Perspectives on Causation: Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 2017 Workshop PDF
Preview Perspectives on Causation: Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 2017 Workshop
Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal Nora Boneh Editors Perspectives on Causation Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 2017 Workshop Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science SeriesEditors OrlyShenker,TheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem,TheSidneyM.Edelstein CenterfortheHistoryandPhilosophyofScience,TechnologyandMedicine NoraBoneh,TheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem,Language,Logic andCognitionCenter,ThelinguisticsDepartment JerusalemStudiesinPhilosophyandHistoryofSciencesetsouttopresentstateof theartresearchinavarietyofthematicissuesrelatedtothefieldsofPhilosophyof Science, History of Science, and Philosophy of Language and Linguistics in their relationtoscience,stemmingfromresearchactivitiesinIsraelandthenearregion and especially the fruits of collaborations between Israeli, regional and visiting scholars. Moreinformationaboutthisseriesathttp://www.springer.com/series/16087 Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal • Nora Boneh Editors Perspectives on Causation Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 2017 Workshop Editors ElitzurA.Bar-AsherSiegal NoraBoneh Language,LogicandCognitionCenter, Language,LogicandCognitionCenter, TheDepartmentofHebrewLanguage TheLinguisticsDepartment HebrewUniversityofJerusalem HebrewUniversityofJerusalem Jerusalem,Israel Jerusalem,Israel ISSN2524-4248 ISSN2524-4256 (electronic) JerusalemStudiesinPhilosophyandHistoryofScience ISBN978-3-030-34307-1 ISBN978-3-030-34308-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34308-8 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof thematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation, broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionorinformation storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Preface Causation stands at the heart of all sciences, and as such, philosophers, linguists, andcognitivescientistsseektounderstandtheexactnatureofthisconceptandhow causalstructuresarerepresentedinthehumancognitivesystems. The philosophical models have been a central motor and a constant point of reference in how thought and to some extent methodology in other disciplines have been shaped. For example, linguists often borrow philosophers’ analyses of causation and assume that the relevant linguistic expressions denote such concepts.Similarly,psychologistsandcognitivescientistsputtothetestmodelsof causation in investigating central cognitive competencies such as causal learning and reasoning. The connections between the disciplines, however, are definitely not unidirectional. Philosophers, for example, occasionally seek insights from the linguistic literature in understanding what yields certain interpretations of causal statements.Similarly,othertypesofinteractionscanbesought:cognitivepsycholo- gistsmaybenefitfrombeinginformedbylinguisticanalysesintheirexplorationsof specific human behavior involving language. And of course, linguists may benefit fromcognitiveinvestigationsthatcanbebroughttobearonquestionspertainingto domaingeneralityoflanguage,takingcausationanditslinguisticencodingtobea studycase. These broad considerations served as the framework for an interdisciplinary encounter held in June 2017 at the Language, Logic and Cognition Center at the HebrewUniversityofJerusalem,wherescholarsfromthethreedisciplinesattended theworkshopLinguisticPerspectivesonCausation.Thisworkshopaimedtobring together cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers in order to explore furtherhowthedifferentdisciplinescanbebeneficialandinstructivetooneanother. Theselectionofpapersgroupedinthisvolumestemsfromthetalkspresentedat thatworkshop,representingawiderangeofanglesonthestudyofcausationinthe three abovementioned disciplines. To reflect this, the papers are organized in five parts. In what follows, we present the structure of the book, briefly describing the papersconstitutingit. Part one, titled Perspectives on Causation, concentrates on points of junction between philosophical and linguistic studies on causation. It consists of papers by v vi Preface Bar-Asher Siegal & Boneh and by Hitchcock. The adoption of central concepts