I think I find myself confused about it means for something to have a “single root cause.”Having not thought about it too much, I personally currently think the idea looks conceptually confused. I am not a philosopher; however here are some issues I have with this conception:
1. Definitional boundaries
First of all, I think this notion of causation is kinda confused in some important ways, and it’d be surprising to have discrete cleanly-defined causes to map well to a “single root cause” in a way/idea that is easy for humans to understand.
2. Most things have multiple “root causes”
Secondly, in practice I feel like mostly things I care about are due to multiple causes, at least if 1) you only use “causes” as defined in a way that’s easy for humans to understand and 2) you only go back far enough to causal chains that are possible to act on. For example, there’s a sense of the root cause of factory farming obviously being the Big Bang, but in terms of things we can act on, factory farming is caused by:
1) A particular species of ape evolved to have a preference for the flesh of other animals.
2) That particular species of ape have a great deal of control over other animals, and the external environment
3) Factory farming is currently the technology that can produce meat most efficiently and cost-effectively.
4) Producers of meat (mostly) just care about production efficiency and cost-effectiveness, not animal suffering.
5) The political processes and coordination mechanisms across species is primarily through parasitism and predation rather than more cooperative mechanisms.
6) The political processes and coordination mechanisms within a particular species of ape is such that it is permissible for producers of meat to cause animal suffering.
… (presumably many others that I’m not creative/diligent enough to list).
How do we determine which of the 6+ causes are “real” root causes?
From what I understand of the general SJ/activism milieu, the perception is that interventions that attempt to change #6 counts as “systemic change,” but interventions that change #1, #2 (certain forms of AI alignment), #3 (plant-based/clean meat), #4 (moral circle expansion, corporate campaigns), #5 (uplifting, Hedonistic Imperative) do not. This seems awfully suspicious to me, as if people had a predetermined conclusion.
3. Monocausal diagrams can still have intervention points to act on, and it’s surprising if the best intervention point/cause is the first (“root”) one.
Thirdly, even if you (controversially, in my view) can draw a clean causal diagram such that a bad action is monocausal and there’s a clean chain from A->B->C->...->{ bad thing}, in practice it is still not obvious to me (and indeed would be rather surprising!) if there’s a definitive status of A as the “real” root cause, in a way that’s both well-defined and makes it such that A is uniquely the only thing you can act on.
Maybe by “root cause”, they mean causes that are common to many or even most of the world’s worst ills (and also that can be acted upon, as you suggest)? You write a joint causal diagram for them, and you find that oppression, exploitation, hierarchy and capitalism are causes for most of them and fairly unique in this way.
Are there other causes that are so cross-cutting (depending on your ethical views)?
1. Humans not being more ethical, reflective and/or rational.
2. Sentient individuals exist at all (for ethical antinatalists and efilists).
3. Suffering is still physically possible among sentient individuals (the Hedonistic Imperative).
I really like the conception of thinking of root causes in terms of a “joint causal diagram!” Though I’d like to understand if this is an operationalization that leftist scholars would also agree with, at the risk of this being a “steelman” that is very far away from the intended purpose.
I think there aren’t many joint root causes since so many of them are less about facts of the world and depend implicitly on your normative ethics. (As a trivial example, there’s a sense in which the root cause of poverty, climate change and species extinctions is human population if you have an average utilitarian stance, but for many other aggregative views, trying to fix this will be abhorrent).
Some that I can think of:
1. A world primarily ruled by humans, instead of (as you say) “more ethical, reflective and/or rational” beings.
1a. evolution
1b. humans evolving from small-group omnivores instead of large-group herbivores
2. Coordination problems
3. Insufficient material resources
4. Something else?
I also disagree with the idea that “capitalism”(just to pick one example) is the joint root cause for most of the world’s ills.
A. This is obviously wrong compared to something like evolution.
B. Global poverty predates capitalism and so does wild animal suffering, pandemic risk, asteroid risk, etc. (Also other problems commonly talked about like racism, sexism, biodiversity loss)
C. No obvious reason why non-capitalist individual states (in an anarchic world order) would not still have major coordination problems around man-made existential risks and other issues.
D. Indeed, we have empirical experience of the bickering and rising tensions between Communist states in the mid-late 1900s.
I also disagree with the idea that “capitalism”(just to pick one example) is the joint root cause for most of the world’s ills.
A. This is obviously wrong compared to something like evolution.
B. Global poverty predates capitalism and so does wild animal suffering, pandemic risk, asteroid risk, etc. (Also other problems commonly talked about like racism, sexism, biodiversity loss)
C. No obvious reason why non-capitalist individual states (in an anarchic world order) would not still have major coordination problems around man-made existential risks and other issues.
D. Indeed, we have empirical experience of the bickering and rising tensions between Communist states in the mid-late 1900s.
A leftist might not claim capitalism is the only joint root cause. But to respond to each:
A. Can’t change the past, so not useful.
B. This isn’t a counterfactual claim about what would happen if we replaced capitalism with some specific different system. Capitalism allows these issues, while another system might not, so in counterfactual terms, capitalism can still be a cause. (But socialist countries were often racist and homophobic. So socialism doesn’t solve the issue, but again, many of today’s (Western?) leftists aren’t only concerned with capitalism, but also oppression and hierarchy generally, and may have different specific systems in mind.) I don’t know to what extent leftists think of causes in such counterfactual terms instead of historical terms, though.
C. Leftists might think certain systems would be better than capitalist ones on these issues, and have reasons for those beliefs. For what it’s worth, systems also shape people’s attitudes or attitudes would covary with the system, so if greed is a major cause of these issues and it’s suppressed under a specific non-capitalist system, this might partially address these issues. Also, some leftists want to reform the global world order, too. Socialist world government? Leftists disagree on how much should be top-down vs decentralized, though.
