Does agent intellect as self possess form? — ucarr

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality... — Dfpolis

Is this form a logical entity emergent from the neuronal processes of the brain?

Does awareness possess boundaries? — ucarr

Boundaries? That is a hard question. Normally the AI is directed to contents encoded in our brain, but in mystical experience it seems to have some awareness of God, at least in His agency. (This is a very complex subject. A good start, but only a start, is the phenomenology discussed by Bucke, James and especially W. T. Stace.) — Dfpolis

If agent intellect emerges from neuronal activity, then its ontic status, rather than metaphorical, is logical?

Logical emergence is one type of category, neuronal grounding of same is another type of category? If so, how does one type of category transduce to the other type?

Aristotle’s definition explains neither the genesis nor the dynamics of consciousness... — Dfpolis

Are you looking to current philosophical inquiry for answers to these questions?

time does not flow, because it does not exist independently of being measured. What flows is the sequence of events that change produces, and that we use to produce a time measure number. — Dfpolis

Somebody -- Was it Aristotle? -- talked about the essential importance of metaphor in the exercise of human intelligence.

I, being lazy, use "time" to signify: What flows is the sequence of events that change produces....

Getting fancy, let me add that,

syn·ec·do·che | səˈnekdəkē |
noun
a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”).

Time, therefore, elides the multi-forms of creation into a universal oneness of blissful wholeness. — ucarr

Where do you buy your weed? A blessed product. — jgill

In the olden days (my childhood), when we had milkmen and they delivered milk in glass bottles to our door, sometimes a bottle would lie burst on its side. Dad, looking at the bottle, would say, "Another loss from water turning into ice."

Did you not learn to navigate sequences of events in this manner?

Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing. — ucarr

I see one inconsistency and one redundancy in this argumentation:
First, there's a circularity: You take two different things, a cause and an effect, and assume that they are one thing --in a sense, or whatever. Then you conclude that cause and effect are the same, well, also in a sense.
Then you introduce the element of timing ("temporal sequencing") that refutes the above statement and which doesn't actually change anything; it's only another reason why the first statement is invalid, since cause precedes effect. Which can be also considered as a tautology. — Alkis Piskas

Is it maybe the argumentation --as a whole-- not properly worded or constructed? — Alkis Piskas

Your analysis is correct. What I'm trying to do has to be processed through the channel of truth. Think of a plumb line and how it's used to keep a building vertical all the way to its apex. If the plumb line holds to the datum at the base of the structure, we say it's true.

In our phenomenal world of everyday experience, we couldn't well navigate constant potential sensory overload if our pattern recognition of cause-and-effect didn't phrase-up to a unified concept wherein the plumb line from a to b holds true.

A and b holding true to each other is a tautology, except that we have the complication that a and b don't look like each other. That's the mysterious time element. Dispelling the seeming difference of a and b is, however, the adventure of life. We make our journeys in search of truth and, if successful, we confirm that a is really b and vice versa. The seeming endless variety of creation boils down to the ohmm of oneness the ascended spiritualists keep exposing to us.

Time, therefore, elides the multi-forms of creation into a universal oneness of blissful wholeness.

The fall from grace is the smashing up of wholeness into pieces; humans, however, cannot be happy without the adventure of reconstruction

Time, beyond water, holds top rank as the universal solvent: with enough time, drops of water pound coal into diamond.

If time is flowing, that is moving relative to different states of the universe, then it must be doing so over some sort of second time dimension. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does your statement above describe a situation containing two temporal progressions: a) different states of the universe; the differentials separating the states of the universe being one set of a type of time; b) time moving relative to the first set of time being the second set of a type of time?

Second, under special relativity, the order in which events occur can be different for different observers. This makes it unclear as to how any time flow could occur. — Count Timothy von Icarus

At the risk of being convoluted and opaque, "order in which events occur can be different for different observers" exemplifies time eliding even itself: that the ordering of events into a timeline is relative to the inertial frame of reference of the observer and thus there is no universal time: time penetrates its ordering of events in one locality with a different ordering of the same events in another locality.

