And AI agrees. :razz: — apokrisis

A little snotty irony is always appreciated

I was drawn to this topic by conversations with so-called preachers (not necessarily Christian ones, but any kind). They say, "You must do this, because I'm a wise man and have learned the truth." When you ask, "What if I do this and it doesn't work?" Silence ensues, or something like, "That means you didn't do what I told you to do/you didn't believe/you weren't chosen." — Astorre

As I said, I am not familiar with preachers or preaching of any sort beyond what I’ve seen in church when I was a kid. I guess all I would say is that it doesn’t have to be the way you described, even if it often is. That’s certainly not the way Lao Tzu, purportedly one of the founders of Taoism, did it in the Tao Te Ching.

I think the topic is at least thought-provoking. — Astorre

I agree.

Consciousness is a passive byproduct, a kind of “ride-along” to the real causal story that takes place in the material world.

Once we grant this setup, we immediately encounter the problem of psychophysical harmony. Why is it that our conscious experiences are so perfectly aligned with our physical and behavioral states? Why does seeing a red apple correspond to the experience of redness rather than the feeling of pain or a random hallucination? Within epiphenomenalism, there is no causal reason for this mapping to be so orderly. The physical world could just as easily have produced any pattern of conscious experiences, or none at all. The fact that our inner experiences match the external world so precisely seems like an extraordinary coincidence if consciousness has no causal role. — tom111

I don’t think there’s any doubt that our consciousness has an active role to play. This is from “Feeling and Knowing” by Antonio Damasio.

…consciousness is an enriched state of mind. The enrichment consists in inserting additional elements of mind within the ongoing mind process. These additional mind elements are largely cut from the same cloth as the rest of the mind—they are imagetic—but thanks to their contents they announce firmly that all the mental contents to which I currently have access belong to me, are my thing, are actually unfolding within my organism. The addition is revelatory. Revealing mental ownership is first and foremost accomplished by feeling. When I experience the mental event we call pain, I can actually localize it to some part of my body. In reality, the feeling occurs in both my mind and my body, and for a good reason. I own both, they are located within the same physiological space, and they can interact with each other. The manifest ownership of mental contents by the integrated organism where they arise is the distinctive trait of a conscious mind.

Faith is neither knowledge nor conviction. It is a leap into the void, without guarantees. Faith is risk, trepidation, and loneliness. Оtherwise there would be no sacramental act, but simply conviction. Faith is not knowledge, for if a person simply knows, they have no doubt. Faith is, on the one hand, imperfect certainty, on the other, intention, and, on the third, a constant feeling of uncertainty. Any attempt to convey the content of the concept of "Faith," in my opinion, seems speculative, because it is a feeling that becomes a judgment when expressed in words . — Astorre

I’ve been thinking about faith recently. It certainly isn’t something that gets a lot of respect here on the forum. The forum is full of people who consider themselves rational and that consideration leads them to atheism. They tend to be condescending and contemptuous of people who profess faith. As I’ve come to see it, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what “faith” means.

Those who have read my posts here on the forum know I have a strong interest in Taoism. I think faith is similar to what Taoists call “Te,” which is sometimes translated as “intrinsic virtuosity” and which I sometimes think of as our true natures, our hearts. This is a quote from Ziporyn’s translation of the Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi). I’ve used it many times here on the forum.

What I call good is not humankindness and responsible conduct, but just being good at what is done by your own intrinsic virtuosities. Goodness, as I understand it, certainly does not mean humankindness and responsible conduct! It is just fully allowing the uncontrived condition of the inborn nature and allotment of life to play itself out. What I call sharp hearing is not hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more.

The preacher supposedly doesn't teach, but testifies. He doesn't impose; he simply shares his experience. This is personal testimony, not preaching in the traditional sense.

But then: The testimony itself is already public and therefore becomes an example, an instruction, a guide. — Astorre

I don’t know much about preaching or how preachers see their vocation, but this description doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t think saying “Here’s what I’ve experienced. You can pay attention and see what you find, experience, inside yourself” is necessarily an instruction. Someone may show you a path, but you have to walk it yourself.

Sex isn't "bad" but it is always violent.

Silly. I’ve made love at least [deleted] times and this doesn’t match my experience—or my partner’s. Perhaps someone couldn’t get a date to the prom.

Fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and other maths of complexity do a good job of modelling physical processes over all scales. A vortice is a vortice from the level of a Bose-Einstein condensate to a black hole accretion disk. — apokrisis

That’s why I said “usually.” As I understand it, engineering mechanics is the science of phenomena that can be constructed using the principles of lower levels of organization.