D. Not the systems they have in mind anymore. I think a lot of (most?) (Western?) leftists have moved onto some kind of social democracy (technically still capitalist), democratic socialism or anarchism.
I think I find myself confused about it means for something to have a “single root cause.”Having not thought about it too much, I personally currently think the idea looks conceptually confused. I am not a philosopher; however here are some issues I have with this conception:
1. Definitional boundaries
First of all, I think this notion of causation is kinda confused in some important ways, and it’d be surprising to have discrete cleanly-defined causes to map well to a “single root cause” in a way/idea that is easy for humans to understand.
2. Most things have multiple “root causes”
Secondly, in practice I feel like mostly things I care about are due to multiple causes, at least if 1) you only use “causes” as defined in a way that’s easy for humans to understand and 2) you only go back far enough to causal chains that are possible to act on. For example, there’s a sense of the root cause of factory farming obviously being the Big Bang, but in terms of things we can act on, factory farming is caused by:
1) A particular species of ape evolved to have a preference for the flesh of other animals.
2) That particular species of ape have a great deal of control over other animals, and the external environment
3) Factory farming is currently the technology that can produce meat most efficiently and cost-effectively.
4) Producers of meat (mostly) just care about production efficiency and cost-effectiveness, not animal suffering.
5) The political processes and coordination mechanisms across species is primarily through parasitism and predation rather than more cooperative mechanisms.
6) The political processes and coordination mechanisms within a particular species of ape is such that it is permissible for producers of meat to cause animal suffering.
… (presumably many others that I’m not creative/diligent enough to list).
How do we determine which of the 6+ causes are “real” root causes?
From what I understand of the general SJ/activism milieu, the perception is that interventions that attempt to change #6 counts as “systemic change,” but interventions that change #1, #2 (certain forms of AI alignment), #3 (plant-based/clean meat), #4 (moral circle expansion, corporate campaigns), #5 (uplifting, Hedonistic Imperative) do not. This seems awfully suspicious to me, as if people had a predetermined conclusion.
3. Monocausal diagrams can still have intervention points to act on, and it’s surprising if the best intervention point/cause is the first (“root”) one.
Thirdly, even if you (controversially, in my view) can draw a clean causal diagram such that a bad action is monocausal and there’s a clean chain from A->B->C->...->{ bad thing}, in practice it is still not obvious to me (and indeed would be rather surprising!) if there’s a definitive status of A as the “real” root cause, in a way that’s both well-defined and makes it such that A is uniquely the only thing you can act on.
Maybe by “root cause”, they mean causes that are common to many or even most of the world’s worst ills (and also that can be acted upon, as you suggest)? You write a joint causal diagram for them, and you find that oppression, exploitation, hierarchy and capitalism are causes for most of them and fairly unique in this way.
Are there other causes that are so cross-cutting (depending on your ethical views)?
1. Humans not being more ethical, reflective and/or rational.
2. Sentient individuals exist at all (for ethical antinatalists and efilists).
3. Suffering is still physically possible among sentient individuals (the Hedonistic Imperative).
I really like the conception of thinking of root causes in terms of a “joint causal diagram!” Though I’d like to understand if this is an operationalization that leftist scholars would also agree with, at the risk of this being a “steelman” that is very far away from the intended purpose.
Still it’s interesting to think about.
I think there aren’t many joint root causes since so many of them are less about facts of the world and depend implicitly on your normative ethics. (As a trivial example, there’s a sense in which the root cause of poverty, climate change and species extinctions is human population if you have an average utilitarian stance, but for many other aggregative views, trying to fix this will be abhorrent).
Some that I can think of:
1. A world primarily ruled by humans, instead of (as you say) “more ethical, reflective and/or rational” beings.
1a. evolution
1b. humans evolving from small-group omnivores instead of large-group herbivores
2. Coordination problems
3. Insufficient material resources
4. Something else?
I also disagree with the idea that “capitalism”(just to pick one example) is the joint root cause for most of the world’s ills.
A. This is obviously wrong compared to something like evolution.
B. Global poverty predates capitalism and so does wild animal suffering, pandemic risk, asteroid risk, etc. (Also other problems commonly talked about like racism, sexism, biodiversity loss)
C. No obvious reason why non-capitalist individual states (in an anarchic world order) would not still have major coordination problems around man-made existential risks and other issues.
D. Indeed, we have empirical experience of the bickering and rising tensions between Communist states in the mid-late 1900s.
A leftist might not claim capitalism is the only joint root cause. But to respond to each:
A. Can’t change the past, so not useful.
B. This isn’t a counterfactual claim about what would happen if we replaced capitalism with some specific different system. Capitalism allows these issues, while another system might not, so in counterfactual terms, capitalism can still be a cause. (But socialist countries were often racist and homophobic. So socialism doesn’t solve the issue, but again, many of today’s (Western?) leftists aren’t only concerned with capitalism, but also oppression and hierarchy generally, and may have different specific systems in mind.) I don’t know to what extent leftists think of causes in such counterfactual terms instead of historical terms, though.
C. Leftists might think certain systems would be better than capitalist ones on these issues, and have reasons for those beliefs. For what it’s worth, systems also shape people’s attitudes or attitudes would covary with the system, so if greed is a major cause of these issues and it’s suppressed under a specific non-capitalist system, this might partially address these issues. Also, some leftists want to reform the global world order, too. Socialist world government? Leftists disagree on how much should be top-down vs decentralized, though.
D. Not the systems they have in mind anymore. I think a lot of (most?) (Western?) leftists have moved onto some kind of social democracy (technically still capitalist), democratic socialism or anarchism.