Causation & Modality
in Logic & Language

Workshop, Monday 22 May 2023

Location: Bushuis, Room F1.01B

09:30 – 09:50 Welcome, coffee & snacks

09:50 – 10:30 Dean McHugh (Amsterdam)

10:30 – 11:10 Mingya Liu (Berlin)

11:10 – 11:40 Coffee break

11:40 – 12:20 Angelica Hill (Amherst)

12:20 – 13:00 Sander Beckers (Amsterdam)

13:00 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 15:10 Ivano Ciardelli (Padua)

15:10 – 15:50 Bridget Copley (Paris)

15:50 – 16:20 Coffee break

16:20 – 17:00 Prerna Nadathur (Ohio)

17:00 – 17:40 Thomas Icard (Stanford)

18:00 – 19:30 Drinks and snacks, Kapitein Zeppos

19:45 Workshop dinner, Hemelse Modder

All times above are local Amsterdam time
(Central European Summer Time; UTC+2)

Programme

Causation and Modality

Dean McHugh

This is a light introduction to my PhD thesis, Causation and Modality (available here). The thesis aims to answer two questions in the analysis of causation. The modelling question: what kind of information do we use when we judge that a causal claim holds? In other words, what information should a causal model contain? And the meaning question: under what conditions is a causal claim true or false? That is, what do causal claims mean?

Our answer to the modelling question is that a causal model must contain time, part–whole structure and nomic possibility. The part–whole structure tells us, for example, that the state of Amsterdam is part of the state of the Netherlands. Nomic possibility specifies which worlds satisfy the laws of nature and which do not. In addition, the model contains two language-related compoenents: for each sentence, the model tells us what part of the world the sentence is about, and in which worlds it is true.

We use these components to analyse how people construct hypothetical alternatives to reality. For it is commonly thought that the truth of a causal claim depends not only on what goes on in the actual world, but on what happens in some hypothetical scenarios as well. For example, when we evaluate Alice missed her flight because she got stuck in traffic, we imagine scenarios where she is stuck in traffic and scenarios where she is not and compare what happens in each.

We compare this modelling framework to a popular alternative, that of structural causal models, showing that our framework can represent some instances of causal reasoning  which structural causal models cannot.

Our answer to the meaning question appeals to two relations: sufficiency and production. We propose that the meaning of cause and because is a blend of these: C cause E and E because C are true just in case C is true, and C is sufficient for C to produce E  but C's negation is not.

Bias in Conditionals

Mingya Liu

The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following Giannakidou & Mari (2021), we assume “nonveridical equilibrium” (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In the talk, I will present experimental work on various modal elements (e.g., adverbs, modal verbs and conditional connectives) that create bias in conditionals (Liu, 2021; Liu & Wang 2021; Liu, Rotter & Giannakidou, 2021).

Two Peas in a Causal Pod: Testing the relationship between modals and causatives

Angelica Hill

Cross-linguistically circumstantial-modal and causative meanings can arise productively in the same morphological causative construction (Ilič 2013, 2014). However, their semantics remain somewhat independent (Kratzer, 1977,1981,1991; Pylkkänen, 2008). In this paper, I explore the relationship between modal and causative meaning by conducting recall priming experiments, in which the goal is to test whether causative constructions (made: "The doctors made the nurses operate”) can prime the rate at which people insert a circumstantial modal (had to: “The nurses had to operate”) when recalling a control sentence (simple past: “The nurses operated with the doctor.") that originally did not have a modal nor causative construction. Results indicate that this morphological observation is more than a mere coincidence, and perhaps ought to be accounted for in the semantics of both constructions. I provide a blueprint for such an amendment, though the full-blown formal account is currently a work in progress. The novel methodology employed in these experiments puts into question what it means to be able to “prime meanings” and lends itself to the broader discussion about the distinction between the processing of semantics and cognition more generally. The objective of this project is to understand exactly what the boundary is between modal thought and causal reasoning, and what methods can be used to determine whether or not we have sufficient reasons to adjust such a boundary.

