he best swipe I have at it right now is to say that causation is a tension between those properties of a thing that (more or less) depend on its present context, and those properties of a thing that are (more or less) independent of its present context. — Pneumenon
I think, then, that the question of understanding causality becomes one of characterizing time. — Moliere
There is never not a context, I grant you. There's also never not individual entities — Pneumenon
Perhaps part of the problem is grammatical, insofar as it's too easy to speak of 'cause' as an independent entity, whereas the formula ought to be, in set theoretic terms: efficient causality={cause, condition}. — StreetlightX
what is a way of approaching causality that enables us to understand diverse varieties of cause in a unifying way? — Pneumenon
I think it's a waste of time to try and "do causality" with FOPL. — Pneumenon
In addition to grammar, one big problem is that everyday paradigmatic instances of causation that are readily visible to us fit the "billiard ball" image quite well: rock hits window, window breaks. How about evolutionary biology or something like that? A notion of causality derived from the former will break down when applied to the latter, as we've both observed in this thread. — Pneumenon
Efficient causation, I think, is basically a heuristic. — Pneumenon
Strongly suspect that this is the root of goofy reductionist theories that claim that causation only happens between fundamental particles or whatever - a dogmatic reduction of every instance of causation to efficient cause.
Maybe one approach would be to ask, instead of the cause of why something happens, ask for the reason that it happens. They're sometimes the same, but they're sometimes not. One example that might draw out the difference it the two possible responses to the question 'why is the water boiling?' One answer is: water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and it's being heated by an electric current. Another answer is: I am boiling the water because I intend to make tea. It's a trivial example but nevertheless makes a distinction between efficient and formal causation in a pragmatic way.
The first kind of causation is generally more specific and is often the subject of scientific analysis - what causes this malady; why do continents move; why do planetary orbits have the form they do. I think that's the source of a lot of your 'bottom-up billiard ball theorising'. — Wayfarer
I think this falls into the same trap I mentioned in the OP. "Is the system more than the sum of its parts?" is like asking "Is any single part something besides a component in a system?" The system does what it does based on isolated interactions; the isolated interactions are the way they are because of the system. Trying to decipher this to get at causality doesn't work, because this tension between local and global is causality. — Pneumenon
Out of curiosity, do you have any way to avoid this type of reductionism? — Marty
Explanation is only different from causation when you are explaining what something is. When you're explaining why something is a certain way, the lines become very blurry. — Pneumenon
That is not to say that our models represent exactly what is being modeled, though. This is glaringly obvious in that we can model nature in such a way as to be intelligible to us only as deterministic, but modern physics seems to suggest that it is "really" indeterministic. — John
I'm not sure how to take this. You don't understand the difference between saying what something is and saying why it's that way? — Pneumenon
Talk of "fundamental particles" and of "higher scales" is really just talk about different perspectives of the same thing. Different perspectives can be in different locations of the same size scale, or from the from different size scales. Your argument is derived from the idea that any "view" can only be a anthropomorphic one - one that only exists on our time and size scale, with the tiniest things that we can observe (tiny compared to us) being "fundamental" while the large things (large compared to us) are "higher scale".I haven't heard any convincing arguments for it. The ones I hear can easily be flipped around: "Everything your body does boils down to the interaction of its fundamental particles." Flip it around: "Any fundamental particle in my body does what it does as a result of its interactions with the particles around it."
Any attempt to boil this stuff down to fundamental particles can be bounced back up to a higher scale in analogous manner. There's just no reason to be that kind of reductionist. — Pneumenon
Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. Also, I am not sure whether you think you are explicating preexisting meanings or inventing your own. — SophistiCat
Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. — SophistiCat
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