Workshop ‘Time in QCA’, Erasmus University Rotterdam

1. Time in QCA
A philosopher’s point of view
Federica Russo

2. A disclaimer
• Methodologically, I see things from a causalist perspective
• Not that we always have to find out causes or that all methods are good at
finding causes
• But I take it that the ultimate goal is to say something about what causes
what
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3. Time in modelling
• Temporal information helps
• ‘Break’ the symmetry of correlation and establish causal ordering
• Establish causal roles in a longitudinal perspective
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4. Why would you need to include time in QCA?
• Answer a question with a new set of questions!
• Is a QCA configuration static of dynamic?
• If you include time, does it mean that the same configuration has
evolved from t > t1 or that it is a new configuration to be compared
with the previous one?
• And related to all this: where does time come in?
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5. Philosopher’s hat on again
• We’d all agree that
• Causal relations happen in time
• Causes preceed effects (at most they are nearly simultaneous)
• [I know only crazy analytic philosophers and Steven Spielberg to
believe in backwards causation!]
• In philosophy of time / physics:
• Infer causal ordering from time ordering
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6. Why this inference is not so obvious
• Epistemic access to temporal ordering may not be direct
• Data collection
• Latency
• …
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7. What is the role of time, exactly?
• Part of the background, shaping up the rest of data collection,
modelling, interpretation
AND / OR
• Part of the modelling itself, considering variables in time
• And any virtuous cycle from one to the other
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8. To sum up and conclude
• We can of course delve deep into metaphysical discussions on the
nature of time etc
• From a more pragmatic, methodologic-oriented perspective
• Q1: what do we need time for?
• Q2: where to put time in the modelling process?
• Q3: what if we’d really need time info but we can’t get it?
• Guess all these points are not QCA-specific but rather general (yet
useful for the discussion)
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