So....you cryin’ uncle? Tossin’ in the dialectical towel?

So....you cryin’ uncle? Tossin’ in the dialectical towel? — Mww

What do you mean?

mwwwww!!!!!!!!!

Hey!!! ‘Sup?

You mentioned wandering, so....

No human can even THINK a particular noumenal object, much less perceive one, and if neither of those are possible, they do not even enter the cognitive system. — Mww

Well, it's arguable that Leibnizian Monads could be categorized as such. But we don't know how they would be possible.

Perhaps Cartesian souls too.

Just lookin' for an argument with you. Not much. :cool:

Causation is explanation. It's the answer to "why?"

Necessity is modality. It's the answer to "could it have been otherwise?“ — frank

The usual conception of causality is that of mechanical necessity. Some system of interactions is so constrained that its outcomes could never have been otherwise.

And it is this mechanical view - A always leads to B, never to C or D - that unites the everyday notions of causality, logic, and indeed maths.

Since the industrial revolution especially - built on the back of Newtonian mechanics and atomistic metaphysics - we want to think like machines and understand reality as a machine. Even the mind and the cosmos must be machines.

So there is a strong sociological unity of thought. Causality and logic are their "best selves" to the degree they conform to the machine model of reality.

But then actual science, and even pragmatic logic, have to deal with the real world where contingency, chance, indeterminism, vagueness, etc, all seem equally part of the deal. And this is where larger models of causality and logic become needed.

If we take a constraints-based view of reality - one based on structuralism, or the formal/final cause recognised by Aristotle - we can see that the mechanical ideal becomes a special case within a more general story.

To be mechanical becomes to be rigidly constrained. No accidents allowed. All unpredictability engineered out.

That's how we make planes that never fall out of the sky, or computers that never blue screen.

But in the real world, shit always can happen. Constraint - and hence any notions of causality or logic that invoke the mechanical - is merely something that is relative. The ideal is 100% suppression of the unpredictable or the uncertain. But we can only get arbitrarily close to that - which is fine for engineers. They are trained to make the judgement call of when close is good enough for all practical purposes.

So the real world is mostly indeterminate - more lacking in constraint than constrained. The structure of nature is largely fractal or scalefree. It is described by the loosest kind of statistical attractor.

Take any river system or mountain range. There is no particular cause or logic to exactly where some water channel branches or some particular peak suddenly rises to tower over the rest.

Science can certainly model the macro factors that represent the constraints on such geological flows. But that just constrains the branching or erupting to some fractal probability distribution. And that is good enough for building natural landscapes as the accumulation of tectonic and climatic accidents.

But the human world prizes the extreme case of complete constraint as that is the route to mechanical control over the largely indeterminate realm of nature. We can impose our determinations on it by thinking in this particular fashion.

And hence the passion with which folk defend the everyday notions of causality and logic. It is built into modern education, modern culture.

We all know the mindset that pays the bills and keeps the lights on.

You mentioned wandering, so.... — Mww

Yep. A neuroscientist starts with a methodological confidence that we can come to understand consciousness. There's a nervous system. It has an environment. It organizes its inputs into a model. It tests the model and so on.

I don't really know what Kant is saying. It seems like a bunch of balloons. If you start poking, they just explode.

The usual conception of causality is that of mechanical necessity. Some system of interactions is so constrained that its outcomes could never have been otherwise.

And it is this mechanical view - A always leads to B, never to C or D - that unites the everyday notions of causality, logic, and indeed maths. — apokrisis

Logical possibility is just testing for contradiction. We analyze an ideal cube to determine the possibilities associated with tossing dice. That's all logical possibility is: analysis.

So when we say the dice could come up craps, all we mean is that the analysis of the cubes includes craps.

There is no ontological aspect to it.

I’m sure you’re aware of Kant’s destruction of Leibnizian Monads. Seems he didn’t appreciate the idea of putting form before substance, and if that wasn’t bad enough, which is indeed very bad, to have matter be self-representative.

But you’re right. Leibniz did consider monads as noumena.

then the logic dictates a causal connection. — Haglund

Ah, but does it. It's still an inference - that there must be a causal connection. The difficulty arises when you say what that causal relationship is. Essentially your positing the common-sense objection to Hume's argument. Have a glance at https://iep.utm.edu/hume-causation/

Kant wanders off into inexplicability. — frank

Kant himself acknowledges that his magnum opus is 'dry, obscure, opposed to all ordinary notions, and moreover long-winded', but despite all that it adds up to a profound insight. Have a geez at this primer.

but despite all that it adds up to a profound insight — Wayfarer

I'm familiar. Thanks.

This thread is plagued by a misunderstanding of necessity.

Understanding your question is tricky. Causation is explanation. It's the answer to "why?"

Necessity is modality. It's the answer to "could it have been otherwise?“

Where do you see the connection? — frank

I see the connection when you say, using logic, that 'a' must be the explanation for 'b'. I wrote to a retired professor whose website I often read, his answer was in part:

Logical necessity and physical causality: Logical necessity is a function only of truth. There is no intrinsic connection between antecedents and consequents in conditionals, or between premises and conclusions, apart from the truth-functional form. Thus, as the Stoics first understood, a conditional means that it is false only if the antecedent is true and the consequent false. In formal deduction, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. It doesn't matter what the meaning of the terms is. ...

