So I should clarify a bit more. We can understand causality as the following: A causes B iff an intervention on A alters the value of B. The concept of ‘intervention’ is doing the work here. Agency theories reduce ‘intervention’ to possible actions of free agents. I prefer Pearl’s approach which fails to reduce the concept of intervention to non-causal concepts but a) doesn’t obviously fail to actually describe our concept of cause the way the agency approach does and b) is a lot more illuminating. However, that doesn’t mean our concept of intervention doesn’t have any element of agency to it or that the two are entirely distinct. At the least, it seems plausible our evolved understanding of causality is interconnected with our evolved concept of agency, even if causality can be discussed mathematically in isolation.
An intervention on the fine structure constant is more mysterious to me than an intervention on the velocity of a pool ball- and it isn’t necessarily just one being within my current capabilities and the other not. And for obvious reasons understanding a first cause under a manipulationist approach is really sketchy.
So I should clarify a bit more. We can understand causality as the following: A causes B iff an intervention on A alters the value of B. The concept of ‘intervention’ is doing the work here. Agency theories reduce ‘intervention’ to possible actions of free agents. I prefer Pearl’s approach which fails to reduce the concept of intervention to non-causal concepts but a) doesn’t obviously fail to actually describe our concept of cause the way the agency approach does and b) is a lot more illuminating. However, that doesn’t mean our concept of intervention doesn’t have any element of agency to it or that the two are entirely distinct. At the least, it seems plausible our evolved understanding of causality is interconnected with our evolved concept of agency, even if causality can be discussed mathematically in isolation.
An intervention on the fine structure constant is more mysterious to me than an intervention on the velocity of a pool ball- and it isn’t necessarily just one being within my current capabilities and the other not. And for obvious reasons understanding a first cause under a manipulationist approach is really sketchy.