As an inherent limit of this statistical tool, we could not prove causation but just identify association and adjust confounding factors one to the other.
So, to echo a question that lingers today, just what is causation?
What Malebranche needs to establish, then, is the claim that causation just is necessary efficaciousness, and the pressing question for Malebranche is how he can defend this claim.
It is supposed to be a metaphysical analogue of causation: just as causation is what connects the explanans of an explanation with its explanandum in causal explanation, grounding is meant to be what connects the explanans of an explanation with its explanandum in metaphysical explanation.
There is an implicit appeal, here too, to the "potter" model of causation: just as, in the sentence "The potter makes the pot", the property "….making the pot" resides in the potter, so too in "I believe that p", the property "….believes that p" resides in me.
5. Correlation and Causation: Just because two things are related does not mean that one caused the other.
Mental causation is just not a problem for me.
2) does the study show causation or just correlation?
If, as many people now believe, the fundamental laws are probabilistic rather than deterministic, this doesn't mean that there is no causation; it just means that we have to revise our theories of causation to fit the facts.
Rosenberg argues that his new envisioning of the PNS as a purely physical law allows us to better understand the lower level origins of apparently higher level causes, thus revealing that "the appearance of 'downward causation' is just that: mere appearance".
