Author's Introduction
- Causal understanding is the cognitive capacity that enables you to think about how things affect and influence each other. It is your concept of making, doing, generating and producing – of causing – that allows you to grasp how the Moon causes the tides, how a virus makes you sick, why tariffs change international trade, the social consequences of a faux pas, and the way each event in a story leads to what happens next. Causal understanding is the foundation of all thoughts why, how, because, and what if. When you plan for tomorrow, wonder how things could have turned out differently, or imagine something impossible (What would it be like to fly?), your causal understanding is at work.
- In daily life, causal understanding imbues your observations of changes in the world with a kind of generativity and necessity. If you hear a sound, you assume something made it. If there’s a dent on the car, you know that something – or someone – must have done it. You know that the downpour will make you wet, so you push the umbrella handle to open it and avoid getting soaked. You watch as an acorn falls from a tree, producing ripples in a puddle.
- The human power to view cause-and-effect as part of ‘objective reality’ (a philosophically fraught idea, but for now: the mind-independent world ‘out there’) is so basic, so automatic, that it’s difficult to imagine our experience without it. Just as it’s nearly impossible to see letters and words as mere shapes on a page or a screen (try it!), it is terrifically challenging to observe changes in the world as not involving causation. We do not see: a key disappearing into a keyhole; hands moving; door swinging open. We see someone unlocking the door. We don’t see the puddle, then the puddle with ripples-plus-acorn. We see the acorn making a splash.
- Most people don’t realise that any of this is a cognitive achievement. But, in fact, it is highly unusual. No other animal thinks about causation in the hyper-objective, hyper-general way that we do. Only we – adult humans – see the world suffused with causality. As a result, we have unparalleled power to change and control it. Our causal understanding is a superpower.
- The scientific story of how our causal minds develop features another superpower: human sociality. It’s our unique sensitivity to other people that lets us acquire our special causal understanding. The story also raises questions about ‘other minds’. If our causal understanding is the exception, rather than the rule, then how does the world show up for other animals? If we try to suspend the causal necessity that structures so much of our experience, what’s left over?
- I’m going to suggest that what remains is our experience of doing – a value-laden, first-personal and inherently interactive perspective. It is in this involved, participatory ‘point of do’ – as opposed to a detached, objective point of view – that the seeds of higher cognition take root.
- Appreciating that our original perspective is action-oriented and goal-directed can also help us understand our own shortcomings – and how to change them.
Author's Conclusion
- Our collective capacity to make new choices about what to do with all our power will determine the fate of our species. The thing that’s so scary and frustrating and hard is that it seems out of our control. It’s bigger than any one of us – far beyond the scale of goal-directed action we evolved to consider.
- Here’s why I’m hopeful. I think we can use our causal understanding to intervene in our own behaviour. For one, we know that it’s highly flexible. Even primary school children can learn about the complex causal relations involved in ecosystems, food chains and structural inequality – this can provide guidance for education, storybooks and children’s media. We also know about the power of sociality – the power of highlighting variables for one another. Friends and family are an influential source for developing habits around causal factors that affect our own health (like exercise, diet and microplastics) and the planet’s (like eating meat, composting and sustainable consumer practices). The more we talk to each other about these difference-makers, the more these actions can echo and amplify, species-wide.
- Finally, causal understanding is rooted, originally, in our values – things we want. The most primal causal learning happens by aiming at things we want to make happen. This means that optimistic, action-oriented suggestions are probably more effective than doom and gloom. My favourite recent instance of human causal imagination is the book What If We Get It Right? (2024) by the marine biologist and climate activist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. In it, Johnson invites us to imagine the future we want to live in, and shoot for it – each in our own way, in our own communities. We already have a lot of solutions, she says; we just need to scale, spread and use them.
- With that in mind, I think there’s hope. It’s only a small step from What if we get it right? to What can I do?
- Let’s get doing!
Author Narrative
- Mariel Goddu is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stanford University in California. From 2012-22, she was a practising cognitive scientist, focusing on causal reasoning in early childhood. She earned her first PhD in developmental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. Her philosophical work lies at the intersection of philosophy of action, biology, and mind.
Notes
- An interesting Paper, but one I found a little confusing. As the author points out in reply to a Comment, 'The essay is concerned with the *psychological* development of human causal understanding –– not with causation, itself'.
- There's rather a negative view of animals' powers of causal reasoning.
- One the Paper moves on to our control of the environment, it diverts into something of a final environmentalist rant.
- There are several sensible Aeon Comments - with some extensive replies by the author with links to further material.
- I need to read this Paper again; it was too complex to absorb while walking Bertie.
- It relates to my Notes on Causality, Psychology, Animals
Comment:
- Sub-Title: "Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect"
- For the full text see Aeon: Goddu - Suffused with causality.
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- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
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