It is one meaning of causation. It is not the classical meaning. It is a Humean formulation. — Marchesk

Under a Humean understanding of causation. Not the traditional one. — Marchesk

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that Humean causation isn't the counterfactual theory of causation?

it provides no explanation for why B follows A

It's not supposed to. The counterfactual theory of causation just explains what it means for A to cause B. We need something else to explain why A causes B.

I disagree with Humean causation becues it leads to the problem of induction

And perhaps there is a(n unsolvable) problem of induction. How can empirical facts allow for deductive inference? They're not a formal system with axiomatic principles.

It makes everything in the universe contingent. — Marchesk

You seem to be conflating epistemology with ontology. That we can't know that the universe will always behave a certain way isn't that it won't.

The counterfactual theory doesn't say whether B is necessitated by A, which the traditional notion of A forcing B to happen entails. — Marchesk

And what does it mean to say that A forces B to happen if not just that if A didn't happen then B wouldn't have happened?

Your account is just replacing the word "cause", first with "makes happen" and now with "forces". These are just synonyms that don't offer any actual explanation. The underlying meaning behind each of these phrases is what the counterfactual theory of causation is trying to make sense of.

Therefore, we can't know that B will follow A in the future under the counterfactual. — Marchesk

The counterfactual theory of causation is about token events, not types. There is only ever one A and one B.

If you want to talk about A and B as being types then you're right, we can't know that A-type events will always cause B-type events, and that's because sometimes they don't. Sometimes when I kick a ball at a window it will cause the window to break and sometimes it won't.

But knowing whether or not A will cause B has no bearing on what it means for A to cause B. The counterfactual theory of causation is an account of the meaning of causation. Whether or not A will cause B, and whether or not we can know this, is a separate matter.

Yes, I just don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. What does it have to do with the counterfactual theory of causation?

If the direct realist thinks the world is exactly as it phenomenologically appears, then their argument is still so embarrassingly ridiculous as to force us to consider our own misunderstanding as the more plausible explanation. — Isaac

They certainly thought so of at least some appearances, hence Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

And see color primitivist realism for the view that objects have an objective colour appearance:

Color Primitivist Realism is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarily understood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative features of the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity and difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors that they really have. Such a view has been presented by Hacker 1987 and by J. Campbell 1994, 2005, and has become increasingly popular: McGinn 1996; Watkins 2005; Gert 2006, 2008. This view is sometimes called “The Simple View of Color” and sometimes “The Naive Realist view of Color”. Primitivist Color realism contains a conceptual (and semantic) thesis about our ordinary understanding of color, and a metaphysical thesis, namely, that physical bodies actually have colors of this sort.

If they're really arguing that we're never wrong, however the world seems, that's how it is, then they should consider the earth flat, the sun in its orbit, dragons exist, and the weather caused by an angry God as these are all ways the world has appeared to us to be. — Isaac

There's a difference between the phenomenology of experience and any subsequent intellectual interpretation. I think you're conflating two different senses of "how things appear".

For example, "the object appears to be glowing red" and "the object appears to be hot because it is glowing red."

Then I'm struggling to understand the account direct realism (or indirect realism, for that matter) is putting forward. — Isaac

The epistemological problem of perception asks: is the world as it appears to us? Direct realists answered in the affirmative. However they made sense of "directness", that things are as they appear follows from perception being whatever they meant by "direct". Therefore, if it can be shown that things aren't as they appear (i.e. that a thing's appearance depends in part on an organism's perceptual apparatus and any associated mental phenomena (e.g. if substance or property dualism are true)) then direct realism is false.

The argument I have been making is that, assuming scientific realism, the world isn't as it appears to us. That's not to say that how the world is and how it appears aren't causally covariant; we know that an object's colour-appearance is determined by the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation it emits or reflects, as well as by an organism's sense receptors and any subsequent brain activity.

I agree with you, as you seemed to say above, that it doesn't even make sense for the world to "have an appearance" (when not being seen), and so direct realism seems to be false even in theory, irrespective of scientific realism. But there seems to be a sticking point in that at times you even seem to reject appearance tout court. Or at the very least reject the claim that any words we use (like "red") refer to features of this appearance; instead you say that they all refer to whatever hidden states are causally responsible for the appearance. I disagree with this view, although admittedly it's irrelevant as the argument isn't over what words mean or what they refer to but about whether or not the world is as it appears to us.

Why can't that wavelength be both green and purple? — Isaac

According to you, something is green if it causes most humans to see it as green and something is purple if it causes most humans to see it as purple. How can a single wavelength cause most people to see it as green and most people to see it as purple?

Your argument is that colour is a property of experience becasue two people see different colours and an object cannot be two colours at once.