Time is essential to location in that the structure of a location is not a separate thing apart from material things populating said location; a location is itself a material thing: spacetime. Spacetime is entangled with the material objects that seem to populate it. Entanglement ⇒ time_gravitation.

Now we come to a big question: the boundaries of consciousness: How do time and gravitation negotiate the boundaries of consciousness? Lying center to this question is how do time and gravitation negotiate recursion? Suffice it to say the result of this negotiation is the axiom.

If you propagate an infinite number of successive executions of a computational function you get as a resultant a mathematical axiom.

Time plays an essential role in negotiating recursion en route to axiomatic truth. Expressed in phenomenal terms, this is time penetrating the boundaries of consciousness.*

Aristotle's agent-intellect is propagated by recursion negotiated by time to time-approaching-time-zero. This is also dimensional expansion, viz., propagation of existence instantiated in material objects.

*What are the boundaries of consciousness? One of the boundaries of consciousness is infinite computational recursion en route to time negotiating time-approaching-time-zero. This is echo feedback looping in route to consciousness.

:up:

I just find it a massive tease to be granted existence and yet only experience it for a brief spell. — invicta

My son, you make Tevye proud! — ucarr

Essentially my actions and life and all my accomplishments being reduced to nothing. — invicta

Beware Albert Camu! — ucarr

The eternal is unchanging. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What makes you an expert on the eternal to make such a blanket statement. I have no idea myself perhaps you could elaborate? — invicta

Do you have a clear idea in your mind what the eternal is ? Perhaps tell us before making statements such as these on it. — invicta

In a cave one parsec from Sol, some writing on the wall was discovered: from the secret pages of a classified document: It's the critic's job to hoist intelligent complaints inside the heart of paradise; Where would Eden be without designs of the serpent; deity is m.c. to a conflict-driven, cosmic entertainment: human.

Deity: "Alright now, invicta. As the winner of our vocal-sparring-for spite-contest, you're given choice of eternal life. Say "yes" and it's yours. The offer, however, does come with conditions. You must agree to one of two choices: a) become chief literary critic for a tony New York-based magazine or b) become maven of a Washington-based gossip column rivaling the caustic bitchery of Hoover. And your choice is?"

I would caution against any model where time "flows." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you elaborate? Can you give me a link to an article that elaborates?

Thanks for the link. :up:

:up:

Nikos Kazantzakis --a giant of the Greek literature-- had been excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church because he was a declared atheist. Yet, he was a very ethical person and if one knows well his works, one could say that he was a very religious person. — Alkis Piskas

Boy, do I love his novel, The Last Temptation of Christ.

What you have to say is too muddled to have any reverberation. — Banno

Thanks for the weigh-in. Dialogue is divine, even when it's not.

You think my thinking untidy.

The hard trick in slinking behind low expectations: maintaining enough public interest to avoid wholesale dismissal. Invective trumps silence, especially when it's instructive.

Against obverse inclination, you've been doing your job of examination: unselfish.

Hostile interest is intriguing because -- I'm off topic...

Back to chasing reverberation. Goal: sustain your pithy judgments.

I guess I give up, having not been able to follow what it is you might be claiming. — Banno

My central mission in this conversation is to define time in terms of boundaries and their inter-relationships.

My central premise is that time is a type of general boundary modulator; perhaps it is the general boundary modulator.

For an example of what I mean, consider: once you were a boy in single digits; now you are a man in double digits. How did this change happen? Typically, we say, "Time passed and you, making your various rights of passage: birth, first steps, first words, first date, graduation, first job, marriage and etc., moved on, growing older."

Well, do you think these rights of passage are moving you along through one boundary after another? Do you think passage through all of these boundaries has been actuated -- maybe I should rather say, facilitated -- by time?

