Lien Y, Cheng P W
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Cogn Psychol. 2000 Mar;40(2):87-137. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1999.0724.
Two opposing views have been proposed to explain how people distinguish genuine causes from spurious ones: the power view and the covariational view. This paper notes two phenomena that challenge both views. First, even when 1) there is no innate specific causal knowledge about a regularity (so that the power view does not apply) and 2) covariation cannot be computed while controlling for alternative causes (so that the covariation view should not apply), people are still able to systematically judge whether a regularity is causal. Second, when an alternative cause explains the effect, a spurious cause is judged to be spurious with greater confidence than otherwise (in both cases, no causal mechanism underlies the spurious cause). To fill the gap left by the traditional views, this paper proposes a new integration of these views. According to the coherence hypothesis, although a genuine cause and a spurious one may both covary with an effect in a way that does not imply causality at some level of abstraction, the categories to which these candidate causes belong covary with the effect differently at a more abstract level: one covariation implies causality; the other does not. Given this superordinate knowledge, the causal judgments of a reasoner who seeks to explain as much as possible with as few causal rules as possible will exhibit the properties that challenge the traditional views. Two experiments tested and supported the coherence hypothesis. Both experiments involved candidate causes that covary with an effect without implying causality at some level, manipulating whether covariation that implies causality has been acquired at a more abstract level. The experiments differed on whether an alternative cause explains the effect.
关于人们如何区分真实原因和虚假原因，出现了两种对立的观点：能力观点和共变观点。本文指出了两种挑战这两种观点的现象。第一，即使在以下两种情况下：1）对于一种规律性不存在先天的特定因果知识（因此能力观点不适用），2）在控制其他原因的同时无法计算共变（因此共变观点不应适用），人们仍然能够系统地判断一种规律性是否具有因果关系。第二，当一个替代原因解释了该效应时，人们会比其他情况更有信心地判断一个虚假原因是虚假的（在这两种情况下，虚假原因都不存在因果机制）。为了填补传统观点留下的空白，本文提出了对这些观点的一种新的整合。根据连贯假设，尽管一个真实原因和一个虚假原因在某种抽象层面上可能都与一个效应共变，但这种共变并不意味着因果关系，然而这些候选原因所属的类别在更抽象的层面上与该效应的共变方式不同：一种共变意味着因果关系；另一种则不然。鉴于这种上位知识，一个试图用尽可能少的因果规则来解释尽可能多现象的推理者的因果判断将表现出挑战传统观点的特性。两项实验对连贯假设进行了检验并提供了支持。两项实验都涉及在某种层面上与一个效应共变但不意味着因果关系的候选原因，同时操纵在更抽象层面上是否获得了意味着因果关系的共变。这两项实验的不同之处在于是否有一个替代原因解释了该效应。