With causality, there are extra concepts. The principle of causality is that the cause makes the effect happen. But that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Causes do not just randomly make things happen. A cause happens in terms of a law of nature. So things do not fall to the ground just because of causality. You need gravity. That takes some figuring out. They're still trying to figure it out. ...

So physical causation draws in multiple concepts and issues, way, way beyond what is involved in logical necessity. In terms of logical deduction or argument, what comes in are extra premises, even first principles, principia prima.

So I'm tempted to say that where you have a 'scientific law', then you have something in which logical necessity meets physical causation. It's a big claim, I don't know if it's true, or original, but that's what I'm trying to articulate.

I don't really know what Kant is saying. It seems like a bunch of balloons. — frank

Here’s a great big one: science needs something other than itself to prove; metaphysics contains its own proof. Science is never complete; metaphysics is self-contained, thus can be complete.

Me, I favor being both satisfied, and done, at the same time with respect to the same thing.

science needs something other than itself to prove; metaphysics is its own proof. Science is never complete; metaphysics is self-contained, thus can be complete. — Mww

I don't understand. Why does science need something else to prove?

I see the connection when you say, using logic, that 'a' must be the explanation for 'b'. — Wayfarer

We can usually imagine multiple explanations for the same event.

Look at this statement, P:

"The ball went through the window because Terry threw it."

P is necessarily true if it's true in all possible worlds. Why would it be? Why couldn't the ball have been shot out of a cannon?

Or we could use old style necessity where a statement about why a ball went somewhere can't be necessary. Only apriori statements are necessarily true.

Why does science need something else to prove? — frank

I'll step into that one. It has to do with the contingent, with dependent conditions. Everything in causal sequences is dependent on something else. Hence the intrinsic logic of the cosmological argument. Not saying I believe it, but it has logical force.

That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours: that the intelligibility science proposes is always subject to empirical verification means that science never actually explains existence itself but must submit itself to a reality check against the empirical data. This existential gap between scientific hypotheses and empirical verified judgment points to, in philosophical terms, the contingency of existence.

So I'm tempted to say that where you have a 'scientific law', then you have something in which logical necessity meets physical causation — Wayfarer

Absolutely not. The universe could have been different.

But why not?

Look at this statement, P:

"The ball went through the window because Terry threw it."

P is necessarily true if it's true in all possible worlds. Why would it be? Why couldn't the ball have been shot out of a cannon? — frank

But it would be true in all possible worlds that the ball went through the window because it was moving. It would be a general statement, not about a specific situation.

Science cannot be done without tools, metaphysics cannot be done with tools.

Because we can imagine the universe with different laws. Logical possibility is about what we can imagine.

Science cannot be done without tools, metaphysics cannot be done with tools. — Mww

What??

Ok, fine!!! With/without equipment. For the benefit of those who wish logic and mathematics to be considered as tools.

But it would be true in all possible worlds that the ball went through the window because it was moving. It would be a general statement, not about a specific situation. — Wayfarer

So you changed P to

Balls that are moving go through windows.

That's not true in all possible worlds.

Ok, fine!!! With/without equipment. For the benefit of those who wish logic and mathematics to be considered as tools. — Mww

I still don't understand. Science is dependent on tools, so therefore what?

we can imagine the universe with different laws. Logical possibility is about what we can imagine. — frank

But necessarily true propositions are those which are 'true in all possible worlds'. People nowadays conjecture that there are universes in which the laws of physics are different, but were not the fundamental constants just as they are, then such a Universe would not be able to exist. In other words, the contingent is dependent on necessary. What is missing in modern Western philosophy is precisely the notion of a domain of necessary being.

Balls that are moving go through windows.

That's not true in all possible worlds. — frank

There can't be a world in which things that don't move go anywhere, as 'going somewhere' is dependent on 'moving'.

There can't be a world in which things that don't move go anywhere, as 'going somewhere' is dependent on 'moving'. — Wayfarer

So P is:

Balls that are moving are going somewhere.

P is necessarily true. :up:

But it's also an empirical observation. The specifics of which ball, why it's moving (i.e. someone threw it) and so on are contingent, but the fact that it's moving, it's path and velocity, are determined by the laws of physics. Hence, logical necessity meeting physical causation.

Did you mean to disagree with me. This sounds like agreement.

Yes, a die is an example of exact mechanical constraint. To be a fair die, with no side favoured, takes considerable engineering.

And then with all sides distinctively marked, we have a logical situation. A free choice what number the die represents.

We are then supposed to throw the die in an ostentatiously careless way so as to ensure that the choice becomes a random one. We leave it up to the fate of the spin and bounce to determine which number shall be our surprise.

There is no ontological aspect to it. — frank

And who is the cause of that? The folk who had a reason to manufacture a game of chance.

Nature certainly would regard it all as highly artificial and quite illogical.