Below are my continuing efforts to understand some important parts of your article:

Replicability is a type, rather than a token, property. We can never replicate a token observation, only the same type of observation. — Dfpolis

Thus, the consciousness impasse is a representational, not an ontological, issue. — Dfpolis

The consciousness impasse, the root of The Hard Problem, is a conflation of type replicability with token replicability, the latter being an impossibility.

Since humans are psychophysical organisms who perceive to know and conceptualize to act, physicality and intentionality are dynamically integrated. — Dfpolis

The above claim posits conceptualize and intend within an equation. Moreover, it implies the integral-holism of rational action. Sentient beings acting rationally are never bi-furcated across the partition of conceptual dualism. Objectivist-Physicalist science breaks the natural coherence linking sentient beings to creation. The Hard Problem is thus a problem of scientific methodology.

Ignoring this seamless unity, post-Cartesian thought conceives them separately – creating representational problems. The Hard Problem and the mind-body problem both arose in the post-Cartesian era, and precisely because of conceptual dualism. To resolve them, we need only drop the Fundamental Abstraction in studying mind. — Dfpolis

Descartes, acting the part of the villain (albeit unintentionally), spurred conceptual dualism: a categorical partitioning of mind and body; Polis, for remedy, argues the return to Aristotelian integralism-holism with respect to physicality-intentionality.

This tells us Aristotle’s agent intellect is the sin qua non component of Polis’ proffered solution to The Hard Problem.

The agent intellect is the self who does introspection: pattern recognition in response to present intelligibility; logical manipulation of information: deduction; inference; interpolation; extrapolation; inferential expansion; information combinatorics, etc.

Matter and form are logically distinguishable, but physically inseparable, aspects of bodies – another one-to-many mapping from the physical to the intentional. — Dfpolis

Key Questions -- Aristotelian awareness contains a physical component: Does agent intellect = self? Does agent intellect as self possess form? Does awareness possess boundaries?

For Aristotle, form and matter are not things, but the foundations for two modes of conceptualization. — Dfpolis

Form and matter are two modes of organization, viz., matter = extension/extendability; form = context/configurability.

Thus, the concept <apple> is not a thing, but an activity, viz. the actualization of an apple representation’s intelligibility. — Dfpolis

Herein activity = physical-intentional complex, viz., present intelligibility ⇔ sentience.

The essence of representation is the potential to be understood. — Dfpolis

Representation = present intelligibility.

Dualism is incompatible with the identity of physically encoded information informing the intellect and the intellect being informed by physically encoded information. — Dfpolis

Sensible-object_sense-organ complex: a swirling yin-yang of integral_holism; no discrete bifurcation.

An agent intellect is necessary because we actually understand what is only represented in brain states. Since neural processing cannot effect awareness, an extra element is required, as Aristotle argued and Chalmers seconds. — Dfpolis

Does the sensible-object_sense-organ complex generate Aristotle’s phantasm?> Yes, however, like a computer; it processes data, but there’s no self who comprehends what it’s doing; there’s no self who comprehends the present intelligibility of the data.

Key Question -- What happens if:

Abstraction is the selective actualization of intelligibility. — Dfpolis

becomes:

Abstraction is the reductive actualization of intelligibility. — ucarr edit

This question is based on my supposition (as influenced by your claim re: replicability) abstraction can only be of type and never of token; replication of token, by virtue of its definition, must always be an identity and thus cannot be an abstraction. An idea can never hold identity with a thing-in-itself. As, per Aristotle:

‘For the sense-organ is in every case receptive of the sensible object without its matter’ — Aristotle

The sense organ takes in the attributes of a sensible thing (form), but not its hyle (potential). It is the potential of a thing-in-itself to map to myriad configurations -- all of them individual instantiations of existence -- that abstraction to the logical cannot emulate.

Key question – Is abstraction, a subtractive process, necessarily a reductive process?

Key question – Can agent intellect generate anything other than abstractions?*

*Consider the inevitable sensory overload from blooming creation sans abstraction.

