Quantifying Causal Contributions in Earth Systems by Normalized Information Flow

To understand the plethora of important processes that are characterized by their complexity, from global pandemics to global climate change, it may be critical to quantify causal contributions between time series variables. Here, we examine an empirical linear relationship between the rate of changing causes and effects with various multipliers. Sign corrected normalized information flow (nIFc) tends to provide the best estimates of causal contributions, often in situations where such causality is poorly reflected by regressions. These include: i) causal contributions with alternating feedback (correlation) sign, ii) significant causal time-lags, iii) significant noise contributions, and iv) comparison among many causes to an overall mean effect, especially with teleconnection. Estimates of methane-climate feedbacks with both observational and Earth system model CESM2 data are given as examples of nonlinear process quantification and model assessment. The relative causal contribution is hypothesized to be proportional to |nIF|, i.e. the ratio between entropy (degree of uncertainty) received from the cause-variable (i.e. information flow, |IF|) and the total entropy change of the effect-variable. Large entropy, associated with noise, deteriorates the estimates of total entropy change, and hence nIF, while the proportional relationship between the relative causal contribution and IF improves.

How Pills Undermine Skills: Moralization of Cognitive Enhancement and Causal Selection

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of cognitive enhancement alleviate concerns about its unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization.

Using process tracing to evaluate stakeholder disputes: The case of tender award dispute in Nepal’s forestry

In donor aid programs, the claims of causal links between inputs and outputs are crucial to establish the effectiveness of aid. As a result, there has been ample research on the degree and direction of correlation and causality between aid and poverty reduction. While evaluating end outcomes has its merits, this article aims to assess how some donor aid programs come under early criticism and/or are dropped or modified in order to ensure their continuation. This article examines a tender award dispute in a forestry program in Nepal, and traces the causal contribution of actors and actions that obstructed and changed the decisions related to the program implementation plan of this multi-million-dollar initiative. The article employs the process tracing method to search, collect, and assess evidence on the tender dispute case of the selected program. By tracing the logical sequence of evidence, this study establishes causality, linking the hypothesized causes and their effects to explain how the tender award decision that was announced by the lead donor and endorsed by the Government of Nepal was eventually nullified.

Thomas Aquinas on How the Soul Moves the Body

It is uncontroversial that Thomas Aquinas has a hylomorphic account of both living and non-living beings. Yet some of his views about living beings, and especially his view that souls (including animal and plant souls) are movers of their bodies, seem to depart from his account of soul as a substantial form, taking a step in the direction of dualism. In this paper, I will (1) propose a new reading of what Aquinas means in calling the soul the mover of the body, and (2) distinguish the causal contribution of souls from that of inanimate substantial form on the one hand and from the action of spiritual substances on the other. The key to my interpretation will be a close analysis of vital motions as self-motions, which is the basis for Aquinas’s attributing a mover role to the soul in the first place.

Causation and Liability

This chapter is concerned with whether it makes a difference to a person’s liability to avert a threat whether she caused that threat or causally contributed to it. It argues against the view that causation is necessary for liability. It tentatively argues for the significance of causation to liability. It then considers a wide range of versions of the view that the magnitude of a person’s causal contribution affects the magnitude of her liability. It does so by exploring different ideas that people might have in mind when they claim that some causal contribution to a threat is greater or lesser. It defends mostly sceptical conclusions. In some cases, the magnitude of a person’s causal contribution to a threat may make a difference to her liability to defensive harm. But where this is true, it is normally because causation is relevant to something else, such as moral responsibility, that affects liability.