Other authors have proposed more direct arguments for deriving the causal asymmetry from assumptions made in the foundations of thermodynamics, than the one developed by Albert and Loewer, arguing that we can derive the common cause principle and thereby the direction of causation directly from the assumption of initial probabilistic independence. While on Albert and Loewer’s account the causal asymmetry is ultimately grounded in the probability postulate, they attempt to derive this asymmetry via a somewhat circuitous route. In fact, since, according to Noether’s First Theorem, there is a conservation law associated with each continuous symmetry property of a system, there seems to be a clear formal route for locating causal claims within physics. It is important here, too, to be clear on what is at stake in the debate. There is also an active debate in the literature on how the causal and thermodynamic asymmetries relate to various epistemic asymmetries, such as an asymmetry of records or an asymmetry concerning our epistemic access to the past and to the future. This debate is far from settled. From a functionalist perspective, defenders of a causal picture and defenders of a probabilistic account can be understood as emphasizing two different aspects that both are integral features of causal models: an initial independence assumption and directed causal relationships among variables.

In particular, the initial randomness assumption can be used to break the symmetry between the retarded and advanced Green’s functions for hyperbolic equations: Causal model constructed with retarded Green’s functions as structural equations satisfy the probabilistic independence assumption required in the structural model framework, while putatively causal models constructed with "anti-causal" or advanced Green’s functions violate the probabilistic independence assumption, since in such models the highly correlated variables characterizing a system’s final state functions as exogenous variables. What speaks for retaining faithfulness is that it is a central assumption in many causal discovery algorithms. By contrast, Wood and Spekkens show that if we hold on to the Markov condition, then violations of faithfulness have to be a generic feature of quantum causal systems that violate the Bell inequalities. But out of the zillions of state-spaces of experience, why expect the state-space of phenomenally-bound experience that inorganic quantum computers hypothetically support will include hedonic tone? Now science can explain why one law operates in some narrow area, in terms of the operation of a wider law in the particular conditions of that narrow area. There are two reasons why the Paley Commission's
predictions were topsy-turvy: First, the commission
reasoned from the notion of finiteness and used a static
technical analysis of the sort discussed in Chapter 2.

A hundred years ago resources seemed limitless and
the struggle upward from meager conditions of life
was the struggle to create the means and methods of
getting these materials into use.

While conserved quantity accounts offer an analysis of the notion of being causally related, they do not, on their own, provide a distinction between cause and effect. In a second step they argue that this branching tree structure underwrites an asymmetry of counterfactual dependence on the macro-level and thereby supports a broadly Lewisian counterfactual analysis of the temporal arrow of causation. The first step is to argue that the Mentaculus implies a branching tree structure toward the future on the macrolevel, according to which the universe’s macrostate at a time is compatible with many more different macro-evolutions toward the future than macro-evolutions toward the past. More recent discussions by contrast, focus on the problem that nonlocal quantum correlations violate Bell inequalities as presenting a challenge to causal analyses. Näger (2016) explores several alternative ways in which faithfulness might be violated in quantum causal systems. This would mean that large neutron stars might enter a short quark star period before collapsing into a black hole, but there would never be a long-lived quark star. Thus, Dowe’s conserved quantity account appears to be designed for an ontology of discrete objects and it is unclear how the account might be extended to cover field theories as well.

It is unclear, however, how broadly applicable Dowe’s account is. Some authors, however, have argued that the explanatory direction is reversed and that the causal asymmetry accounts for the asymmetry between prevailing initial and final conditions. However, there is another kind of explanation of phenomena which we use all the time and which we see as a proper way of explaining phenomena. Yet Pearl’s own do-calculus first introduces interventions formally in a way that does not posit intervention variables external to the causal model of interest. So that it becomes this way of rationali-… Thus, faithfulness arguably is not a necessary condition for causal models. Yet there are also arguments suggesting that faithfulness cannot be a necessary condition on causal models (Cartwright 2001). Paradigmatic cases of violations of faithfulness involve cancelations among different causal paths, as they occur in feedback-control structures. The hypothesis of theism is that the Universe exists because there is a God who keeps it in being and that laws of nature operate because there is a God who brings it about that they do.

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