from classic philosophical accounts to causal relations by linguists stands at the heartofBar-AsherSiegal&Boneh’spaper.Thispaperscrutinizestowhatextent thephilosophicalconceptsareapplicableforlinguisticanalysesofvariouscausative constructions. In turn, it also critically evaluates cases in which philosophical discussionsseekinsightsfromjudgmentsthatareprimarilylinguisticwhendealing with the metaphysics of causation. In its panoramic perspective on causation and causative constructions, and with its consideration of the meeting points between disciplines,thisfirstchaptercanalsobereadasanintroductiontothevolume,since itlocatestheotherpapersofthisbookinthediscussionsitsurveys. Hitchcock’spaperpointstothediscrepancybetweenwhatlookslikethebinary representationofcausationinlanguageandthewaycausalrelationsaremodelledin theframeworkofthestructuralequationmodel,wheresuchrelationsaresensitiveto multiplevariables.Heaskshowwesuccessfullycommunicateaboutcausalrelations giventhisdiscrepancy. The papers of the second part, grouped under the title Methodology: Uncov- ering the Representation of Causation, propose novel methodologies for study- ing representations of causation. Bellingham, Evers, Kawachi, Mitchell, Park, Stepanova & Bohnemeyer’s paper presents preliminary findings of the project CausalityAcrossLanguages.Whereas,usually,linguisticstudiespresupposesome implicit semantic criterion to what should be included under the category of “causativeconstructions,”thisstudyproposestobeginfromasystematicobserva- tionofhowspeakersofdifferentcommunitiescommunicateaboutvariouscognitive concepts.Itproposesseveralmethodologiesforexploringproduction,comprehen- sion,andconceptualizationofcausationacrossasampleoflanguages.Theirstudies payparticularattentiontoculturalinfluencesandcrosslinguisticdifferences,when subjects are presented with various visual scenarios, and judge what they have been shown. The preliminary results are relevant for inquiries interested in causal pluralism,subcategoriesofcausation(e.g.,physicalvs.abstract),andcrosslinguistic differences between causative constructions and issues pertaining to lexicalization vs.pragmaticenrichmentinthelinguisticrepresentationofcausation. In turn, the paper by Hagmayer & Engelmann traces the way people ask questions in order to get or give explanations. The goal of their experiments is to gaininsightsintothevalidityoftwogroupsofcognitive-psychologicaltheoriesof causalexplanations,dependency-relatedandmechanistic,theassumptionbeingthat the different theories require different types of knowledge for causal explanation. This paper provides a good overview of current cognitive-psychological theories forhowpeopleexplainfacts,anditsoriginalityliesinthemethodology:theauthors allowparticipantstoaskunguidedquestionsseekingexplanations,whichareinturn theobjectofaquantitativeanalysis,unlikethestandardmethodologyofpresenting subjectswithinformationandthenaskingthemtojudgeorevaluate. Thenexttwopartsofthebookarededicated tolinguisticanalysesofcausative constructions.ThepapersinpartthreerevolvearoundthetopicofMeaningCom- ponentsofCausation.Eachofthefourpapersinittacklesphenomenapertainingto centralinquiriesinlexicalsemanticsandinsodoingdealwithavarietyofessential Preface vii questions in the literature, among them, event causation, direct causation, internal causation, zero-change and defeasible causation, and the agent/causer distinction. ThepaperbyCroft&Vigusiscouchedinaforcedynamicsframework.Itextends the first author’s seminal theory of argument realization, where causation serves as an organizational factor in lexical semantics, to cases in which one finds event nominalsinsteadofindividualparticipantsasargumentsofthepredicate.Basedon acrosslinguisticinvestigation,thispaperarguesthateventnominalscorrespondto participant sub-events, which are in turn realized according to the same rules as participantsinthecausalchain. Levin’s paper provides support for the prototypical conception of direct causa- tionintheliteraturebyexaminingresultativepredicatesintransitiveconstructions, bothwhenthedirectobjectNPisselectedbythemainverbandincaseswhereitis not.Itshowsthatthenotionofdirectcausation,intermsofabsenceofintervening participantthatappliesinthecaseofsimplexcausativeverbs,alsoholdshere.The constructions are of interest since they represent concealed causatives, and at the same time, they behave similarly to sentences with lexical causative verbs, with respecttodirectcausation.Thisobservationraisesafundamentalquestionregarding causativeconstructions:whatisthesourceofthecausativecomponentinthem?