But if colour is a property of experience, then the statement "an object cannot be two colours at once" is incoherent. Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac

When direct realists say that we see an object as red because it is red they are not saying that we see an object as red because it causes us to see it as red. That would be a truism.

There is something which is a red look (i.e. the seeing as red). It's what occurs when most people's eyes are stimulated by light with a wavelength of 650nm. Direct realists say that we see an object as red because that object has that exact red look and that light reveals the look rather than just causes that look. A red look and an orange look are conceptually different things, and if they were physical properties they would be physically different things. And the claim is that an object cannot have two different physical looks for the same reason that it cannot have two different physical masses or two different physical charges. Or, at the very least, that at least one object could have just one physical look.

And if at least one object could have just one physical look but two people could see it as two different colours then for at least one of them the colour they see isn't a property of the object.

But I suspect that your account of experience can't make sense of this, in which case it's irrelevant to the argument being made which is an attack on direct realism, not on whatever your account is.

I don't understand your objection. If in all possible worlds A causes B then in all possible worlds if A doesn't happen then B doesn't happen. If in some possible worlds A causes B and in some possible worlds it doesn't then in some possible worlds if A doesn't happen then B doesn't happen and in some possible worlds it is not the case that if A doesn't happen then B doesn't happen.

You don’t see a difference in those accounts of causality? — Marchesk

It's the same account; that A causes B is that if A didn't happen then B wouldn't have happened. It's just that in one universe A doesn't always cause B. What's the issue?

Possible Universe X: B always follows A. Possible Universe Y: B follows A up until time T. — Marchesk

A causes B in universe X, A causes B up until time T in universe Y.

Compare that to All Possible Universes where: B always follows A.

A causes B in all possible universes.

The counterfactual definition still doesn’t solve the problem of induction... — Marchesk

Is it supposed to? I just understood it as an attempt to explain what causation means.

... and it doesn’t distinguish between impossible and possible but never happens.

Is it supposed to? It just explains that "A causes B" means "If A didn't happen then B wouldn't have happened". Whether or not A or B is possible has nothing to do with causation.

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. — Palmer, 1999

Vision science: Photons to phenomenology

The problem of induction says we don't know this to be true about the future. But if there is a C which makes it so that A can't be false and B be true, then we do know that B follows A in the future.

The C could be in A or B, it could be a law prescribing A & B, or it could be something else connecting B to A. I think it would be easier to discuss an example than just to talk about C in abstract terms. — Marchesk

So A causes B if some C makes B follow from A? But then what does it mean for C to make B follow from A? Does it mean that if C were false then B wouldn’t follow from A? We’re back to the counterfactual definition of causation I gave above, just replacing A with C.

The distinction between direct vs. direct realism is non-sensical when you include the experience as part of the world your experiencing, and understand that effects carry information about their causes. — Harry Hindu

We're directly aware of the effects and through that indirectly aware of their cause.

Do you not have direct access to your experience and isn't your experience part of the world as much as what your experience is of? — Harry Hindu

Yes. But it doesn't follow from this that I am directly aware of the cause of my experience. The part of the world that is my experience isn't the part of the world that is the apple. I'm directly aware of the former, and through that indirectly aware of the latter.

Consciousness doesn't extend beyond the body.

I addressed your concerns here.

Scientific realism and direct realism are incompatible, therefore one (or both) is wrong.

Do you think we directly perceive the light but indirectly perceive apples? — NOS4A2

No, I think something like the Sense-Datum Theory of perception is correct.

What I'm saying here is that your account of perception – that A directly perceives B if there is no "mediating factor" between B and A – entails that we directly perceive light and indirectly perceive apples, given that light is a mediating factor between us and the apple but that there (presumably) is no mediating factor between us and the light. And I'm saying that your rephrasing of your account to say that we directly perceive apples "through light" is as meaningless as saying that we directly perceive distant events "through a camera feed". It's just special pleading.

We directly perceive apples through light. — NOS4A2

This is as meaningless as saying that we directly perceive distant events through a camera feed.

I don't see why resembles even enters into reference. If I say "Jack, come over here!" when the man's name is John, I'm still referencing the man, I just got his name wrong. If I say "bring me that green cup", pointing to a red cup, I'm still referencing the cup, I just got its colour wrong.

We don't have to be right about something's properties in order to reference it. — Isaac

The existence of M-theory doesn't entail that the things it models – strings, branes, the ninth spatial dimension, etc. – exist outside the model. It attempts to explain observable phenomena, but it would be wrong to say that its terms – "strings", "branes", "the ninth spatial dimension" – refer to whatever "hidden states" explain observable phenomena. If these hidden states don't "match" the models then these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension – they're something else. And if these hidden states aren't strings, branes, or the ninth spatial dimension then it isn't that "strings", "branes", and "the ninth spatial dimension" are non-referring terms, it's that they refer only to the models.