The Hard Problem of consciousness signals the need for a paradigm shift. — Dfpolis

The physical-conceptual complex of Aristotelian animism is a corrective reversionist paradigm. However, this reversionism is not retrograde because it meshes cleanly and closely with much of scientific understanding evolving henceforth from antiquity.

So for example, someone in another thread suggested to me that we could model an atom as a system. However, the natural state of atoms is to exist within complex molecules, where parts (electrons for example) are shared. If two atoms share an electron, and the atoms themselves are being modeled as distinct systems, then in each model, the shared atom is both an internal part of the inertial continuity of the system, and also a part of the other system, thereby acting as a causal force of change on that same system. In other words, from this 'systems' perspective, the electron must be understood as both a part of the inertial continuity of the system, and a causal force of change to the system (being a part of an external system), at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think the arbitrary nature of system boundaries is akin to other problems in the sciences and even humanities. For example, in semiotic analysis/communications, a physical entity, say a group of neurons, might act as object, symbol, and interpretant during the process, depending on the level of analysis that is used. But at a certain part, the ability of any one component to convey aspects of the total message breaks down. E.g., a single logic gate can't hold the number "8," itself. Certain relationships only exist at higher levels of emergence, like your example of shared electrons. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your above quotes for me are introductions to detailed examinations of topics in physics, each of which, in the elaboration of specialization, would easily engage the entire careers of physicist-specialists.

My label of convenience for the theme connecting and focusing pertinent issues within Time and Boundaries is Boundary Ontology. Under this category the focus is on such questions as: How do we measure the surface of a material object? In the scale of human experience, this question is perhaps mundane. Is that the case at the scale of the elementary particles? How about the scale of the expanding universe? What does it mean for spacetime to expand and yet have no outer boundary?

Speaking mathematically, clearly topology has a key role to play herein. For example: topology might offer a rational approach to a definition of the soul: a surface invariant to unlimited manifolding of a set.

Is system the limit of entropic expansion? Is universe the limit of system? These are, I think, important boundary ontology questions.

Is there a possible general mathematical definition of what constitutes the boundary of a system?

Can boundaries be defined for cognitive inter-relations, thereby establishing a hybrid interweaving the cognitive_physical?

Finally, there's the supreme challenge of the sine qua non of boundary ontology puzzles: Origin Boundary Ontology. First principle, first cause, etc, will need more than three spatial dimensions + time for practical elaboration.

I still don't see what your musings, ucarr, have to with philosophy. What's the philosophical itch you're trying to get us to scratch? State it plainly. — 180 Proof

Have your seen my quote directly above yours?

Do you think the forward-flowing of history comprises the physical phenomena populating our empirical experiences? — ucarr

"Forward-flowing" is a cognitive illusion and intuitive way of talking about asymmetric change. "History" represents time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story). Particle physicists refer to worldlines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics refer to entropy gradients. — 180 Proof

I take your above quote for an answer to my question above it.

No doubt my appointment with the dentist tomorrow, when seen as asymmetric change representing time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story) with reference to world lines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics referring to entropy gradients, holds formally very little in common with my vision of getting a filling in my back molar. No. I haven't entered such descriptions into my daily planner.

Having said that, I think I understand your cutting-edge scientific vision of forward movement is pertinent to the concepts and details of my narrative. If I'm right, then you exaggerate when claiming "It's clear as mud to me."

(I model mathematical causal chains as compositions of functions. A result (effect) at a time t is, say, z. The next temporal step is to compute s, where s=f(z), then after that, r, where r= g(s), and so on. There's a whole theory herein. But I think it more realistic to assume several functions act on z, not just one. Like differing forces. So each step - and these are associated with intervals of time - has as outcome the influence of a number of "forces", rather than a single function.) — jgill

In the above quote, jgill elaborates with detail and clarity what I've been trying to claim more vaguely and superficially. The above quote gives us a description of phenomenal reality, known empirically to all of us. It is a complex mix of the physical and the conceptual. Cause and effect and time are deeply partial to each other as an interweave, and this interweave has for its signature the forward-flowing of history.

