Is it possible to dissociate the method or mechanism from the reason? — Pantagruel

[A] reason is not an intention but, instead, the sufficient condition, or causal event, indicative of a "method or mechanism".

Asking how is always implicitly asking why.

I don't agree because I understand How as correlating with explanation and Why as correlating with intention. Perhaps the latter is a special case (re: agency) of the former which is more general (i.e. mechanistic, pre/sub-agency). Just as 'can does not imply ought', How does not imply Why (even though, inversely, Why (often) implies How like 'ought implies can'). Conflating these interrogatives does – has always done – much mischief in/with philosophy (e.g. theology, idealism, antirealism, psychologism, etc).

1. Why do planets orbit the sun?

Gravity.

2. How does gravity do that?

It bends space

A causal argument has, among other things, two components viz. an explanation (why?) and a mechanism (how?)

Yes, I'm definitely exploring the theory-ladeness of the observational viewpoint, and suggesting this contains an embedded teleology. Kind of a 'natural experimentalism' perspective.

"Gravity" is merely a term (à la proper name) and not an explanation. "It bends space" is the (descriptive) germ of a mechanistic explanation.

Conflating these interrogatives does – has always done – much mischief in/with philosophy (e.g. theology, idealism, antirealism, psychologism, etc). — 180 Proof

Mischief keeps philosophy interesting.

Asking how is always implicitly asking why. Every causal explanation is contingent on some purposive stance within the question. — Pantagruel

For a philosopher, that may be true. But for empirical scientists, only "how" questions are relevant to their interests. Except for a few theoretical physicists, they typically leave the "why" questions to theologians and philosophers. :smile:


PS___I just uploaded a blog post that touches on the "intentional stance" among other metaphysical concepts that are off-limits to reductive Science.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page72.html

Nice! I'm very much interested in reintegrating empiricism into a more holistic perspective. Spencer's First Principles, as dated as it is, still presents a remarkably cohesive integration of evolution as a universal process across all theoretical domains, from physical to organic to social.

Spencer's First Principles — Pantagruel

I wasn't aware of Herbert ("survival of the fittest") Spencer's list of Principles. Can you express the gist of those "laws" of Nature, in light of modern science? My first impression is that "Persistence of Force" sounds like Inertia; "instability of the homogeneous" sounds like either Entropy or Radioactive Decay: and "Multiplicity of Effects" sounds like a Pleiotropic Gene. But I'm sure he had more philosophical or historical applications in mind. How do you interpret them? :smile:

According to Spencer in First Principles, three principles regulate the universe, namely the Law of the Persistence of Force, the Law of the Instability of the Homogeneous and the Law of the Multiplicity of Effects.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/

Yes, Spencer definitely anticipated and, in some cases, confused some modern scientific concepts. His assessment of the significance of various manifestations of "spiral structures" in nature is eerily prescient of fractals and chaos theory. His goal was to outline a comprehensive philosophical knowledge. His conclusion:

Manifestly, the establishment of correlation and equivalence between the forces of the
outer and the inner worlds, may be used to assimilate either to the other; according as
we set out with one or other term. But he who rightly interprets the doctrine contained
in this work, will see that neither of these terms can be taken as ultimate. He will see
that though the relation of subject and object renders necessary to us these antithetical
conceptions of Spirit and Matter; the one is no less than the other to be regarded as
but a sign of the Unknown Reality which underlies both.

Manifestly, the establishment of correlation and equivalence between the forces of the outer and the inner worlds, may be used to assimilate either to the other; according as we set out with one or other term. But he who rightly interprets the doctrine contained
in this work, will see that neither of these terms can be taken as ultimate. He will see
that though the relation of subject and object renders necessary to us these antithetical
conceptions of Spirit and Matter; the one is no less than the other to be regarded as
but a sign of the Unknown Reality which underlies both. — Pantagruel

Apparently, Spencer was trying to reconcile our commonsense division of the world into Subjective (Inner ; Spirit) and Objective (Outer ; Matter). Like him, I have tried to conciliate Inner & Outer worlds in my personal worldview of Enformationism. In that thesis, the "unknown reality" is the well-known, but little understood, phenomenon of "Information". Its original meaning was subjective, as the contents of human minds : Knowledge. But then Shannon used the term to refer to the neither subjective nor objective carriers of meaning (1s & 0s), instead of the contents. More recently, Theoretical & Quantum physicists have discovered that Information (in the form of Energy) is also the organizing mathematical structure of Matter, hence Objective. So, I have concluded that neither the Subjective, nor Objective aspects of reality is "ultimate". Instead, my view is that everything is ultimately a form of Generic Information.