Causal Sufficiency and Actual Causation

Sander Beckers

Pearl opened the door to formally defining actual causation using causal models. His approach rests on two strategies: first, capturing the widespread intuition that X = x causes Y = y iff X = x is a Necessary Element of a Sufficient Set for Y = y, and second, showing that his definition gives intuitive answers on a wide set of problem cases. This inspired dozens of variations of his definition of actual causation, the most prominent of which are due to Halpern & Pearl. Yet all of them ignore Pearl’s first strategy, and the second strategy taken by itself is unable to deliver a consensus. This paper offers a way out by going back to the first strategy: it offers six formal definitions of causal sufficiency and two interpretations of necessity. Combining the two gives twelve new definitions of actual causation. Several interesting results about these definitions and their relation to the various Halpern & Pearl definitions are presented. Afterwards the second strategy is evaluated as well. In order to maximize neutrality, the paper relies mostly on the examples and intuitions of Halpern & Pearl. One definition comes out as being superior to all others, and is therefore suggested as a new definition of actual causation. 

Counterfactuals, minimal change, and aboutness

Ivano Ciardelli

When we make a counterfactual assumption, we consider a range of counterfactual scenarios. How are these scenarios generated? Since the work of Stalnaker and Lewis, the leading view has been that they are generated by minimizing departure from the actual state of affairs with respect to some metric. In recent joint work, I have given an argument against this idea, which has been met with a response on behalf of the minimal change approach. In this talk, I will reiterate the challenge with the help of examples in Dean’s thesis. I will advocate a different way of thinking about the process of making counterfactual assumptions, exemplified by the theory developed in Dean’s dissertation. On this approach, the focus is not on minimising departure from actuality, but on determining what aspects of the world the assumption is about.

What Futurates Tell us about Meaning

Bridget Copley

Futurates are sentences that have future reference in the absence of future-oriented morphology, as in (1). They have a “planned” or “settled” flavor, as shown by the fact that the sentences in (2) are infelicitous:

(1) a. I make the coffee tomorrow.
b. The Red Sox play the Yankees tomorrow.

(2) a. #I get sick tomorrow.
b. #The Red Sox beat the Yankees tomorrow.

"Natural" or "clockwork" futurates also exist; they can describe settled eventualities but not unsettled ones:

(3) a.  The sun rises tomorrow at 5:48.
b.  #It rains tomorrow at 5:48.

Futurates have complex meaning with seemingly no  morphemes to express it, which makes them ideal for an investigation into how meaning and form relate to each other.

In this talk I appeal to futurates to argue that (i) intentional and dispositional meanings are similar enough to be expressed via the same forms , and (ii) complex dispositional meaning can be entailed by denotations that only express parts of it. 

Modeling progress: causal models and the imperfective paradox
(joint work with Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Prerna Nadathur

Prominent accounts of the imperfective paradox link the truth of non-culminating telic progressives (Nur was writing a novel) to the modal accessibility of culmination alternatives introduced by an intensional progressive operator (PROG).  This approach faces empirical challenges from acceptable progressives of unlikely-to-succeed events (e.g., cross a minefield) as well as from progressives in 'out of reach' contexts, where culmination is precluded by reference-time facts.  We propose that telic predicates are instead sensitive to structure inherited from an event type introduced by (telic) predicate P: this is constituted by a formal causal model in which P's culmination condition C occurs as a dependent variable.  The model provides a set of causal pathways for realizing C (comprising sets of jointly sufficient conditions for C) as well as (sets of) conditions which preclude C.  On this approach, the progress of an actual (token) P-eventuality can be measured with respect to the event type itself.  A reference time situation s satisfies PROG(P) just in case it is a plausible cross-section of an incomplete causal pathway in P.

By assigning the intensional element of 'paradox' effects to the internal structure of telic predicates, this account delivers improved judgements for challenging paradox data.  Looking ahead, it suggests a new approach to the denotation of eventuality predicates, on which familiar aspectual class properties can be derived from features of (language-independent) causal models which capture common-sense intuitions and idealizations about how the world works.

Logical Problems of Causal Inference

Thomas Icard

The aim of this talk will be to explain how problems of causal inference can be usefully and precisely understood as logical problems. Causal inquiry introduces novel angles on traditional themes in logic, and in the other direction, logic offers tools for clarifying questions in the theory of causal inference.