If you want to discuss pre-biological "evolution," you're not going to be looking at how biological systems moved from bacteria to complex beings, but how chemicals interacted over time to change into biology, but that's not what we call "evolution" and it creates a host of issues that cannot be answered through looking at the fossil record. — Hanover

Book suggestion—“What is Life— How Chemistry Becomes Biology” by Pross. It doesn’t contradict what you’ve written, but provides more detail and explanation.

But the truths of mathematics seem a little more robust than ordinary truths. 2+2=4 is true in all possible worlds, but "all ravens are black" might or might not be true. If mathematics was on par with ordinary propositional sentences, why would there be different categories of truth? — RogueAI

Yes, many disagree that mathematics is a language. That doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t emerge out of physics. It is my understanding that it emerges, if that’s the right word, out of counting.

My problem with the concept of emergence is that it does not seem to be an explanatory concept that provides us with a mechanism for moving from one level of reality to another without presupposing the already established levels of reality. And if it has no explanatory power (reconstruction rule), then I do not understand why anyone would choose physicalism as a general ontology of the world. — JuanZu

The idea of emergence is descriptive. It tells us that each level of scale or organization has its own scientific principles and phenomena. Usually you cannot use the principles of one level of organization to predict—construct—phenomena at another level. That’s all it is. That’s all it does. It’s not magical. I don’t know what that says about physicalism.

For example, how do we explain Pythagoras' theorem with the concepts of physics? Emergence should explain how we move from talking about mass, particles, velocity, momentum, etc., to talking about numbers without presupposing knowledge of numbers as sui generis entities. — JuanZu

I don’t think anyone claims mathematics of any sort emerges from physics. Mathematics is a language that describes the world. That’s it.

It does... In terms of deontological individualism. — Copernicus

It doesn’t seem that way to me, but since neither of your options match my understanding of morality, no need for us to take it any further.

It is not about practical reasoning. If you were given a choice, a hypothetical scenario, or should I say, imperative, what is your preferable choice? — Copernicus

All other things being equal, sure, I would pick the action that lead to the least number of deaths. I don’t think that has anything general to say about the two moral options.

Suppose the trolley is not moving toward anyone until you decide its course. You must direct it either toward three people or toward one person. There is no longer an option to “do nothing.” Every outcome stems from your deliberate agency. — Copernicus

What are the consequences if I don’t choose and just do nothing? Will everyone die?

One thing you haven’t taken into account is liability. When I choose, I take on liability for the consequences. It might not be unreasonable for me to make no choice at all as a way of protecting myself from that liability.

Yet as our reason does not represent shape, size, or any other physical property essential to extended things to be relevant to our moral value, it is representing us not to be extended things. To put it another way, if we are physical things then our intrinsic moral value would have to supervene on some of our essential features.....but it doesn't. Thus we are not physical things. — Clarendon

Welcome to the forum. I might argue that people do not have intrinsic moral value, but I won’t do that here because I want to keep to the terms of your OP.

I don’t understand why a person cannot have both moral value and an essential physical nature.

The difference, I take it, between something being 'intrinsically' morally valuable and 'extrinsically' morally valuable is that in the former case the moral value is supervening on essential properties of the thing, — Clarendon

I don’t understand the basis of the claim that something being intrinsically morally valuable implies the moral value is supervening on essential properties of the thing. Alternatively, I might claim that it is God‘s judgment that people have intrinsic moral value. I think it would be fair to characterize that as an essential property. That brings us back to the possibility of having both a physical and a non-physical nature.

I guess what this boils down to is that I don’t see you’ve demonstrated your claim from the OP.

Doggerland by Ben Smith — Jamal

I was intrigued by this. Doggerland was an area of dry land between what is now Great Britain and France. It was inundated about 8000 years ago by a mega tsunami caused by the collapse of the continental shelf off of Norway.

Alas, that’s not what the book is about.

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer is no.1, hands down. — Manuel

I didn’t have my glasses on when I saw your post and I read that as “Naval Explosives.” I thought that was an interesting choice until I reread it, this time wearing them.

But I just finished The Magus by John Fowles yesterday and it's vying for the top 5 spot - it's astonishing, still reeling from that experience. — Manuel

I gave that to my daughter for Christmas one year. We share a love for it. Have you read “The French Lieutenant’s Woman?”

rambling OP of opposition to some vague notion — Gnomon

HA!!

Sorry it took so long for me to respond.

But my argument would be that the mechanical notion of causality only arises within the context of intentional being. — apokrisis

This makes sense, although I hadn’t put it in these terms to myself before. Maybe it’s really another way of saying what I was trying to say in the OP

So often, causality is an important concept in interpersonal relationships where people try to exert control over one another. Often, it's in the form of assigning blame; attributing a single cause is necessary in oder to effectively blame someone for something happening. — baker

Rather than blame, I would more likely say responsibility or accountability. As you note that’s in relation to causality as it applies to human action. I intended to avoid all the complications associated with that by limiting the discussion to non-intentional causality.