I've never had occasion to read much of Spencer's work. So, my impression of him was mostly due to the thesis of Social Darwinism. For which, he was maligned by Social Liberals. But, I suspect that his intentions were not to support Capitalism or Fascism, but to foster a broader scientific worldview. Perhaps, he wanted to combine the "How" of Science, with the "Why" of Philosophy and Religion. :smile:

Legacy : The basis for Spencer's appeal to many of his generation was that he appeared to offer a ready-made system of belief which could substitute for conventional religious faith at a time when orthodox creeds were crumbling under the advances of modern science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

EnFormAction : Literally, the act of enforming --- to fashion, to create, to cause.
1. Metaphorically, the Will of G*D flowing through the world to cause evolutionary change in a teleological direction.
2. Immaterial Information is almost always defined in terms of its physical context or material container. (e.g. mathematical DNA code in chemical form)
3. Raw En-Form-Action has few, if any, definable perceivable qualities. By itself, Information is colorless, odorless, and formless. Unlike colorless, odorless, and formless water though, Information gives physical form to whatever is defined by it.
4. Like DNA, Information shapes things via internal rather than external constraints. Like the Laws of Physics, Information is the motivating & constraining force of physical reality. Like Energy, Information is the universal active agent of the cosmos. Like Spinoza's God, Information appears to be the single substance of the whole World.
5. Information is the divine Promethean power of transformation. Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

PS__What was the source of your Spencer's quote above?

PS__What was the source of your Spencer's quote above? — Gnomon

It's the concluding paragraph of the second edition of his book First Principles.

It's good to attempt an overarching theory - that's Spencer's position too.

How and why are questions that bleed into one another.

Suppose I put a book back on a mantel. Then a large truck rumbles by, which vibrations are enough to cause the book to fall. If someone asks, "How did that happen?" a variety of answers are possible. That the vibrations from the passing truck caused it to fall is obviously true. But if the book is too large for the mantel, that is also an explanation. Or if I placed the book carelessly. But even with respect to the apparent-proximate physical cause, the passage of the truck, we could say, if the foundations of the house had been more substantial, then the vibrations would not have affected the book. Or if the driver had not detoured from his usual route today. — Pantagruel

J.L. Austin (among others with the same method) looks at what is ordinarily implied in our expressions. In this case a book has fallen off a mantel, and you have imagined a context in which someone asks "How did that happen?", which is a good start imagining an example with a context (part of the method). One implication is that the question is an accusation; obviously the questioner was not in the room . They are asking someone in the room (say, me), if I had anything to do with the book falling off the mantel--as if to a child, or because it is a prized book. This is not so much to ask about the cause as to lay blame and to demand a plausible explanation from me. This is a moral claim and not an epistimological one (about physical causality). As Austin uncovered, I will have an excuse, or a qualification, etc. "It wasn't me! It was my brother!" or "I knocked it off, but it was an accident when I spun around." or "I must have placed it carelessly." If this were something serious, we could imagine an investigation that involved finding if the truck was not following its normal route, or if the foundation had been unsoundly constructed.

Another implication of course is that the question is asked just out of curiosity, as a request from me for an impersonal explanation (as if the question could be asked of themself). And there will be certain kinds of things that can be said, such as the truck, or an earthquake, or gravity, poor foundation, etc. These are physical causes, determined by an empirical investigation.

Is it possible to dissociate the method or mechanism from the reason? Or from a reason?

Asking how is always implicitly asking why. Every causal explanation is contingent on some purposive stance within the question. — Pantagruel

And now it might be clearer to see how a method (the physical cause) can be separate from a reason (did you do it on purpose?), because causality and culpability are different questions (the "purposive stance" of them is different). Of course some excuses will push off onto physical causality ("I didn't do it, it just fell when a truck went by.")

Separately, I think it's Austin who says (or Cavell) we usually ask "How do you know that?" (which is answered with, say, justification: "Well I ran a study that found...") but not often "Why do you know that?" (answered personally, say, defensively: "I know it might sound trivial, but I've found 13th-century Irish poetry to be profound").

I claim that asking about reason involves sets of circumstances. With respect to some universal established order, the event was likely for the given the apriori conditions, but different conditions would've resulted in a more ordinary outcome. We inquire the deciding circumstances, the usual circumstances, the usual outcome.