I model mathematical causal chains as compositions of functions. — jgill

The gist of my claim herein is that the above quote describes our fluidly transforming world as an ongoing continuity of boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries.

Time and its signature, the forward-flowing of history, will bleed through anything, whether physical or conceptual: the drop of water, in time, bores through the great stone; the black hole, in time, evaporates, releasing phenomena only seemingly lost forever.

..."time" is neither "temporal" nor a "phenomenon". (I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.) — 180 Proof

What’s the critical operation between cause and effect when considered as conjunction: time?'' — ucarr

No. IMO, wrong, or incoherent, question (i.e. misuse of terms). — 180 Proof

Are there any observable boundaries time cannot merge? — ucarr

More incoherence. "Time" is a metric (i.e. parameter), ucarr, not a force or agent. — 180 Proof

Do you think the forward-flowing of history comprises the physical phenomena populating our empirical
experiences?

In the below quote, are you referring to the commingling of the forward-flowing of history with the metric that tracks it mathematically?

(I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.) — 180 Proof

Saying gravity causes acceleration is just saying the acceleration between two masses causes the acceleration between two masses. — Banno

Is it a stretch, a distortion, a mis-read to say your above quote is affirmation of my main point?

Gravity causes acceleration (in free fall) ⇒ acceleration of mass ≡ gravity as $g = 9.8/s^2$, or $f = ma$.

My Main Point

Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing. — ucarr

Gravity is just a name for the acceleration of any two masses towards each other. — Banno

Are you talking about gravitational attraction?

$g = 9.8 m/s ^2$ You hold this equation in contempt?

What’s causing precise acceleration? — ucarr

Respective masses curving spacetime. — 180 Proof

Is this the language you respect?

I would caution against any model where time "flows." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You imply time is a metric: a standard of measurement?

Time is the dimension in which change occurs. Without
time change is meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Change specified as boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries is what interests me and what motivated my OP.

Time is the dimension in which change occurs. Without time change is meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you making reference to spacetime?

Some philosophers have bitten the bullet and accepted either the non-existence of time, change, and motion based on this problem, or infinitely regressing time dimensions, but there is actually no need to do this. I would recommend R.T.W. Arthur's "The Reality of Time Flow - Local Becoming in Modern Physics," on this point. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the book reference.

Becoming suggests crossing a threshold. Is this a topic of the book?

But then the temporal aspect is there, but the thing is contrived. — unenlightened

Okay. I understand you to be making a comparison. You're telling me the concept of interaction hews to more naturally occurring situations; the concept of before and after hews to more contrived situations.

I don't know what atemporal cause and effect would be. — unenlightened

So the quote below is not your intended example of an atemporal cause and effect?

An interaction changes two things at once - an atom absorbs a photon and its energy is increased. one does not wish to say that the photon caused the increase in energy more so than the atom caused the absorption of the photon - it is a single event - a single interaction, and the observation thereof is another interaction. — unenlightened

Below are my efforts to understand some important parts of your article:

Premises

…consciousness emerges in a specific kind of interaction: that between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — Dfpolis

The agent intellect is the mediator between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — ucarr-paraphrase

A neural network instantiates order and thus intelligibility; the agent intellect is necessary to effect comprehension of present intelligibility by the act of reading and comprehending it. This is the action of consciousness. — ucarr-paraphrase

Since consciousness does not actualize a physical possibility, it is ontologically emergent. — Dfpolis

Questions

A neural network is first-order organization whereas consciousness is second-order organization?

Since consciousness is an interweave of the physical and the inter-relational, consciousness is, ontologically speaking, a hybrid of the two under rubric of Aristotelianism?

Is the agent intellect a synonym of the self; does the agent intellect possess matter and form?

Maybe I'm just missing the point of your post, ucarr. — 180 Proof

Do you find the general structure of the OP too muddled to allow discernment of a central theme?