@apokrisis

I think the primary difference between what you’re saying and what I’m saying is about language— the words we use to describe things. — T Clark

This has always struck me as a bit unfair. I know how seriously they take coffee in Australia.

…so naturally I thought that was the direction you might explore. The systems perspective. Causality as so much more than cause and effect. The story of just efficient cause. — apokrisis

I thought that’s what we were doing. This has been a very satisfying thread for me. It’s given me a chance to flesh out some of my thoughts. You’ve thought about this a lot more than I have, but I think we’re talking about the same thing. I think the primary difference between what you’re saying and what I’m saying is about language— the words we use to describe things. I think the word “causality” is misused and misleading. I think it would be better to dispense with it except in a certain limited number of cases.

That seems odd on what is supposed to be a philosophy board. Again, you introduced constraints as a better approach in the OP. Was the thread meant to tread no further in that direction? — apokrisis

Again, I think this is language. Yes I do want to talk about constraints. I don’t think it was me who limited discussions of causality to just efficient cost. That, as I
understand it, is the common way it’s thought of. That’s what I’m resistant to.

Thanks

Reduction to efficient cause is a mindset based on certain metaphysical presuppositions. — apokrisis

No. My mindset is based on my understanding of how the word causality is generally understood by people who don’t recognize the limitations of the concept associated with complex systems.

My suggestion was to get back to the metaphysics as it was first envisaged in Greek discourse. — apokrisis

No. Again, what the Greeks said isn’t what people today say. That’s what I was talking about.

And didn't Collingwood offer his own update on Hegelian dialectics – one that boils down to the unity of opposites – as well as being an epistemic idealist? — apokrisis

I’m not familiar with that. I only turned to Collingwood when he confirms my prejudices.

We can't – in Kantian fashion – know the truth of our metaphysical presuppositions directly. They are after all logical arguments if they have any rigour wort — apokrisis

Here’s one of those Collingwoodian prejudices—absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false.

Complexity is different as it speaks to emergence, self-organisation and topological order. A theory of the Universe has to be able to model the emergence of space, time and energy as its three major ingredients. And why shouldn't physics and cosmology have that ambition? — apokrisis

I agree with all this, although, as I’ve said many times in this thread, I don’t think it makes sense to call this causality.

If you, any of you, think you have a clear notion of what abduction is, and why it is useful, set it out! There's be a Doctorate in it for you. — Banno

I’ve already answered that question. I recognize you don’t like my answer.

It's presented as "given some evidence, infer the hypothesis that would best explain it" where "best" is left ill-defined. This leaves it entirely open to arbitrarily inferring any explanation to be the best. — Banno

It’s not the explanation that’s the best, it’s the hypothesis that’s a good one and worth testing. A strawman from the king of strawmen. You are waving words around as if they were arguments.

Indeed, at its heart, it remains unclear what abduction amounts to; and as such, it is ineligible as a grounding for rational discourse. — Banno

Abduction is brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a creativity technique in which a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously in response to a prompt. Stress is typically placed on the volume and variety of ideas, including ideas that may seem outlandish or "off-the-wall". Ideas are noted down during the activity, but not assessed or critiqued until later.

Is it rational? Yes, of course. It’s a method that works to generate new ideas that can be evaluated and justified. It can be very effective, as I know from my own career. It would be irrational not to use it under the appropriate circumstances.

A book well worth reading is Peter Hoffmann's Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos. — apokrisis

I really liked that book. It changed the way I look at living organisms and the world in general. Oddly enough, it’s one of the books that led me to seeing the world as I described it in the OP.

So the OP was about the limits of the efficacy of the mechanistic mindset. The complaint was that because it seemed a severely limited view of Nature in practice, one might as well give up on the very idea of believing in “causality” — apokrisis

Ahem…

Collingwood's abstruse concept is over my untrained head — Gnomon

Here’s an idea— if you don’t understand a word don’t use it.

I simply construe the term to mean that the conclusions follow logically from the premises. — Gnomon

This is not correct.

I don't see how it's possible to deny that there is order in the universe, regardless of humans perceiving it. — Patterner

Ever since I read this, I’ve been thinking about it. I started out writing a response where I said I denied there is order in the universe, but I am not ready with an argument right now. I’m going to think about it some more.

In that simplistic dichotomy, where is the "logical efficacy" of the OP? Is it in the "top-down constraints" or the "bottom-up degrees of freedom". Is it the top-down logical or intentional efficacy that the OP was arguing against? :smile: — Gnomon

This is not what Collingwood meant by logical efficacy.

