Causation: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

I feel smarter after reading this great short introduction, and I very much enjoyed the thinking it promoted.

If you want a book that calls into question whether one really knows anything about anything this is the book for you. (Everyone who wants to do their own thinking needs to spend some time questioning fundamental ideas.)Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum are two first rate philosophers who have written one of the most important books I've ever read. They write clearly and with wit. One can learn a whole lot about Causation in a very short amount of time with this book.Causation is as fundamental an idea as there is and this book makes will, without doubt, increase one's understanding of it. Among other things it's a great shortcut to understanding David Hume's most important philosophical contributions. (I recommend also studying Hume separately as Hume was a fascinating fellow).The thing about causation is that it's not directly observable and, therefore, deserves to be questioned. If you want to understand more about that this is the book for you.If I ruled the world I would have Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum get busy writing Very Short Introductions to Ontology and Epistemology which would help make my philosophical life more complete.

The biggest lacking when talking about physics is that only examples of conservative systems are presented, in which by time can be reversed. Examples from thermodynamics and in particular on irreversible system could be more suitable to address causation. Moreover, the concept of entropy, and hence of information, seems to be closer to the concept of causation, as it changes unidirectionally as the system evolves, and information is probably the physical quantity that transfer during a causation event.

I bought this book (in Kindle format) in the hope of gaining some practical insights as to how one should, and how one should not, do a causation analysis. If your interest is practical, you probably won't find this book helpful. For a start, the title is misleading. This is less a book about causation than a book about the HISTORY of thinking about causation - in other words, it is more philosophical than scientific. In a pedantic way, the authors summarize what various philosophers have had to say about the abstract concept of causation, including Aristotle, Hume, Locke, and so on. To oversimplify only a bit, first the authors present an outdated theory, then they critique what is wrong with it. While it can certainly be helpful to study the history of philosophy (and I generally enjoy that), this reads more like a tedious textbook than a concise summary. It also contains a number of scientific errors that do not help the authors' credibility. For instance, they write, "Who would have thought that the penicillin bacterium could have cured so many ills ...?" but penicillin is not a bacterium - it is a mold.I own more than a dozen books in the series, and found the others to be very good or excellent. Not this one.It does have one redeeming feature, however: it is, indeed, very short - which is a good thing because it's a tough read.

Causation is the foundation of law, science and, in most cases, religion and human culture. But are two events that occur together really related as cause and effect? Hume proposed that the only justified relationship we could draw between such events was that they occurred together. Actual causes escape observation. However, this destroys the idea of liability, criminal culpability, and free will. What philosophical options are there? An Oxford Professor leads this discussion step by philosophical step.Having already studied causation and having contributed a paper to this discussion many years ago, I was curious to find out if there were any earth-shaking new ideas. I found none.While the twists and turns of this discourse may be entertaining to a student of the history of philosophy, I susect many will find it bewildering.

I'm giving this little book 5 stars not because it was so profound or contributed in any significant way to metaphysics but because it accomplishes what it sets out to do, cover the approaches to the subject of cause and causation from a metaphysical and epistemological perspective, and does it rather well. There is not too much to be said here. The material is easily accessible to anyone with a smattering of philosophy background. Nothing technical, no math or symbolic logic, just a good description of various causal theories beginning with Aristotle and Hume (they set the foundations), and while examining what works and doesn't work, particularly with Hume, moves into exploring every other basic causal theory and how they relate to one another.

Quite nice for beginners, just as promised by the title... it skimms through the basic concepts and prominent names in the field.

Indeed, a very short introduction :) quite useful if you know almost nothing about the subject and don't have time for a heftier volume. However, I would have probably enjoyed a more updated view and examples.Overall, quite good if you don't have more than a couple of hours, but if you do I'd rather suggest "Causality: Philosophical Theory meets Scientific Practice" by Illari & Russo...

This book feels like someone took random paragraphs from various sources and threw them together as "chapters". At 120 pages, this is a very long introduction and the reader expects the authors to pick the plums out of this immense topic and give a crystal clear sense of how the field is structured so that the reader can continue on their journey knowing at least that. You have to present the information in an order that makes sense if you don't know anything ! This is not what this book does, the authors have not distilled their topic enough to give a good summary, or their are not good writers, or the publisher has severely edited the text.On every page it feels like the authors are basically holding back, as if they fear the reader is too stupid to be told things in their full glory. The implications are not stated: "ok, so what?", is how this book makes you feel.There are 20 page articles on google scholar about the history of causality that give a much better impression of the field in a fraction of the length, for free.If you've ever read a book of absolute clarity like Peter Singer on Hegel or David Papineau in Philosophical Devices, this one by Mumford & Anjum on causation is as clear as mud.

