A comment on arguments of mental model theory of causation

ABSTRACT

Causation is a complex concept. No single monistic theory of causation is likely to account for it (Wolff, P. (2014). Causal pluralism and force dynamics. In B. Copley, F. Martin, & N. Duffield (Eds.), Forces in grammatical structures: Causation between linguistics and philosophy). Nonetheless, mental model theory (MMT) claims to provide a unified account of causal representation and inference. In MMT, a singular causal claim “A caused B” has a deterministic meaning referring to three temporally ordered possibilities: A and B, not-A and B, not-A and not-B. No internal components such as mechanisms, powers, or dependencies are part of the core meaning of causal claims. It is argued that MMT’s attempts to refute counterexamples to its proposals are manifestly inadequate. Theoretically, the all-encompassing ambition of MMT make it so flexible as to be trivial. Technically, the term “modulation” is an unanalyzed and self-inconsistent concept. Moreover, in many situations, mental models are redundant for causal representation and inference. MMT’s monistic-deterministic view cannot capture the full complexity of causation.

KEYWORDS:

• Causal determinism
• mental model theory
• modal concept
• causal pluralism

Acknowledgements

We would like to give our sincere thanks to Mike Oaksford and Simon Stephan and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Because this article is a short theoretical comment, there was no available data.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Yin (2022) revealed that the models themselves are not sufficient (a) to discriminate causal from noncausal sequences, (b) to distinguish “cause” from “enabler,” and (c) to fix a particular causal assertion among several legitimate options--the same mental model can have multiple causal descriptions.

2 We make no strong claim that the crucial role of mechanism playing in causal inference must implant in causal meaning although these two questions closely intertwine with each other (Ahn & Kalish, 2000; Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2009). However, it is MMT’s duty to unambiguously explicit why in people’s mind the important benefactor in causal inference loses its legality in causal meaning.

3 In their articles MMT did not drew this distinction, rather at some places they made a mixed use of the two processes. However, if we do not separate them, it is then hard to understand what they mean by, on one hand, saying “other factors are not the part of core meaning” and on the other hand they say models of knowledge take precedence over models of causal assertions.

4 Though many theorists objected to characterize the concept of CAUSE, as well as ENABLE in terms of necessity or sufficiency (e.g., Cheng & Novick, 1992; Wolff & Song, 2003; Wolff & Zettergren, 2002), MMT, at its own core, actually defines causal concepts in this way (see also Wolff, 2007).