Do you find my prose sometimes waxing poetic at the expense of scientific and logical merit?

Do you think my notion of time's relationship to unfolding history fatally flawed?

One can say that footprints are caused by feet, or that they are caused by gravity, or both. Or one could talk about the relative hardness and resilience of feet and wet sand... But physicists talk more about interaction and the limits of interaction being the light cone. An interaction changes two things at once - an atom absorbs a photon and its energy is increased. one does not wish to say that the photon caused the increase in energy more so than the atom caused the absorption of the photon - it is a single event - a single interaction, and the observation thereof is another interaction. — unenlightened

In this conversation two schools of thought are present: a) temporal cause and effect; b) atemporal cause and effect

And then there is the matter of origins: we extrapolate the expanding observable universe backwards in time and come to a singularity, that we call the Big Bang - the beginning of space, time, and energy. And because of the physicists demand that cause must precede effect in time, there can be no cause of the beginning. The story has to stop at the limits of the equations. To speak of a cause of time and space in this sense is to reject the physicists meaning such as it is, and resort to Prime Mover type talk. — unenlightened

I'm getting the impression post-Newtonian physics is moving away from temporal cause and effect towards atemporal cause and effect.

Not really, because acceleration can be caused by things other than gravity. So for example, a rocket blasts off and it accelerates in breaking away from gravity, as a sort of reverse relation to gravity. There is still a relation with gravity involved here, but since it is a reversal, we see that it is not a direct relation because there must be something else involved. Since there is something else involve we can't restrict the domain. — Metaphysician Undercover

Likewise, with your example of the parachutist. You refer to the effects after jumping, as "acceleration". But what is required prior to this, and is a necessary condition, is that the person takes off in a plane (gravity reversal), and then jumps from the plane. That particular prior condition is the one required for your specific description, but it could be replaced with all sorts of others. So even the prior condition is not in the strict sense "necessary", but there is a whole class of possible prior conditions. But since one of these many possible conditions is necessary, for the acceleration described, we cannot restrict the domain in the way you propose. — Metaphysician Undercover

The restriction stipulates causes of acceleration of a material object. This set contains gravity-caused acceleration scenarios, but the domain of this set need not exclude other scenarios, such as rocket-propulsion caused acceleration as a unified concept. However, a legitimate sub-set includes the set of gravity-caused acceleration: a one member set.

Are you guys telling me time and cause and effect are either: a) separable; b) separate? — ucarr

With respect to contemporary fundamental physics, I don't see what one has to do with the other. Even in Kant, these concepts are not directly related. — 180 Proof

As I understand you, you're telling me cause and effect is not a temporal phenomenon. Am I reading you correctly?

dV/dh=A is not abstract. If you measure a change in depth, then dV=Adh gives the corresponding change in volume. — jgill

So d = depth? A variable is not abstract?

I don't see what "time" and "cause & effect" have to do with one another. IIRC, the equations of QFT lack time variables — 180 Proof

A good point. However, much of Q-theory presupposes spacetime in one or another metric framework. When you see d^4 in a formula that probably indicates space and time. — jgill

Are you guys telling me time and cause and effect are either: a) separable; b) separate?

A causal change in V is the result of draining the liquid to a lower value of h. dV/dh =A, which gives a change of V corresponding to a change of h. No time is involved in the equation, only change. But if h=h(t), then dV/dt=(dh/dt)A, and we have change associated with a passage of time. — jgill

No time is involved in the equation, only change. — jgill

Is this an example of the difference between an abstract idea (equation) and its everyday expression as a physical event?

...in that series of events that's referenced in the O.P., neither cause nor effect is demonstrable, but only temporal predecessors & successors. — ItIsWhatItIs

The parachutist has jumped out of a plane airborne at ten thousand feet. What happens next and why?