Peircean triads. Is it the degrees of freedom below, the constraints above, and the resulting phenomena?
— T Clark

That’s it. Between the downward constraints and the bottom up construction, the reality that emerges inbetween as the dynamical balance. — apokrisis

How does this relate to the sign, the object, and the interpretant.

As usual, I enjoyed your interesting post. It does just strengthen my understanding that the way you see the world and the way I do are not compatible. I’ll use my new favorite word again—incommensurable.

I looked back over all my posts in this thread and the responses to them. The only question on the table as far as I can tell is whether or not relying on memory is rational. That seems like a very simple and straightforward judgment to make. I would even say obvious. Clearly you and. @unenlightened disagree with me on that.

But rationality WAS decisive for both of us. Contrast our rational choices with IRRATIONAL means of making a choice: basing it on the alignment of the planets, consulting a Ouija board, or basing it on an inscription in a fortune cookie. — Relativist

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not sure you’re right. I guess it depends on whether he didn’t take the bet because he really thought the odds were against him or because Hume said he shouldn’t.

He is not going to recommend that you abandon your science or your common sense. But he is going to ask you to abandon your arrogance and righteousness. — unenlightened

This seems like kind of an arrogant and righteous comment.

While for the last fifty years or so the news has been reporting many issues that threatens to effect our lives there has been one problem that hasn't been really talked about and that there is a problem that world population is not only not growing but it is actually deceasing world wide. In many of the industrial countries of the world there is talk that there isn't going to be even younger working age people to do enough work to support those that are retired. I wonder what the thoughts are of the members of this forum on this subject. — dclements

This is an issue that gets talked about all the time, including here on the forum. The current world population is about 8 billion. That’s expected to reach about 11 billion within 70 years I think. Then it’s supposed to shrink. I don’t think that takes into account the possible consequences of climate change.

This is a truly bizarre argument. I give up.

We rarely have enough information to prove something true beyond all doubt, so navigating through life entails making informed, rational predictions and decisions. Occasionally, wild guesses work out, but informed, rational decisions are more apt to do so. Example: for any given vaccine, it's possible it will do more harm than good, but we can look at studies (or trust those who've done so) to weight the good vs the bad. — Relativist

I would go a step further. It would be irrational not to do things the way you’ve described.

It seems to me there could be a scifi story in what you're saying. If we came up with a way of thinking about something that actually changed its behavior, and it never behaved that way before we came up with that way of thinking about it. That would be pretty amazing. — Patterner

Did you ever read the “Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula LeGuin? It’s not exactly what you described but it has a lot in common. Really good book. Pretty good movie.

I have already explained why it would not have been rational, viz. that your offering the bet in circumstances where you had expertise that I lacked, especially when you had been plying me with alcohol made me suspect a scam. Thus I had legitimate Wittgensteinian reasons for doubt in the particular circumstances. — unenlightened

This is why we pragmatists rule the world.

This is a point very specific to Peircean semiotics and hierarchy theory...

If you have black and white as two complementary extremes, you must also have all the shades of grey which a black and white mixes. And that makes for a triadic story of complexity. This is a simplistic example. But you can see how it makes threeness the irreducible basis of a world with complex relations. You’ve got to break possibility apart in a way it then can relate over all its scales of being — apokrisis

I can never figure out what you mean when you talk about Peircean triads. Is it the degrees of freedom below, the constraints above, and the resulting phenomena?

Well the crowd I mixed with were mainly ecologists and biologists. — apokrisis

Even as an engineer I was sometimes frustrated by the clunky, short-sighted approach, but those were the standards of practice.

How could you - as an ecologist - even argue with someone who only thinks as a mechanist. — apokrisis

Although I'm not a ecologist, that's what I'm trying to do here.

Because cause is what people are often interested in. And precisely because systems are often complex, describing it is too much, if possible at all. — hypericin

If you can't thoroughly describe a system, you can't express it in terms of causes either.

That A casually impinges on B is both of practical significance and is a metaphysical reality. — hypericin

My point in this discussion is to show that causality is only of practical significance in a limited number of mostly artificial cases. I'm not sure what you mean by "metaphysical reality."

That your history of smoking is a casual antecedent to your lung cancer, while brushing your teeth isn't, is an interesting and real feature of the world. But, as you point out, the way it is a casual antecedent is usually quite complex, in a way that the language of cause doesn't easily capture. The word "cause" seems to imply a billiard ball view, where the cause solely produced the effect, which confuses and obscuring the reality, especially of very complex events such as wars, elections, and ecologies. But this doesn't mean we should throw out casualty entirely. — hypericin

I agree with this. The bolded text in particular states my position well. I don't propose to throw out causality entirely, but I would limit it's use to specific cases where it is useful.