wallet, in the sense that a pickpocket had robbed Jane. Nevertheless, several other options are possible, like
- Jane simply lost her wallet
- Jane left her wallet in a restaurant.
“However,” so Kahneman, “when the idea of lost wallet, New York, and crowds are juxtaposed, they jointly evoke the explanation that a pickpocket caused the loss.” That a pickpocket would have stolen the wallet is a hasty conclusion.
Also the post hoc propter hoc fallacy, which I discussed here long ago, is a case in point: The thinking that because one thing happened after another, the first thing caused the second. It is related to the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, i.e. the false argument saying that if two facts or events happen to take place together, one is the cause of the other. (mentioned in the same blog; see also my blog on the conjunction fallacy)
In a book published in 1945, the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte, so Kahneman, attacked the Humean idea that we infer physical causation from repeated observations of correlations among events. (see also my blog “Humean causation”). Instead, Michotte argued that we see causality, just as directly as we see colour. Experiments have shown that already six-month-old infants do. “We are evidently ready from birth to have impressions of causality, which do not depend on reasoning about patterns of causation”, so Kahneman (p. 76). In short, we can say that we have an illusion of causality or causation, an illusion that can lead to serious mistakes, as we have seen.
Is it really so that causation is only in the mind? I have my doubts that there is not such a thing as causation in nature. How could we play billiards, if causation would be only an idea in the mind? How could we make something happen if there was no causation? Why would nature do what is in our minds, simply because it is in our minds, like moving a billiard ball when it is touched by another billiard ball? As James Woodward says somewhere: We use medicines because of their effects. The medicines and their effects are connected, and the connection is real and not only in the mind. Or take the photo series that I used for my blog “Humean causation”. The photos are stills from a video. I touched there a domino in order to make a row of dominos tip over. It was not only an idea in my mind but the event was recorded by a smartphone. The first domino tipped over, because I touched it; the second domino did, because the first domino touched it; etc. Doesn’t this exemplify that causation is a real phenomenon and not only something in the mind?