If the presence of trait A precedes the presence of trait B
You mean preceeds in time? What if A is my paternal grandfather’s eye color (black), and B is my eye color (black)? Our eye color is correlated due to common ancestry, and A preceeds B in time. But A does not cause B. There are lots of correlated things in the world due to a common cause, and generally one of them preceeds another in time.
You can’t talk about correlation and time like that. I think the only thing we can say is probably macroscopic retrocausation should be disallowed.
The way interventionists think about effects is that the effect of A on B in a person C is really about how B would change in a hypothetical person C’ who differs from C only in that we changed their A. It’s not about correlation, dependence, temporal order, or anything like that.
You mean preceeds in time? What if A is my paternal grandfather’s eye color (black), and B is my eye color (black)? Our eye color is correlated due to common ancestry, and A preceeds B in time. But A does not cause B. There are lots of correlated things in the world due to a common cause, and generally one of them preceeds another in time.
You can’t talk about correlation and time like that. I think the only thing we can say is probably macroscopic retrocausation should be disallowed.
The way interventionists think about effects is that the effect of A on B in a person C is really about how B would change in a hypothetical person C’ who differs from C only in that we changed their A. It’s not about correlation, dependence, temporal order, or anything like that.