© 2002 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Against Modularity, the Causal Markov Condition, and Any Link Between the Two: Comments on Hausman and Woodward
1 Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England. Email: philcent{at}lse.ac.uk
In their rich and intricate paper ‘Independence, Invariance, and the Causal Markov Condition’, Daniel Hausman and James Woodward ([1999]) put forward two independent theses, which they label ‘level invariance’ and ‘manipulability’, and they claim that, given a specific set of assumptions, manipulability implies the causal Markov condition. These claims are interesting and important, and this paper is devoted to commenting on them. With respect to level invariance, I argue that Hausman and Woodward's discussion is confusing because, as I point out, they use different senses of ‘intervention’ and ‘invariance’ without saying so. I shall remark on these various uses and point out that the thesis is true in at least two versions. The second thesis, however, is not true. I argue that in their formulation, the manipulability thesis is patently false and that a modified version does not fare better. Furthermore, I think their proof that manipulability implies the causal Markov condition is not conclusive. In the deterministic case it is valid but vacuous, whereas it is invalid in the probabilistic case.
1 Introduction
2 Intervention, invariance and modularity
3 The causal Markov condition: CM1 and CM2
4 From MOD to the causal Markov condition and back
5 A second argument for CM2
6 The proof of the causal Markov condition for probabilistic causes
7 ‘Cartwright's objection’ defended
8 Metaphysical defenses of the causal Markov condition
9 Conclusion
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