A mere series of events can never constitute a causal relationship. The frames within a film strip precede & succeed each but aren't either the causes or effects of one another. — ItIsWhatItIs

A film script is also known as a continuity. Characters behave and their behavior causes reactions in other characters. Action with emotional impact drives the story forward. As the story moves forward, characters change. This is the arc of the story. As we watch a film continuity, we feel and know the middle of the story is not the same as the beginning of the story because things have happened that have brought us to a new place in the story of people's lives. What Joey did to Cathy last night has made her become a more confident woman next morning.

What's going on inside of Cathy?

Here's another thing to add to what jgill said. I think that jumping, or more correctly pushing off, in a gravity-free space, actually would cause acceleration. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're right about this.

Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing. — ucarr

Do you buy the notion gravity-and-acceleration are a unified concept within a restricted domain:

Acceleration only occurs from the effects of gravitation when whatever is preventing acceleration is removed, or if an object is suddenly exposed to gravitation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see what "time" and "cause & effect" have to do with one another. — 180 Proof

Is it your understanding cause and effect is not a temporal phenomenon?

The falling parachutist does not fall at a rate determined purely by gravity - air resistance must be taken into account and this slows the fall. Such an effect is frequently calculated as proportional to the square of the velocity when close to the ground... — jgill

You're right, of course. I stand corrected for neglecting to mention air resistance.

We see how cause and effect the logical conjunction evolves: $a⇒b⇒$
$a⇒b−t ⇒{a⇔b}^n$ — ucarr

My symbolic logic statement is supposed to say: a leads to b (causal relationship) evolves into a leads to b minus time (abstraction) evolves into a and b are interwoven as a unified concept. The bi-directional a and b at the end needs to have a bracket so that the bi-directional is raised to the power of n. This final piece is supposed to represent all cause-and-effect relationships. I'm just learning mathjax and don't yet know how to get a polynomial raised to a power.

Well, at least you get a minimum of one reply this time around. :cool: — jgill

Yes! And I'm much obliged to you for supplying it. Thanks

Thanks for the notification.

Y= The town is entirely flooded by the river. X=River Drive is flooded. Go figure. — jgill

So, the part is part of the whole, except when its not.

revised

Do you understand that if X is a necessary condition for Y, the occurrence of X still does not necessitate Y? — Metaphysician Undercover

The necessitation of Y requires multiple necessary conditions?

The first statement means the person is causing the falling. — ucarr

No it does not. Anytime something is caused to do something by a separate force, the thing doing whatever it is caused to do is not the cause of the action. A rock is doing the falling but not causing the falling. A cannon ball, or baseball flying through the air is doing the flying, but not causing the flying. Etc.. — Metaphysician Undercover

I acknowledge that my interpretation of my gravitation example, with respect to your claim cause and effect is essentially temporal, is wrong.

I also acknowledge that your interpretation of my gravitation example, with respect to your claim cause and effect is essentially temporal, is correct.

The rest of your discussion of "doing" is therefore not relevant to how I was using "doing". — Metaphysician Undercover

My interpretation of what the jumper is doing in free fall, as previously stated by me, is wrong. The jumper is not doing falling at accelerating speed -- gravity is doing that by causing it.

What the jumper is doing is reacting to what gravity is causing the jumper to do.

Causation

Cause – an agent of change that transforms the state of being of its object

Effect – a transformation of the state of being of the object of a causal power


Temporal Sequence

Yes, before and after is an order by position, temporal position. — Metaphysician Undercover

Before and After – Interpretive Claim (With respect to above claim) – this type of temporal sequence may contain a causal component, but it isn’t necessary.

Supporting Examples

Example A – Causal Component

• Temporal position – before
• No water drunk
  
• Temporal position – after
• Contaminated water drunk
• Low white cell count
• Bacteria proliferates
• Lung cell metabolism transformed – stops producing new lung cells; starts producing new viruses

• Example B – No Causal Component

• Temporal position – before
• No water drunk
  
• Temporal position -- after
• Contaminated water drunk
• High white cell count
• Bacteria wiped out
• Lung cell metabolism unchanged; continues producing new lung cells as it had been doing before contaminated water drunk

In Example B we see that before and after retain their meanings in the absence of a causal relationship that connects them (with respect to lung cell metabolism).