In the language of probability, I think that we are looking for C, such that given the outcome O and the arbitrary knowledge of the circumstances N (N and C are independent):
We also would like to show that C is unusual:
or equivalently, that O is unusual:
Not all questions are posed in a way, which guarantees that one of the last two criteria can be satisfied. "Why does life exist?" is a question whose answer requires C, such that (not C) is a more likely choice, given all context information, and behaves as a cause of life in the above sense.
Edit:
Meaningful information theoretic way of describing causes exists, I suspect. And physically, causality is confined to the light cone of an event, if one wants to deal with this narrower view of the subject.

I think that the purpose of science is realized with the 'top-level' context which is the natural purpose of existence. As such, 'scientific objectivity' (including causal explanation) is subordinate to its integration into purposive human existence.

This excerpt from the Preface to Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia sums up it perfectly:

the object emerges for the subject when,
in the course of experience, the interest of the subject is focused
upon that particular aspect of the world. Objeciivity thus
appears in a two-fold aspect: one^ in which object and subject
are discrete and separate entities, the other in which the interplay
between them is emphasized. Whereas objectivity in the
first sense refers to the reliability of our data and the validity
of our conclusions, objectivity in the second sense is concerned
with relevance to our interests. In the realm of the social,
particularly, truth is not merely a matter of a simple correspondence
between thought and existence, but is tinged with
the investigator's interest in his subject matter, his standpoint,
his evaluations, in short the definition of his object of attention.

Meaningful information theoretic way of describing causes exists, I suspect. — simeonz

I'd agree with this.

Philosophers have too long concerned themselves with their own thinking. When they wrote of thought, they had in mind primarily their own history, the history of philosophy, or quite
special fields of knowledge such as mathematics or physics. This type of thinking is applicable only under quite special circumstances, and what can be learned by analysing it is not directly transferable to other spheres of life. Even when it is applicable, it refers only to a specific dimension of existence
which does not suffice for living human beings who are seeking to comprehend and to mould their world.

Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, Ch1, part 1

Meaningful information theoretic way of describing causes exists, I suspect. — simeonz

I'd agree with this. — Pantagruel

What I meant was that there are definitely two distinct questions, when it comes to the causes of an event. One is about the ordinary causes and another about the particular causes. I tried to define probabilistically what a particular cause would look like.

For example, if we ask "Why was the pedestrian in a traffic accident?", we could answer "Because they were jaywalking." This does not imply that jaywalking necessarily causes a traffic accident, or not even regularly does so. It does increase the chances, but not definitively. Even more so, it does not imply that every traffic accident is the result of jaywalking. But given a rush hour's urgent traffic and no known traffic hazards at the time, by principle of elimination, one can eventually infer that the cause was jaywalking, and that had the pedestrian obeyed the traffic regulations, there would have been no accident.

I think that frequently "why" and "how" are questions that are conflated linguistically. There are certainly two different inquiries in there, but the language does not convey them at all times, and the words are sometimes used interchangeably. I assume you were asking about the underlying investigations, and not the ambiguity inherent in the vocabulary.

Edit:

A "how" question to me is about the generic causes. It does investigate the conditions treated with generality. In contrast, "why" questions can suggest that in the specific circumstances, a set of particular conditions became an unlikely triggering cause for an unexpected outcome. As I said, there is ambiguity in the language and possible interchange of meaning, but distinct types of inquiries underneath.

What I meant was that there are definitely two distinct questions, when it comes to the causes of an event. One is about the ordinary causes and another about the particular causes. I tried to define probabilistically what a particular cause would look like. — simeonz

Yes, I followed that. My contention is that there is always a why somewhere. And that the notion of a purely objective how is always an abstraction from the holistic natural context.

Yes, I followed that. My contention is that there is always a why somewhere. And that the notion of a purely objective how is always an abstraction from the holistic natural context. — Pantagruel

I now see better what was the meaning behind the last two paragraphs you quoted, but I am still not grasping their scope. In fact, reviewing this remark...

Philosophers have too long concerned themselves with their own thinking. When they wrote of thought, they had in mind primarily their own history, the history of philosophy, or quite special fields of knowledge such as mathematics or physics. This type of thinking is applicable only under quite special circumstances, and what can be learned by analysing it is not directly transferable to other spheres of life. Even when it is applicable, it refers only to a specific dimension of existence which does not suffice for living human beings who are seeking to comprehend and to mould their world. — Pantagruel

Physics is actually a prime example of the intention dependence of the cause and effect relationship. As you said, holistically speaking, the task to define laws that determine whether an event is admissible presently in our universe with respect to the complete knowledge of its full historical state isn't ill posed, at least probabilistically. But we can never infer such colossal cause dependence, operate with it, and we would never find occasion to reproduce it. But given only the precursor events that have been witnessed locally in the recent past, various laws define constraints on the possible near future outcome. Such laws are easier to infer, operate, actuate, and apply, and are deliberately in the scope of the physical sciences. Even the second law of thermodynamics, may be deterministic globally, but we are interested in its probabilistic local form.

Material sciences at least attempt to resist biases (only partly successfully, and only to the extent to which it is feasible), but more anthropocentric planes of life involve a lot more coercion when deciding the interpretation of the facts, making them fit to the presuppositions and objectives of the observer. This is why I cannot conclude what the paragraph suggests for the inquiries in those areas, when social, economic, political, etc, factors are involved. The truth becomes value-based and not rooted in empirical reality and any mechanical explanations are consequently disrupted. I am not sure whether this isn't just a crutch solution though, which will be relegated to stricter methods as our species becomes more enlightened about their own condition.

Physics is actually a prime example of the intention dependence of the cause and effect relationship. As you said, holistically speaking, the task to define laws that determine whether an event is admissible presently in our universe with respect to the complete knowledge of its full historical state isn't ill posed, at least probabilistically. But we can never infer such colossal cause dependence, operate with it, and we would never find occasion to reproduce it. But given only the precursor events that have been witnessed locally in the recent past, various laws define constraints on the possible near future outcome. — simeonz

Yes, Popper's refutation of the possibility of a "causally complete" omniscience (Laplace's demon) is based on such laws and the "event-horizon" of the light-cone you mentioned earlier.

The truth becomes value-based and not rooted in empirical reality and any mechanical explanations are consequently disrupted. — simeonz

Exactly. And that...is...life. Not the portion we intellectually amputate, the whole thing. It's why social scientists like to use the term "irrational" when what they are really talking about is "supra-rational" in my opinion. Everything that isn't reducible to causal descriptions, art, ethics, teleology.

Exactly. And that...is...life. Not the portion we intellectually amputate, the whole thing. It's why social scientists like to use the term "irrational" when what they are really talking about is "supra-rational" in my opinion. Everything that isn't reducible to causal descriptions, art, ethics, teleology. — Pantagruel

You exclude art and ethics, which may mean that you intend something truly uncomprehensible by this term. How do you define it? I could speculate that some kinds of value are apriori, whilst others are derivative and empirical, refined using scientific methods. But there still needs to be some clarification of the independence of the categories of intrinsic value.

Philosophy constantly contends between the correspondence and pragmatic theories of truth. I ask however, how do they interact, how do they actuate, what is their point of convergence if any, how stable are they. Even if taken on their own merit, philosophy should investigate the interdependence and relative qualities of those phenomena.

Analytic thinking is too slow and technically limiting to accommodate life. Inefficiency is dangerous for survival. Pragmatics (biases, aesthetics, ethics, group thinking, etc) are robust within the scope of their intended function. But the problem is that they are catastrophically unstable. They fail to sustain residue of their original form in the long run. Correspondent truth evolves, by the very nature of fact retention after discovery, incrementally. Furthermore, it is sometimes unclear how values actuate, since there might be no guide for their appraisal rooted in permanent external reality, and nothing intrinsic to them to establish consensus. Another problem is that pragmatism is inherently conservative, because change requires surrendering something, and the effort is a reduction from the appeal and value of the alternative.

But the problem is that they are catastrophically unstable. They fail to sustain residue of their original form in the long run — simeonz

I don't see that this is necessarily so. Pragmatics can be more or less self-aware, like anything. On the other hand, instability is not necessarily a bad thing. Systems frequently evolve because of inherent instabilities, or meta-stabilities.

In all honesty, I am challenged to define my take on pragmatics. Contrasting it with correspondence truth, I would say that the latter is about knowing and the former is about being. Correspondence is revised through empirical (and analytical) refutation, and pragmatic value is revised by gaining or losing presence in life. In other words, pragmatic statements are true, because we exist and believe them to be true, and corresponding statements are true, because they describe the empirical world accurately, to the extent that they enable us to anticipate and alter the environment.

I don't necessarily mean that changes in value occur only through personal finality. Shifts in various spectra of life (culture, politics) can produce them too. But something has to lose ground and something else has to gain prevalence, reshaping "truth" in the process.

The instability of pragmatic truth for me stems from its relative independence from permanent natural factors. Some things "just are" and then they "just aren't", because of systemic volatility. Pragmatic value is Darwinian in my opinion and evolution doesn't care about whether you are right or wrong, strong or weak, clever or stupid. It cares about "is" and "isn't", then shuffles the cards periodically and examines the new correlations. Pragmatics conforms to the limits imposed by nature ultimately, but its path involves fluctuations in the admissible state space, macroscopic entropy, which is the essence of being alive.

I don't see that this is necessarily so. Pragmatics can be more or less self-aware, like anything. — Pantagruel

Depends on what you mean. First, certain humanities investigate the validity and soundness of our customs and practices using analytic methods, or in reference to the claims of sciences. This is the application of correspondence truth to pragmatic truth, simply by being analytic and objective, even if it is not concerned with the fundamental physical law. Second, a person can be pragmatically skeptical about pragmatics (and about a lot of other things). This is a way to reconcile our personal values and empiricism, without feeling completely guilty of insincerity. And finally, there are studies, which do not discover, but define what pragmatism should be. These definitions ultimately are provided "as is", with some analytic arguments in some cases and reliance on consensus.

On the other hand, instability is not necessarily a bad thing. Systems frequently evolve because of inherent instabilities, or meta-stabilities. — Pantagruel

This is one justification for the everpresent instability in our social fabric. Considering the trial and error approach that is needed for survival, in the long run, involatility is a dying proposition. Nations and empires need to decline after their energy have become spent, the political spectrum needs to reorganize when the socioeconomic forces require it, shifts in perception have to occur when our ethics are challenged. In other words, when it comes to pragmatism, which is, for the time being (possibly for a longer time than we have left), unavoidable part of reality, tragedies, conflicts and some chaos are useful. The question is, can a grounded methodological analysis of pragmatics say anything of merit, aside from examining its internal consistency, like humanities do. Other than that, the only venue worth exploring that I can think is the relationship between pragmatics and nature.

Edit --- Stylistic changes

I wanted to respond to some questions here, about the presuppositions of science (QM for example). Since I lack the command of written English necessary to do so, I refrain. But I realized the relevance of that subject to your earlier suggestions about the precedence of the kinds of truth.

Notably, if we ask, what verifies the soundness of logic, objectivity of empiricism, utility of statistical reasoning, effectiveness of inductive reasoning, eventually those questions cannot be answered by analytical or empirical arguments alone. They can be elaborated, of course, meta-scientifically, but not given fundamental explanation. My view on this question is that those beliefs are indeed a kind of pragmatic truth. They are shaped by choices. Given the opportunity to use the various available faculties, we have successfully employed forms of those mechanisms to a rewarding conclusion. So, the justification of those instruments appears neither rational, nor measurable. Again, I would claim that the underlying process of justification of existence is Darwinian. In retrospect to your comment that pragmatics can be self-aware, I can now better answer that this is possible through cross-inspection between different kinds of pragmatics, but also each type of pragmatic truth can reflect on itself according to its own chosen system of values and language. Logic and science have concerns to their validity and soundness. Religion, for example, can have theistic concerns of itself. Some humanities, like philosophy or history involve complex interplay between different pragmatic values, original to them or imported from other fields. Mathematics for example, debates whether real numbers are manifest, or whether the axiom of choice is sound. We have questions regarding the deduction used therein - should it be classical or intuitionistic logic. A lot more scientific questions can be raised reflectively. People (I dare claim reasonably) express doubts on the nature of statistics - is it discovered or is it pignistic, or does it matter at all (which is not just a philosophical proposition, but also a quantitative logical inquiry). These are self-reflections.

I agree that every question "how?" follows an underlying question of "why?". Correspondence arguments are a variant of pragmatic arguments. I myself would claim that unambiguousness, falsifiability, reliability, are the metrics of the scientific method and that these qualities should be presently our priority as society. The justification would be pragmatic hand-waving about the state of evolution we are in. I claim it, because I live it. Aside from a social debate, there is also the question of whether subjective idealism is right that the world is not empirical, or maybe the empirical reality happens to be absurd and not analytical. I dare to believe that for practical matters, i.e. all intents and purposes, this is not so.

Why questions may mean either How?, in the mechanistic sense, or Why? as in "from what intent?" or "toward what end?" They are clearly different categories of question.

Also, they are always scale bound. Why? in the context of society is not the same thing as in the context of an individual, though both may have had a part to play.