–a questionthatcanbeofinteresttoscholarsoutsideoflinguisticsaswell. Next,RappaportHovav’spaperunderminesthelinguisticvalidityofthewidely accepted division between internally and externally caused change of state verbs. This division relies on the assumption that the so-called internally caused verbs appear as intransitives only – lacking an external cause. The author demonstrates that what has been accepted in the literature as rigid generalizations is, in fact, merelyatendency.She,consequently,claimsthatitdoesnotreflectanygrammatical propertyofchangeofstateverbs.Instead,thedataproposevariousgeneralprinci- ples that govern lexical causatives and the (non)appearance of cause arguments, whichshapethistendency. In the last paper of this part, Martin elucidates, on the basis of experimental studies in Mandarin, French, and English, the crosslinguistic tendency for zero- change use of causative predicates to occur with an agentive subject contrary to a causesubject,oranintransitiveverb,wherezero-changedoesnotarise.Itproposes twotypesofargumentsintroducingheadsandconsidersindetailhowtheycombine withtheVPsinlanguageswithweakperfectivesandincaseswheretheverbhasa sub-lexicalmodalcomponent,yieldingdefeasiblecausatives.Thispaperintroduces different ways in which causal relations are represented in the syntax and how it affectsthesemanticsofsuchconstructions. The last point regarding Martin’s paper can also serve to introduce the fourth partofthebook,titledSyntacticandSemanticAspectsofCausation,asthefirst two papers by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou and Ahdout, as well as Doron’s, deal with the distinction between agent and causer and its adequate linguistic representation.Allpapersinthispartarguethat,atleastatthesyntacticlevel,causal relationsarerepresentedinmorethanoneway. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou discuss the syntactic properties of subjects of a subclass of psychological predicates (e.g., interest) and claim that there is a viii Preface syntactic distinction between the types of causers they license: agents introduced by Voice and causers introduced in the specifier position of vP, assimilating the latter to internally caused causative verbs. Contrary to Martin’s semantic account that distinguishes agent from causers, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou claim that causersformonesyntacticdomainwiththeresultstateconstituent,whereasagents do not. This difference in structure, according to them, also explains the patterns observed with defeasible causatives with coerced psychological predicates. Their accountalsoadvocatesinfavorofsyntacticindistinctnessinencodingcausationin thephysicalandpsychologicaldomains. Ahdout in turn describes a phenomenon known as agent exclusivity effect in nominalizationsofcausativeverbs.Ithasbeenshown,mainlyonthebasisofdata drawn from English, that agents in this syntactic environment are licit, whereas causes are not. Previous work has provided syntactic analyses to account for this effect, claiming that agent and cause are attached in constructions of different sizes and therefore can or cannot fit in nominalizations. Other accounts sought the difference in the type of Voice head available. On the basis of new data from Hebrew, Ahdout shows that like in Greek, Romanian, and German, the agent exclusivity effect can be overridden with cause-PPs, therefore casting doubt on previousanalyses.Thispaper,likethetwopreviousones,makesclearthatatsome level of representation, agents and causes are different. An interesting question raised here is whether causation can be taken to be a meaning primitive or rather isreadoffthestructurepost-syntactically. Next, Nash’s paper is concerned with the syntactic and lexical semantic prop- erties of embedded causees in Georgian. Her central claim is that in neither of the constructions, the causee is realized as an agent, even if it is an agent in the simple, unembedded, verb. The paper surveys ways in which the agent argument is “demoted” when it surfaces as the causee in these causative constructions. In particular, the paper unveils subtle differences between types of causativized transitive verbs and provides a novel discussion of causativized