And the same is true of everyday perception. If the hidden states don't "match" our model (or sense-data) of the colour red then they are not the colour red, they're something else, and colour terms like "red" refer only to the model (or sense-data).

I'm saying that the term 'red apple' refers to the hidden state we model as a red apple. — Isaac

But you just said above "I can't talk about [the external cause], can't even mention it."

So which is it?

It's literally called a model. — Isaac

Yes, and assuming scientific realism, the nature of the external world "matches" the model. It's not just an instrumental tool.

I'm saying that the term 'red apple' refers to the hidden state we model as a red apple. — Isaac

Which means what, exactly? That the hidden state resembles our model of a red apple, such that it is as a red apple appears to us?

You can't say the only access we have to the real world is our models, and then go about apparently comparing our models to the real world and finding them to differ. We have no non-modelled access to the external world, so how is it featuring in your comparison? — Isaac

Ordinary perception doesn't provide us access to the external world (outside our models), but assuming scientific realism the Standard Model does. Given that direct realists tend to be scientific realists the arguments I have been making show that their direct realism is incompatible with scientific realism. I'm not particularly wedded to scientific realism and am willing to accept scientific instrumentalism, but that's not relevant to the argument I'm making, which is just that assuming scientific realism and the Standard Model, indirect realism follows.

I have no direct access to the external world to conflate it with anything. I can't talk about it, can't even mention it without all I'm saying actually deriving only from a model of it. — Isaac

Then what the hell have you been saying for the last few days when you talk about the external cause of one's perception being a red apple?

Are you just saying that we think of the external cause of one's perception as being a red apple? Because that's the point I've been trying to make all along. Contrary to the direct realist who says that the external cause of one's perception being a red apple isn't just something we think to be the case but also mind-independently is the case.

If we were bats we might well describe walls as having a pitch. — Isaac

That we might say this isn't that, as a mind-independent fact, walls have a pitch. As I mentioned in the other thread, I think you're conflating our model of the external world with the external world. That's a mistake.

Another question: is there a fundamental difference between sight and echolocation? Obviously sight involves light and a visual experience whereas echolocation involves sound and an auditory experience, but in both cases it is just a case of some "foreign" force (light or sound) interacting with and being changed by some other object (a wall) and then this affected force stimulating some organism's sense receptors and producing the associated experience.

Does echolocation involve the "direct" perception of a wall? Are the features of the auditory experience mind-independent features of the wall? Presumably echolocation involves the experience of such things as pitch and tone and pace? Does the wall have a pitch, a tone, and a pace? I don't think this at all sensible. So why would sight be any different?

As I said in the other thread, I think people are just bewitched by the complexity of visual experiences. It confuses them into adopting the naive view of perception which modern science has shown to be wrong.

One could instead argue that we directly see the environment, of which the apple is part of, and environments have lighting conditions. It's a mistake to just focus on the apple, as if it had independent existence from everything else. Of course there has to be physical relation between the object and the perceiver. — Marchesk

If you're not considering air, light, or glasses to be a mediating factor between the apple and one's sense receptors then I don't understand that is meant by "mediating factor". This just seems like special pleading.

How would a world resemble how it looks to us? I can't even make any coherent sense of such an expression. — Isaac

Neither can I, but it's the position of direct realism that it does. Hence the arguments I've put forward that show the problems with this view.

You want to claim that there isn't 'really' a green apple there? — Isaac

I don't make that claim because I don't claim that something is "really" there only if it is mind-independent. As I've said many times over the years, antirealism isn't unrealism.

That birds would see it as purple? That only shows that green apples look purple to birds, not that there is no green apple. — Isaac

If something looks purple but isn't purple then there's a difference between a purple-look and being purple, and so we're back to what I said before; there are two different senses of the word "purple" and you're just equivocating. There's the purple appearance, which I would say is the primary sense of our understanding, and then there's the mind-independent state of causing most humans to be presented with this purple appearance, which is an ad hoc naming.

That’s right. We experience light, air, glasses, apples, heat, gravity, pressure, the tree, the leaves and so on. We directly perceive the environment. There is no mediating factor between the environment you experience, and you the experiencer. I’ve said this a few times now. — NOS4A2

You're not addressing the question. According to your account we don't directly see apples because air, light, and glasses are a mediating factor between the apple and you. Deflecting by saying that we directly experience the light doesn't say anything about whether or not we directly see the apple.

What does symbolic logic have to do with causality or laws of nature? It's interesting you want to use a syntactic formalism in a discussion on nominalism. — Marchesk

It helps us make sense of the terms. Symbolic logic is used in much of philosophy, not just as an exercise in syntax but to better address the substance of some philosophical position, e.g. with the recently discussed Fitch's paradox of knowability.

