luhmann-ppc-comment

Psychological Review Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association2005, Vol. 112, No. 3, 685–693 0033-295X/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.112.3.685The Meaning and Computation of Causal Power: Comment on Cheng(1997) and Novick and Cheng (2004)Christian C. Luhmann Woo-kyoung AhnVanderbilt University Yale UniversityD. Hume (1739/1987) argued that causality is not observable. P. W. Cheng (1997) claimed to present “atheoretical solution to the problem of causal induction first posed by Hume more than two and a halfcenturies ago” (p. 398) in the form of the power PC theory (L. R. Novick & P. W. Cheng, 2004). Thistheory claims that people’s goal in causal induction is to estimate causal powers from observablecovariation and outlines how this can be done in specific conditions. The authors first demonstrate thatifthenecessaryassumptionswereevermet,causalpowerswouldbeself-evidenttoareasoner—theyareeither 0 or 1—making the theory unnecessary. The authors further argue that the assumptions the powerPC theory requires to compute causal power are unobtainable in the real world and, furthermore, peopleareawarethatrequisiteassumptionsareviolated.Therefore,theauthorsarguethatpeopledonotattemptto compute causal power.Keywords: causal induction, causal power, power PC theory, reasoningHume (1739/1987) argued that causality is not present in our occasionsonwhichthecausewaspresentbutfailedtobringaboutexperienceandthattheconceptionofresultsfrominduc- ...