by From Asad Zaman Underlying Philosophy of Science Many important structures of the real world are hidden from view. However, as briefly sketched in previous lecture on Ibnul Haytham: First Scientist, current views say that science is only based on observables. Causation is central to statistics and econometrics, but it is not observable. As a result, there is no notation available to describe the relationship of causation between two variables. We will use X => Y as a notation for X causes Y. Roughly speaking, this means that if values of X were to change, then Y would have a tendency to change as a result. This is not observable for two separate reasons. ONE because it is based on a counterfactual. In another world, where the value of X was different from what was actually observed in
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from Asad Zaman
Underlying Philosophy of Science
Many important structures of the real world are hidden from view. However, as briefly sketched in previous lecture on Ibnul Haytham: First Scientist, current views say that science is only based on observables. Causation is central to statistics and econometrics, but it is not observable. As a result, there is no notation available to describe the relationship of causation between two variables. We will use X => Y as a notation for X causes Y. Roughly speaking, this means that if values of X were to change, then Y would have a tendency to change as a result. This is not observable for two separate reasons. ONE because it is based on a counterfactual. In another world, where the value of X was different from what was actually observed in our current world, this change would exert pressure on Y to change. TWO X exerts an influence on Y, but there are other causal factors which are also involved. Thus Y might not actually change in the expected direction because the effect of X might be offset by other causal factors which we have not accounted for. For both of these reasons, causality is not directly observable.
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