Causality and Probability
Here’s something to think about: in our brave new quantum world, any physical event predicate you choose has some nonzero chance of occurring. Yet, even then, not every imaginable cause for such an event’s occurrence is self-consistent. So, for example, while there is an infinitesimal, non-zero chance that the Green Party will win the next Presidential election, there is absolutely no chance that the Green Party will win the next Presidential election because they got fewer than 2% of the vote. Another cause must have contributed to this strange occurrence. If we cared to, theoretically, it would be possible to enumerate the possible causes of every event, and it is possible to identify cause-groups which are not sufficient - no matter what - and probability doesn’t enter into it.
This is an intuitive expression of why I think causality is a really interesting and useful concept. However, I haven’t thought about it enough to say for sure that it’s not wrong. I’d appreciate your thoughts below.