How do you assess the truth content of the above interpretation of your claim?

Do you deny that gravity holding a person down to earth in one situation and accelerating the descent of a person in free fall in another situation exemplifies gravity doing two different things in two different situations? — ucarr

Yes I deny that...It is the person who is doing two different things, walking on the earth in one case, and falling in the other, gravity is doing the same thing in both cases. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here's my inference from your above quote (especially the bold_italic part): the person in free fall is doing the falling. This is distinct from saying: The person is experiencing the falling. The first statement means the person is causing the falling. The overall statement says gravity is also causing the falling (just as it is also causing the walking person to be pinned to the ground).

From Space Shuttle missions many humans have seen astronauts spinning and somersaulting mid-air within zero-gravity chambers whilst the rocket is outside earth's gravitational field. In the absence of a gravitational field, we see that humans do not cause their own falling through space. Back to our situation: regarding when a suicide jumps from a cliff, in our example here, we have two proffered explanations: 1) the person falls to earth at increasing speed due to acceleration due to gravity; 2) the person falls to earth at increasing speed due to both their own rare and generally unknown ability to use their own power to reflexively cause him_her_self to fall earth at increasing speed due to acceleration due to gravity and due to the power of gravity to do same.

Let's apply Occam's Razor in our evaluation of the two proffered explanations; after all, we know that when you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not unicorns, right? So, when we look for best explanation why suicide falls to earth at increasing speed due to acceleration due to gravity, do we want an explanation that has a human doing something we have reason to doubt the possibility of as witnessed in the zero-gravity chamber, or do we want an explanation that has a human experiencing something seen too many times to count over the millennia spanning human history?

ince [sic], when we look at integers 6 and 8 and understand there is no temporal relationship connecting them, as per the definition of ordinality, and that therefore, if we replace 6 and 8 with before and after, and if we maintain our understanding of the context to be ordinal, then claiming before and after have a temporal relationship amounts to conflating two distinct categories (contexts). — ucarr

I'm afraid not ucarr, you are being ridiculous again. Before and after have completely different meaning from six and eight. By analogy, would you say let's switch green and red, in the context of colour, and see that green is the same thing as red. Come on. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you not see that in my argument two contexts: temporal_sequential and ordinal are involved and, moreover, that my argument depends upon taking before and after out of their default temporal_sequential context and placing them in the ordinal context, and that doing so strips away temporal antecedence? Also, do you not see changing their context thus violates no rules of inference? Sixth and eighth have different ranks, but there's no temporal relationship in ordinality, as there is in cardinality. By analogy, before and after denote different times, but as with all ordinals, there's no temporal relationship between beforth and aftereth.

Do you not agree your attempted analogy equating red and green fails because contextualizing before and after as beforth and aftereth does not equalize them. Instead, it de-temporalizes them? Do you not see, more generally: contextualizing ≠ equalizing?

Ordinal" is not restricted to numbers. It can mean a position in any type of series, or concerning any order. So contrary to what you say, the temporal order of cause and effect is an ordinality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay. So, beforth and aftereth can constitute an ordinality either temporal or non-temporal. This true because ordinal specifies order by position; it says nothing about temporal order. Since non-temporal is included and temporal is not excluded, both types are valid.

Do you agree this?

Might this be a motivation for projecting artificial temporal antecedence onto observed phenomena? — ucarr

The motivation is usefulness. — Metaphysician Undercover

Due you suppose the pursuit of usefulness always leads to truth?

Since they don't appear during the incubation period, can we claim bacterial infection before high-volume is an antecedent cause of symptoms? — ucarr

Sorry, I don't follow the question. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here's the root of my argument: antecedence ≠ coincidence.

Since coincidence parallels co-functionality, coincidence can sometimes example causation.

Do you agree with this?