The current pandemic has focused attention on the techniques used by epidemiologists and other non-experimental scientists to infer causal hypotheses from correlational data. I have previously argued* that we need to explain these techniques by reducing causal relationships to dependencies in systems of structural equations with probabilistically independent exogenous variables. In this talk I shall aim to use this account to cast light on (a) single-case counterfactual dependence and actual causation, (b) the content and practical relevance of generic causal claims like “smoking causes cancer”, (c) the temporal asymmetry of causation, and (d) the proper understanding of rational action under risk.
*In particular, I’ve argued this in http://weebly-file/1/8/5/5/18551740/stat_nat_csn_monist.pdf. I will also be giving a talk on it at the CUNY Logic and Metaphysics workshop on Monday 7 March 1615-1815.
The talk will be on Zoom. All are welcome to attend!
The zoom link will be distributed through the MAPS mailing list. If you are not on the MAPS mailing list and would like to receive the Zoom link for the talk, please email nyphilsci@gmail.com.
Poets and singers in a number of medieval vernacular languages reached non-native audiences and inspired speakers of other languages to compose in theirs; and many imagined their compositions enjoying a universality similar to that of cosmopolitan languages like Latin and Arabic. An interesting rationalization of these aspirations can be discerned in a short verse narrative of a well-known episode in the youth of Alexander the Great, conqueror of India, together with his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. Not only does it involve Greeks and Indians singing French songs and cosplaying French lovers, but the philosopher is induced to pretend to be a horse and then justifies his behavior as “natural,” with far-reaching implications which this talk will explore.
Sarah Kay is Professor Emerita in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University and Life Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In Spring 2023, she is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Columbia Society of Senior Scholars.
This talk is presented by the Columbia Maison Française, Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, The Society of Senior Scholars, the Department of Music, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies.