Do you consider the description of the salt marsh I discussed as a "toy case?" If so, I disagree. — T Clark

Do you consider the description of the salt marsh I discussed as a "toy case?" If so, I disagree. — T Clark

No, that is the opposite of a toy case. By toy case I mean the simplified examples that may come to mind when considering causality, such as one billiard ball hitting another.

The question I've been asking is--if it is such a complex system of events, why bring the idea of causality into it at all. Why not just describe the system? — T Clark

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.

That A casually impinges on B is both of practical significance and is a 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.

There is meaning, and there is order. We find those things. — Patterner

Got ya. The view I have sympathy for at present is that meaning and order are products of our interactions with the world rather than features waiting to be uncovered. We create concepts, patterns, and “laws” as tools to navigate our experience. This makes me wonder, what would count as meaning that is independent or external to human thought?

But I can see how it would be argued that the daily sunrise or even the laws of logic are external to us. I’m not entirely convinced, and I wonder to what extent the universe we know is a contingent product, not of some external truths, but of our cognitive apparatus. Similar, I suppose, to Kant’s notion that space and time are necessary conditions for any experience: they structure how we, as humans, perceive the world, rather than being properties of the world independent of us. But this is just an intuition, and I don’t know enough philosophy to turn this into a more comprehensive picture. And as someone pragmatically inclined, reality as it might really be doesn't much matter.

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.

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.

This makes me wonder, what would count as meaning that is independent or external to human thought? — Tom Storm

I don't know if anyone at all agrees with me, but I say the order of the bases in DNA mean amino acids and proteins.

I don't see how it's possible to deny that there is order in the universe, regardless of humans perceiving it. If solid H2O sometimes floated in liquid H2O, and sometimes didn't… If photons sometimes traveled at 299,792,458 mps, and sometimes didn't… If electrons sometimes repelled each other, and sometimes didn't…. if the strength of gravity sometimes followed the inverse square law, and sometimes didn't... On and on and on and on and on... It would be chaos if those things didn't always work the same way under the same conditions. The universe would be chaos. If a universe could exist at all.

But they do work consistently. With order. Call them properties, or laws, or whatever. But there is order to them all, everywhere.

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.

This is the general model of systems causality. Form constrains and matter constructs. A single cell is the membrane enclosing a busy chemistry. A body is a skin enclosing a busy community of cells.

Many other consequences follow. But this is the guts of it.

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

Yep. And so the issue is whether to give up on causality as it seems to run into the sand after just a few steps up in complication, or instead start developing theories that deal with complexity directly.

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?

I find it helpful to compare it to the trinity. Which works in the same way, father (god), downward constraint, mother (Holy Spirit)upward constraint, son, (Christ)the resultant reality.
I’ve been thinking in threes for a long time, it works well for me.

There's lots of trinities. I struggle to reconcile them, maybe they're just different and i shouldn't try.

Substance, form, function
Cardinal, fixed, mutable
Will, intellect, feeling
Father, Son, Holly Ghost
Belly, head, heart
Strawberry, mint, hazelnut
Ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar
Red, blue, yellow
Labour, Tory, Lib Dem
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
Voltage, resistance, current
Bowl, cherries, life

I should probably read some Pierce. Might help me out.

Constraints — T Clark

I believe that the idea of constraint is fundamentally incorrect, as it adds a dimension of possibility to reality that I consider unnecessary. We can speak of a certain regularity that existed (the continuous evolution of dinosaurs) and that was completely disrupted by an asteroid. Extinction is an effect of the asteroid striking the Earth. However, it is not the constraint of a possibility. For that possibility would make us think of a world where that possibility exists. I prefer to speak of a rupture in the regularity or stability that the dinosaur species possessed, without needing to introduce the concept of possibility into the constrains.

I don't see how it's possible to deny that there is order in the universe, regardless of humans perceiving it. If solid H2O sometimes floated in liquid H2O, and sometimes didn't… If photons sometimes traveled at 299,792,458 mps, and sometimes didn't… If electrons sometimes repelled each other, and sometimes didn't…. if the strength of gravity sometimes followed the inverse square law, and sometimes didn't... On and on and on and on and on... It would be chaos if those things didn't always work the same way under the same conditions. The universe would be chaos. If a universe could exist at all. — Patterner

I understand why it feels compelling to say that the universe must have order, because without consistent laws, nothing could exist as we know it. Maybe you (and most scientists) are right about this. :razz: Neverthless, I am curious, does what we call ‘order’ exist independently of our own frameworks? The stability of H₂O, photons, electrons, or gravity is only meaningful within the systems of concepts, practices, and distinctions that we impose.

Does the universe possess order as an intrinsic property, or does it only become ordered through our acts of knowing, as we impose structure on an otherwise indeterminate reality? Your notion of chaos, therefore, is not an external threat; it is simply the indeterminate reality that we continually structure in order to make sense of anything at all. The predictability we observe is real, but is this because we have stabilized certain patterns within an otherwise indeterminate world? I wonder if what we call ‘laws of nature’ are our codified ways of structuring reality, not independent features of the universe. But I fear I have strayed into an unpopular and perhaps debased version of post-modernism.

But let's look at an example of the above so we can tease it out.

When we say that water freezes at 0 °C, it seems like an objective fact about the universe. But from my perspective, this predictability arises perhaps because we have structured reality with concepts like temperature, phase, and measurement. The water itself doesn’t carry the law of freezing; it only behaves in ways we can recognize once we impose these distinctions. What we call a ‘law of nature’ is therefore not an independent feature of the universe, but a pattern we have stabilized within an otherwise indeterminate reality.

I'm just trying to think through this stuff here and perhaps doing it badly.

Shouldn’t that be Labour, Reform, Lib Dem.

Thinking in threes helps one get away from seeing things in black and white. Blackist’s are dead against whiteist’s, they think it’s nonsense. But if you bring grey into the mix, there’s a bit of both and a new colour aswell, grey.

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.

It seems almost like the double slit experiment. If photons never went through without making the interference pattern before people started watching it. But Google AI says:

'The concept of an "observer" in quantum mechanics doesn't require a human or conscious being. Any interaction with a classical system, whether a detector or even just the environment, can act as the measurement that causes the wave function to collapse.'

When we say that water freezes at 0 °C, it seems like an objective fact about the universe. But from my perspective, this predictability arises perhaps because we have structured reality with concepts like temperature, phase, and measurement. The water itself doesn’t carry the law of freezing; it only behaves in ways we can recognize once we impose these distinctions. What we call a ‘law of nature’ is therefore not an independent feature of the universe, but a pattern we have stabilized within an otherwise indeterminate reality.. — Tom Storm

My position is that there are laws of nature that account for the order in the universe, and that these exist independently of us. I acknowledge I could be wrong, so I'm interested in exploring the perspective you offer.

My perspective is consistent with everything we "know" about the universe. The alternative, the "mind-created order" that you suggest seems to lack all explanatory value - it raises more questions than it answers. It does seem possible, but that's about it - there's no other reason to think it's true, as far as I can tell. Surely, it's at least possible that our traditional view is correct.

Is it really just a coin toss between these two possibilities? I don't think it is, but I'd like to hear what others think. What am I overlooking?

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.

Extinction is an effect of the asteroid striking the Earth. However, it is not the constraint of a possibility. For that possibility would make us think of a world where that possibility exists. — JuanZu

So what is natural selection but a constraint on genetic variety? Biology relies on its evolvability as its primary cause. It creates the possibilities that the world then prunes to shape.

At the level of fundamental physics quantum states are also being thermally decohered. The second law is the general constraint on what exists. And the quantum says even Nature starts by generating a variety of possibilities that a global classical context then prunes to shape.

Reality can’t seem to escape this causal pattern.

I wonder if what we call ‘laws of nature’ are our codified ways of structuring reality, not independent features of the universe. — Tom Storm

Both things can be true. We do impose our epistemology on Nature. We are creating a narrative. But also Nature is there to be spoken about. We can hope to tell a story that is pragmatically useful. It will relate us to the world in a relationship that works.

Yes, the whole distinction between events that are intentional versus those that are not seems to complicate all of the discussions I’ve looked at. As I noted earlier, that’s why I avoided the whole subject of human causation. That doesn’t mean none of the issues discussed in this thread is relevant. — T Clark

Yes, Causation without Intent is what we call Accident. And the distinction is crucial in philosophy & science, but typically taken for granted. Unfortunately, Quantum Physics*1 has undermined the simple Certainty of Newton's physics/metaphysics, in which all events were intentionally caused by God. When you take God or Logos (reason ; intent) out of the equation things quickly get messy : like a half-alive cat in a box*2.