Admittedly we don't need to go that far, but it would be useful if we could translate the notion of causation into something more formal than "A causes B if some C makes B follow from A" because it's not clear what C is or what it means for this C to make B follow from A. My own account of causation is taken from Lewis: A causes B if it is not possible for A to be false and B to be true.

Causality can be defined is that which makes B follow A — Marchesk

Unfortunately we’re looking for something more formal to explain this relationship. Can we translate what you say here into symbolic logic?

You don't understand the notion of causality? — Marchesk

Causation is a tricky thing to define. The definition I provided above is Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation. I’m not quite sure how to make sense of “A necessitates B”. It’s definitely not “if A is true then B is necessarily true”.

Although part of the problem here is probably to do with the various paradoxes of material implication.

A necessitates B — Marchesk

How is this any different to saying “if A happens then B happens”?

Secret Service agents who tried to torpedo Hutchinson testimony lawyer up, refuse to testify: panel

Top Secret Service agents who tried to undermine former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the Jan. 6 committee have hired private lawyers and are refusing to cooperate with the investigation, members of the panel said over the weekend.

I wonder why.

Questions have swirled about Ornato and Engel's credibility since Hutchinson's testimony. Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who wrote the book "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" during the Trump administration, told MSNBC that both men were "very, very close to President Trump."

"Some people accused them of at times being enablers and 'yes men' of the president—particularly Tony Ornato—and very much people who wanted to do what he wanted and see him pleased," she said, adding that "both of these individuals lose a little credibility because of how closely they have been seen as aligned to Donald Trump."

Ornato made an unusual transition from working for the Secret Service to working directly for Trump at the White House, serving as deputy chief of staff for operations. Former White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah accused Ornato, who helped coordinate Trump's infamous clearing of protesters at Lafayette Square for a photo-op at a nearby church, of lying about the incident. "There seems to be a major thread here… Tony Ornato likes to lie," Kinzinger tweeted last month.

Oh, that's why. They're unwilling to tell the truth and they're unwilling to lie under oath.

For example, we do not 'see' an internal model. That appears to be impossible. — Isaac

This is where you're getting lost in the irrelevance of English grammar. All that matters is whether or not the world when not being seen resembles how it looks to us. Are the mind-independent features of the world present in the phenomenological character of experience? We need to answer these questions to solve the epistemological problem of perception. All this other talk is a red herring.

So now we're believing the scientists again. — Isaac

I'm not believing him. I'm pointing out how even the theory you're supporting doesn't make the metaphysical claims you're making.

And I'll refer back to Friston:

Note that ‘red’ is a fictive cause of the data, not a sufficient statistic — it does not exist other than as the support of a probability distribution. It is this belief we associate with qualia. Imagine now that you have access to the sufficient statistics inducing qualia from multiple patches of retinotopically mapped colours and hues. You then hierarchically optimize the next level of sufficient statistics to find the best hypothesis that explains the sufficient statistics at the retinotopically mapped level — and you select a belief that they are caused by a red rose. Again, the rose does not in itself exist other than to support a probability distribution associated with sufficient statistics — say neural activity. The key thing here is that the hypotheses underpinning (supporting) beliefs are specified by a generative model. This model furnishes a virtual reality that is used to explain sensory impressions through the act of inference.

Of course, he talks about things like "red" and "a rose" as being a "fictive" that is used as some sort of instrumentalist tool to make sense of sensory impressions, whereas I would refer to such things as being sense-data (and he indeed mentions qualia). Either way, it's not the mind-independent causal thing.

Only according to the scientists. It doesn't seem that way to me, objects don't seem to me to be how the standard model describes them. So I suppose for the purposes of our current conversion, they aren't. — Isaac

Exactly. Which is why the objects you see aren't mind-independent. That's the point I've been making since the start.

Then why does it matter what the standard model tells us about how objects reflect light? — Isaac

Because it shows that colours as-seen aren’t mind-independent. If it were the Standard Model or some other theory would find it. Instead, colour is a product of perception. The naive philosopher then mistakenly thinks of this colour as being mind-independent.

Scientists tell you objects are made of waveforms. They don't seem to be, but you accept they are. — Isaac

No I don’t. Waveforms are waveforms. Tables aren’t waveforms. I reject the philosophical position that reduces the everyday objects of perception to just being the mind-independent stuff “out there.”

As I have said before, the world as seen isn’t the world as described by the Standard Model, and I’ll add isn’t the world as described by cognitive science either.

Phenomenological experience is its own domain, hence the hard problem of consciousness, and hence the epistemological problem of perception that direct and indirect realists are trying to solve.

How does any of that show that colour actually is presented to experience? — Isaac

I know from first-hand experience that colours are present in my experiences. I’m not just some thinking thing that engages in logical inferences.

Of course I can’t make such a claim about you or anyone else. Perhaps you all have blindsight or are p-zombies. But I tend to trust that other people have the same kind of experiences as me.