Kommunikation kausaler Information

01.01.2025 bis 01.01.2028

Knowledge of causal processes is vital for all aspects of our lives, from mundane
consumer choices to high-impact socio-political decision making. Much of our
causal knowledge is acquired not from individual experience, but from cultural
transmission via language. While theorists have amassed a large body of
philosophical and psychological understanding about causation, surprisingly little
research has been devoted to a theoretical understanding of the processes that
underlie communication of causal information and the role of the linguistic signal
in this transmission.
The main objective of this project is to apply methods and tools from experimental
pragmatics to shed light on a wide range of puzzles about causal language and
cognition. We introduce a new pragmatic framework, the "CommuniCause"
approach, which makes new and empirically testable predictions and o􀁼ers a
uni􀁿ed explanation for a number of disparate phenomena, both old and new.
CommuniCause brings together two important strands of research that have been
isolated until now, in a way that will bene􀁿t both communities. It draws on
established philosophical theorizing and recent computational models of
individual causal cognition, but is distinguished by its focus on linguistic factors:
Communicating Causality
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Details
the speaker’s choice among the variety of linguistic expressions available, and the
impact that this choice has on a recipient’s pragmatic interpretation.
CommuniCause promises advances to linguistic pragmatics as well, by confronting
theories and models with a range of intricate puzzles that have not previously been
treated from a linguistic perspective.
The project explores the extent to which this pragmatic approach can explain key
features of causal inference. One is the problem of causal selection, how we
identify one event as the cause of another. When two cars collide, why do we think
that the driver that ran the red light was "the cause" of the accident, rather than
the safe but unlucky driver? Another puzzle involves the interpretation of
correlational evidence: Why do people interpret "Aspartame is linked to cancer" as
implying that aspartame consumption causes cancer, and not the other way
around? The CommuniCause perspective suggests treating these puzzles as traces
of pragmatic reasoning: in interpreting what others have said, we can use what we
know about how speakers make choices to infer what they are probably trying to
convey.
In a number of experiments, we explore the detailed predictions of the framework
for how speakers make complex choices among various ways of expressing
themselves, how causal and non-causal language is interpreted in context, and
how linguistic framing in􀂀uences causal reasoning processes. If these results
validate our approach, we can conclude that
language matters
in causal thought
and talk to a much greater extent than previously realized.
A particularly interesting contribution of this project with important practical
implications is the juxtaposition of causal and non-causal language. We
investigate the conditions under which speakers choose non-causal expressions
(e.g., "If A, then B" or "A is associated with B") to convey causal meaning, and the
circumstances under which listeners infer causal information from expressions
that are merely correlational. Contrary to widespread conception, we do not
consider causal inference from non-causal language a fault or an irrationality.
Rather, the CommuniCause approach is able to shed light on the e􀁽ciency and
systematicity of this phenomenon, thereby providing a better grip on avoiding
miscommunication between domain experts and lay audiences in important areas
like health communication.