unergatives. The investigationofthesyntacticandlexicalsemanticpropertiesoftheseconstructions proposes a take on the issue of direct vs. indirect causation by analyzing the structuralandsemanticpropertiesofanintervening eventparticipant,between the causerandtheeffect.Interestingly,inrelationtothemaindiscussionintheprevious threepapers,Georgian,atleast,doesnotdistinguishbetweenagentsandcausersat thestructurallevel. Returning to psychological predicates, Doron distinguishes between two sub- classesofverbs,realizingdifferentlythecausercomponent,takentobeanargument, rather than a relational element. One subclass consists in a two-place relation between the experiencer argument and the T/SM argument, where the cause brings about the relation; the other subclass is a one-place property predicate, the experiencerargumentbeingthesubject.Inthisanalysis,thecauseargumentvaries initsinterpretationaccordingtoitsbroaderenvironment.Thepapergoesontoshow thatthesetwosubclassesarenotparticularorspecialtothepsychologicaldomain; rather,theypatternlikestativephysicalpredicates. Preface ix Lastly,Charnaveldepartsfromtheotherauthorsinthispartinfocusingonthe connectives because and since rather than on the lexical properties of verbs. She proposesthattheseconnectivesconstituteattitudecontextsintroducingajudgefrom whose perspective the causal relation between the content of the main clause and that of the adjunct clause is evaluated. The paper argues that the causal judge is syntacticallypresent.Itisshown,onthebasisofdatacollectedinexperiments,that the causal judge is introduced as an argument of the connective and is identified through exhaustive binding by the closest relevant attitude holder in the sentence, which is either the speaker alone or the speaker together with a relevant animate event participant. This depends on the site of adjunction of the because and since phrase,allowinginthefirstcase,butnotinthesecond,ananimateeventparticipant tobetheattitudeholdercontrollingthejudge. The closing fifth part contains two papers concerned with Philosophical InquiriesonCausationbyStathamandKment.Statham’spapersurveysrecent advances in philosophical thinking about causation and causal reasoning, paying particular attention to those models construing causation reasoning as deviation fromthenorm.SimilarlytoHitchcock,thispaperalsoconsidersandevaluatesthe structural equation model as a powerful system for representing causal systems. Considering causal relations through deviation from the norms leads the author to break from the tradition that bases the metaphysics of causation on insights fromthephysicalandnaturalworldoflaws,independentofhumanconcerns.One consequence of this is the enrichment of the traditional classification of types of clausal claims customarily distinguishing type and token claims and taking only tokens to be deviant, whereas types are always normal. The novel proposal in the paperisthatthesecategoriesofclaimsareorthogonal,andtherefore,onecanalso encounterdevianttypes.Thepaperinvitesfurtherinvestigationofthequestionhow thetypologicalabundanceofcausalrelationsmadeavailablebytherecentmodels can inform linguistic research and more generally the issue of sub-types of causal locutions. Kment’s paper criticizes the standard view, attributed to Lewis, according to which, causal relationships are defined by counterfactual dependency. Instead, he argues that counterfactual dependence provides evidence for causal connections but does not constitute them. That is, counterfactual reasoning is only useful for establishingcausalclaims,andnaturallawsandpasthistoryareneededtoestablish anewclaimaboutrelationshipsof(actualtoken)causation.Thispaperisinlinewith the literature in philosophy and in linguistics, according to which, counterfactual statementsareaccountedforbycausalrelations,sincepriorknowledgeisrequired forestablishingsuchclaims.Inthissense,itelucidatesthatoneisnotreducibleto theother. Whilethisprefaceprovidesonewayofgroupingthepapersthematically,various otherwayscouldbethoughtof,accordingtoseveralrecurrenttopicsthroughoutthis book,regardlessofthedisciplineofeachchapter.Wewillbrieflymentionsome,so astoproposeideasforotherpossibleinquiresacrossdisciplines. Many discussions in this volume can be read with the fundamental question in mindofwhetherandhowcausalitycanbereducedtoothernoncausalterms(Croft
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