Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
lizard or a kitten, but this is not to change one of these animals into another. What is
changed in this case is the content of the cage, not the animals themselves. (Woodward
2003 , p. 113)
The issue arises in economic and sociological research when, for example, race
discrimination in mortgage applications or sex discrimination in employment is
assessed by sending applicants who have been matched as thoroughly as feasible
for salient characteristics, differing significantly only in race or sex, through a
mortgage qualification or hiring process. With respect to sex discrimination,
Woodward ( 2003 , p. 115) rejects the claim “[b]eing female causes one to be
discriminated against in hiring and/or salary” as “fundamentally unclear” since
“we lack any clear idea of what it would be like to manipulate it.” Woodward
argues that it is not the applicant's sex but the employer's beliefs about them that is
causal.
How are sex and race different from considering the causal outcomes of cars that
differ only by their engine type? Consider a coin-sorting machine - coin discrimi-
nation being less emotive than sex or race discrimination. Different coins can be
placed into the machine and fall into different slots depending on their shapes.
The mechanically relevant description of a coin is as a vector of variables - for
example [ diameter , thickness , weight ]. What else is it to be a coin other than having
the right values in such a vector? The social metaphysical answer might be that the
essence of being, say, a nickel is to have the imprimatur of the government (to have
been dubbed legal tender for $0.05 by the United States Mint) and to have an
appropriate standing in the social practice of money. In other contexts, such
considerations may be of genuine interest, but they are not mechanically salient.
For a causal understanding for purposes of designing, building, operating,
maintaining, and repairing the coin sorter, we do not need a penny to change into
a nickel. Each penny, nickel, dime, and quarter is just the coin in the machine -an
instantiation of a vector-valued variable and its causal fate is a realization of the
causal process represented by the causal connections among that variable and those
that describe the state of the machine.
We need to distinguish between existential and causal identity. Each may be
salient in different contexts. The critical question is which context is relevant for
what purposes. We have no notion of how to turn a penny into a nickel, but we have
a clear notion of how to change a coin from being a nickel to being a penny in the
context of the operation of a coin sorter, and it seems perfectly sensible to say that it
is “being a nickel” that is a cause of the coin falling into slot 3. Slot 3 being
configured in the right way is, of course, another cause, the causes interacting
according to the design of the machine.
How is sex discrimination different in principle from coin discrimination? In
the hiring process, we can represent people as a vector-valued variable Applicant
¼
[ Race, Sex, Age, Employment Status, Wealth,
], which interacts with variables
describing the other factors and processes related to hiring. We do not need to
change a particular person from male to female to understand this causal process.
It is enough to reparameterize the vector. Much of the effort in conducting discrim-
ination research using such techniques goes in to establishing the relevant causal
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