Causation & Ethics

Causation is a matter of Ethics, not science.

A man drinks some vodka, and soon after starts a fight in the pub, concerning a political point.

So what's the cause?

• The man claims the vodka was the cause, and he should stop drinking vodka.
• The barman claims the man was the cause of the fight.
• The man's friends note that a number of fights have started due to politics, and conclude that discussing politics causes fights.

People point and blame things which they want to change. The man blames the vodka in order to not blame himself. His friends have a similar tactic, but offer a tantalizing solution which promises to stop many fights in the future. The barman just wants to not deal with that guy again.

So we have many causes, but which one's the 'real' cause? Or, to cut to the heart of the question, what method do we use to determine a proper cause from an improper cause? When I actually try to find a method to determine the cause of an outcome and apply it to different questions of cause-and-effect, the only one that sticks is this:

What should you change when you want to change the outcome?

If a friend insists on taking a shortcut home through a dangerous area at night, we might warn them not to. We want to change the potentially dangerous outcome by changing their behaviour, and telling them to avoid the danger seems the best way of them avoiding it. However, a local newspaper reports that someone attacked them because they walked through a dangerous area at night, suddenly the cause might shift: the cause suddenly becomes the people in the park who attack people, and possibly inept police, or useless politicians. It seems like a sudden contradiction when nothing has changed. However, the conversation has changed dramatically; from any point-of-view which a newspaper might take, any number of things might change which could prevent that dangerous place where people attack anyone wandering alone.

If you're late for work because of the snow, then it sounds scientifically acceptable, but it never is. If everyone else expects snow in December, and you simply didn't prepare, then the cause isn't snow, it's a lack of foresight. The cause is you. But if it snows in April, then that's different. You can't do anything, so we blame the snow in order to signal that we're not changing our behaviour, and nobody's to blame.