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Understanding Cause & Effect
Critical thinking is more about understanding context and relevance than it is about noticing a problem and attempting to influence it. Recognizing context and relevance includes identifying all of the factors that contribute to outcomes that we experience or observe. It is about becoming free of ego and objectively considering all there is to be considered.
There are many ways to look at situations and the information that is used to describe them. Thinking about causation might require some adjustment in perspective. This perspective shift requires seeing a bigger picture. In other words, we must look at the factors we understand as being parts of a process that creates them, instead of thinking of them as standalone facts.
One of the beliefs associated with evaluating situations is that correlation does not imply causation. While this may be scientifically valid and useful, it poses a challenge when trying to use information to identify the factors that contributed to an event we might be interested in. Thankfully, Judea Pearl (A Turing Award winning scientist) has outlined a process for connecting prior events to current outcomes. This process is called The Ladder of Causation.
The Ladder of Causation presents a method for understanding cause & effect. It consists of 3 steps. The first step deals with observation or association. The second…