Causation: A Very Short Introduction delivers on its promise to provide an overview of the key theories of causation. The first five chapters describe theories of causation inspired by philosopher, David Hume. Along the way, the authors point out challenges with each. Then we move onto four alternative theories (physicalism, pluralism, primitivism, dispositionalism). A short final section addresses how we identify causation in the real world.For me, the book is a bit heavy on the philosophy and light on the practical. The authors state upfront that philosophers, "approach the problem [of causation] in the abstract while scientists encounter it in its concrete instances". How do scientists measure and understand these concrete instances in the real world? The final section of the book, which address this question, felt like an afterthought. The authors could have expanded this section with some interesting examples.I came to this book with no prior knowledge of the theories of causation, so I enjoyed the read. If you like thinking about fundamental questions--like what is causation?--you will enjoy it too.

I don't know why I so thoroughly enjoyed this book and why I think other readers would, too. Really, I don't know. I haven't got the faintest idea. My impression is that it's because I have a history of enjoying easy-to-read stuff about subjects I find complex. But regular occurrences of one phenomenon (history of enjoying) don't guarantee their future occurrences. Perhaps it's in my genes, that it's part of evolution, and that the reason why I thought it so good can only be explained by understanding all phenomena that ever occurred, from time immemorial, the Big Bang. Or perhaps I'm somehow disposed to enjoy it, that there are some powers within me (or the book?) that are enlivened by my reading it?Or perhaps all of the above? As I said, I really don't know. Curiously, though, before I read the book I wouldn't have had any problem explaining the phenomenon I'm now experiencing, that I liked it. I would have said: well written, interesting subject, funny, short. These, I would have thought, were the causes for my liking it. Now I believe, how could I be sure these are in fact causes, and how can I explain the effect? Clearly, I wouldn't have written this review had I not read it, so at least there is something for certain here: the book did make a difference. But even this, the authors question, so I reduce my liking it to the one thing that I can observe. Here it comes, this is what it did: it revealed my ignorance about causes and effects, and the underlying concept, causation itself.In other words: this is a great introduction to causation to the lay reader, and one which is both funny and thought-provoking. It appears all (or most) key concepts of causation are discussed, dissected, and finally refuted. And then ... the authors attempt but conspicuously fail to come up with convincing refutations of the last of these concepts, dispositionalism. Now, this is the view which the authors themselves seem to subscribe to. Fortunately, they do this non-refutation, if there is such a thing, with humour, by the claim that this is a "powerful theory". Reading the book and the chapter, readers will understand that the phrase contains at least double meanings, one of which is "powerful" as in "yes, this is probably how we should talk about causation; the best way, really". The second meaning is, "Dispositionalism means accepting that before causes, powers lay." In that conspicuous chapter title, part of the greatness of the book is evident: it is explanatory, clever, but by no means pretentious.Another way of reading the book is to look at it as a refutation of the philosopher David Hume's concept of causation. Hume's is the first concept introduced, and it appears over and over again, as the point of reference. Understanding causation is understanding why Hume's wrong, so to speak. And so we really have, in a very short intro to causation, also a short intro to David Hume's thoughts. Which makes me wonder, what caused the authors' problem with Hume? That he was a Scot, or that he produced the most compelling account, ever, of causation?

I enjoy thinking about philosophical issues and I found this book interesting and clearly written. It didn’t make the topic of causation less mysterious for me and I feel it is one of those things that can’t be explained at a fundamental level - it just is a feature of our world as we perceive it, hard-wired into the way we think. The book, perhaps, might have said more about how science deals with the subject using experimental methods, statistical analysis and the investigation of underlying mechanisms.

In a comparatively short space this book covers the paradoxes and allusiveness of pin pointing exactly what is meant by a cause. Starting with Hume's challenge the argument reflects whether his proposals can be sustained in the light of contemporary science and philosophy.