In philosophical discussions, Logical (directional) Causation in macro space-time seems to be implicit (intuitive) for "humans" in the word "cause". If not, an alternative meaning should be clearly indicated. Otherwise, the thread would quickly come unspooled . . . . as it so often does. :wink:


PS___ In college, we did an exercise called Design by Accident. Participants typically saw logical order (Form) in patterns that resulted from intentional randomness, such as spilling ink or pick-up-sticks. We seem to be designed by evolution to conceive order even in perceived disorder, and to infer causation even in the absence of evidence of intention.


*1. Quantum Causality :
In essence, quantum causality is about exploring what happens to cause and effect when we apply the principles of quantum mechanics to the very fabric of spacetime, leading to a more flexible and potentially counterintuitive view of causal relationships
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+causation

*2. IS THE CAT DEAD OR ALIVE OR BOTH?
Superposition or reposed position

Causation without Intent is what we call Accident. — Gnomon

That may be what YOU call it. I just call it causation. You can choose to believe there is intent involved in all causation, but you cannot possibly show that causation requires it.

IS THE CAT DEAD OR ALIVE OR BOTH? — Gnomon

All answers depend on some unverifiable intrepretation of quantum mechanics. Which one is correct seems likely to remain a mystery, even though many are unwilling to accept that.

Nevertheless, "quantum causality" is well represented by a wave function - a Schroedinger equation that depicts the deterministic evolution of a quantum system over time.

Causation without Intent is what we call Accident. — Gnomon

I would suggest that what we call an accident is the opposite of what we call a necessity. So the more fundamental dichotomy is chance and necessity. Or what in the systems view is the top down constraints and the bottom up degrees of freedom.

In the most general metaphysical sense, you have the global finality that imposes a structure of necessitation on the occurrence of events. Some set of constraints that limit the probabilities. But then the corollary of that is that what isn’t forbidden is free to happen. From the physical perspective, that is what becomes the accidental. The degrees of freedom. The actions that are chance happenings so far as the global finality is concerned. The kind of differences that make no difference as far as the system’s most general purposes are concerned.

Then within this most general physical view, we can start to talk of life and mind as intentional or dispositional systems. Systems in an encoded of informational modelling relation with their world.

So a mind is in a highly intentional state to the degree it is organised to eliminate all the kinds of accidents that it feels would matter. The differences that would make a difference.

Accidents can still happen. We may fluff the tennis shot. But then we can go work on our shot and seek to minimise future such errors.

So intention is the kind of global state of constraint that an intelligent system can form. It has a brain to set things up in a way that more or less ensures a ball is at least going to try to clear a net and land in a court.

The opposite of an intent is then a mistake. An error. Something that by definition is meaningful as we would want to correct our habits the next time around.

The Earth doesn’t have any reason to care if the cliff side crumbles. That is just an accident. The laws of thermodynamics are in fact being respected by this sudden act of erosion. It is necessary only that the statistics average out for the laws to be upheld.

But the architect needs to care if his buildings show tendencies to crumble in ways not intended. He will have to do more work on ensuring this cannot happen in future.

So again, we have the one most general model of causality that applies to Nature as a whole. And then we have the subset view which is tailored to explaining life and mind. Overall, Nature is a balance of chance and necessity. Semiotic systems are then a pragmatic balance of their intentions and outcomes. Accidents can become errors to be avoided. A further dimension of purpose and meaning arises as the world is now being organised - or at least some tiny part of it - by a sense of personal agency. An organism that is acting with a constraining point of view,

I have no problem with the idea of constraint as long as we eliminate teleology. There is something with a certain regularity and stability, and suddenly something interrupts that. Genetic variability is blind, and mutations can be of any kind. But when you put it in the face of a cataclysm of that magnitude, things seem biased, and it seems as if we had cut off or interrupted some purpose. But from my point of view that is an illusion.

I have no problem with the idea of constraint as long as we eliminate teleology. — JuanZu

Sure. But the system’s approach can deal in grades of teleology. Minds can form purposes, bodies can shape functions and then the physical realm can have its tendencies. Its directions everywhere wants to go, its states that are its global statistical attractors.

