Eve Tushnet writes

"Social science in many ways depends on moral philosophy. In deciding how to measure causation and what to control for you’re making judgments about which causal mechanisms you are willing to consider and which situations you consider equivalent." (emphasis mine, citation below)

That last sentence really captures one of the nuances that I have been pondering for the last several years.  

While the culture in which we find ourselves may shove us in one direction or another regarding such things as 

• what foods are "breakfast foods" or 
• whether or not we think farming or computer coding is a more prestigious job or 
• whether we think spanking is an appropriate form of discipline...
• (to name 3 of a near infinite number of particulars)

How the culture informs us about such things as causal connection and equivalency is much more important, because it is almost undetectable, and therefore more powerful. The fact is that our culture, and indeed our history in many ways dictates what we think is "right" when we are "making judgments about which causal mechanisms you are willing to consider and which situations you consider equivalent".  This puts words to something I have been thinking about, and feeling a bit disturbed about for quite a while.  

Rightly or wrongly, I have settled on, as one of my points of particular interest, 15th-17th century Europe, it's philosophical influence through its writers and events, and it's direct influence on groups of individuals who, in response to diverse stimuli, ended up landing in America and forming our society in response to the old societies which they left. I believe they have been primary influences that dictated to those of us who came after how we would make those judgements about causal mechanisms and equivalencies.

The downside is that I think they got it wrong.  

The upside is that I have begun to see it.  

And that is sobering, but helpful.

Alfred North Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World suggests:

"Do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which controversialists feel it necessary explicitly to defend.  More important and more telling for the deep understanding of a culture are the fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose.  Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming.  Indeed, they do not know that they are assuming anything, because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them."

I think that what we perceive as causation, and what we consider equivalent is one of those deeply rooted assumptions that we do not understand as being an assumption.  And I think we should consider them deeply.

Citation: <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/three-kinds-of-argument-on-family-structure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=three-kinds-of-argument-on-family-structure>. Accessed 8/15/12