Hugh Desmond (KU Leuven)
It remains unclear whether the behavior of nonlinear feedback systems, which can include approach to equilibrium, abrupt phase transitions, and chaos, pose mere technical challenges or more fundamental problems for interventionist causal analysis. In this paper I argue for the latter in that interventionist analysis is fundamentally inapplicable to causal relations between variables that are related through nonlinear feedback. I then discuss how interventionist analysis can yield more meaningful causal knowledge concerning the dependence of global system behavior on parameters values.