After all, physics can’t get by without its principle of least action. So constraints shape physical tendencies. Nothing too metaphysically alarming about that? And the other thing of neurobiological purpose can then be understood as a well developed and highly evolved version of a mere statistical tendency.

A tendency is thus a state of the very least constraint. Yet least action is still a principle that physics finds essential when accounting for why something would happen the way it does.

The stability of H₂O, photons, electrons, or gravity is only meaningful within the systems of concepts, practices, and distinctions that we impose. — Tom Storm

Careful—you're starting to sound like @Wayfarer. That the stability is meaningful is not the same as to say that it exists. The conflation of meaning with being or existence is a constant in Wayfarerland. Of course things can be meaningful only to a percipient who finds them to be so, but it is certainly bad logic that concludes they can only exist in the human understanding. Why should we doubt that the patterns, regularities, forms and invariances we find everywhere in nature exist independently of us?

To say they don't seems to be the height, or better, the low, of human hubris , anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. It also seems extremely implausible that we could construct these ourselves from scratch and fortuitously find that the predictions based on understanding them can be so successfully used to navigate the world.

Genetic variability is blind, and mutations can be of any kind. — JuanZu

Evolvability itself evolves, Organisms can tune the rate of their variability. Some genes are far more conserved than others.

And then selection acts at the population level of gene pools and their allele frequencies.

So yes, mutations might be blind. But even that is purposeful in that the blindness and the mutation are constrained by the fact that organisms have already established the 99% they have in common with members of their gene pool and the kinds of gene complexes they might want to most expose in the next round of life’s lottery.

Apart from Dawkins, not many biologists are zealots about life being a matter of blind chance. Indeed, life became complex because it could turn evolution into a game of making good genetic predictions with the right amount of mistakes to also keep on learning about the world.

The genes offer the environment a suitable range of options to choose from. Then tailors the gene pool to track any changes in this customer preference.

Or at least there is another causal narrative to offer beyond Dawkin’s blind watchmaker.

But the system’s approach can deal in grades of teleology. Minds can form purposes, bodies can shape functions and then the physical realm can have its tendencies. — apokrisis

I prefer the term ' tendencies' to 'teleology'. Tendencies are something that are created during the development of a process. Whereas teleology is the end that is found at the beginning of the process, even before the process begins. In my opinion, they are two very different things.

On the other hand, it is very different in the case of minds. To me, teleology seems like a mystery to be clarified. For me, it has to be related to subjective time, which is different from the extensive time of physics. But it is something I have not yet investigated.

Tendencies are something that are created during the development of a process. Whereas teleology is the end that is found at the beginning of the process, even before the process begins. In my opinion, they are two very different things. — JuanZu

I hear you. But quantum physics does raise the issue of retrocausality as part of its holism. In some restricted sense, the future does act backwards on the past. Entanglement applies in time as well as space.

So that – along with the principle of least action – puts tendencies and purposes on some kind of connected spectrum. Finality is in play at some level that needs to be accounted for. So I wouldn't want to get into the psychological habit of leaving it out.

A small difference in the physicalist sense, but a potentially major one in the metaphysical sense.

To me, teleology seems like a mystery to be clarified. For me, it has to be related to subjective time, which is different from the extensive time of physics. — JuanZu

Well that seems no mystery at all from the point of view of the biosemiotician. An organism is in a modelling relation with its world. So of course it is in the business of thinking ahead and getting organised by anticipating what is to come.

Consciousness is intentional as modelling is about predicting what can be expected to happen so as to have some say in the matter. We can't wait to react to the world after it happens as mostly that would be too late to change things. But we can prevent the future happening if we act ahead of the moment.

It takes 120-200 milliseconds to even react to the world at the level of reflexive habit. To hear the starters pistol in a race, or to see which way the ball bounced after the tennis serve got struck.

Then it takes more like 500 milliseconds to form a fully attentive and comprehended understanding of whatever surprising or unexpected thing just happened half a second ago. If we couldn't get ourselves set up ahead of time with our psychological modelling, we couldn't even exist in the world as functional beings. So being purposeful is where it all starts. Having some set of intentions. And then picking up the pieces after the predictions go wrong.

Just the same as biological evolution. Except this is the evolution of a world model over lifetimes of learning right down to the last thought you could have had before the disaster struck.