PHI403 Lecture 04 — What's in a Correlation?

A diagnostic of the regularity theory that anchors correlational science. Hume (Treatise, 1739) identified causation with constant conjunction — a view "still alive and well" in evidence-based decision-making.

The lecture distinguishes five types of correlation (co-variance, plain regularity, stable proportion, invariance, constants) and five possible causal conclusions from a correlation (A→B, B→A, common cause, mutual causation, no causal link — the last exemplified by divorce in Maine × margarine in US, r = 0.997).

Bradford Hill's nine criteria — temporal priority, consistency, strength, specificity, plausibility (mechanism), etc. — are introduced as the standard statistical toolkit. The lecture notes that some criteria are statistical and some ontological, and that statisticians' effort to separate genuine from accidental regularities tacitly concedes that causation is more than regularity — a tension between the methodological "correlations first" and the ontological "nothing over and beyond correlations".

Connections

Back-link: sources/2023-anjum-rocca-phi403-causation-in-science. Concepts: concepts/regularity-theory-of-causation · concepts/causation · concepts/mechanisms-in-science.