The only way to show that something is intuitive is to look at it and see if your intuition likes it. That's what "intuitive" means.
That being said, look into Aristotle's causality - there are some old, old, old folk-notions of cause that are intuitively plausible. — Pneumenon
You keep on telling me what I think and what I'd say. Yet every time you do that, you get it wrong. It might be time to stop making assumptions about what other people think. — andrewk
That is not my position, and I never said it was.I mean, if your position is that you have no idea whether or not my pressing these keys has something to do with letters appearing on the screen, then I can't help you. — Pneumenon
'Will writing from person X appear on their screen if they don't touch the keyboard and [insert a number of constraints to rule out things like using voice-recognition software or getting somebody else to type it]?' Probably not. I thought I'd already given that answer but in case I'm misremembering, there it is.So, for example, will the writing of Pheumenon's post still appear if he doesn't touch the keyboard? Or does the appearance of those specific letters depend upon him pressing the keys? — TheWillowOfDarkness
I think that some philosophers might raise an eyebrow at your claim that explanation is "perfectly concrete and definable." The voluminous literature on scientific explanation alone would seem to indicate that it is far from settled what constitutes an explanation of some phenomenon or state of affairs.The only point of contention seems to be that, if we start with the perfectly concrete and definable concepts of prediction and explanation, the notion of 'causality' adds nothing to our understanding of the world and just confuses discussion of it. It also generates unnecessary arguments and lawsuits, amongst non-philosophers and philosophers alike. — andrewk
I'd say they are different in that the predictive claim is clear whereas the causal claim is capable of many different interpretations. Just think of how many arguments you've been in or witnessed about whether something was somebody's fault.You could then just absorb the causal claim into the predictive claim, but they are fundamentally different aren't they? Or are they? — Srap Tasmaner
The correlation vs causation dichotomy is one that has occupied my mind a fair bit over the last couple of years. I used to think there was a clear distinction between the two, but now I am not so sure. — andrewk
Certainly not ignoring.That said, within both contexts, the physical and the mental, there are clearly, in different ways, logical distinctions between correlation and causation; which you seem to be ignoring, or wanting to dissolve. — John
Maybe somebody else thinks that, but not me. If we have identified a mechanism, we have a richer understanding and a more confident basis on which to make predictions.does anyone think there's just nothing there to know? That correlation, and that at a pretty coarse level, is the best we'll ever be able to do? — Srap Tasmaner
If you think you have found some distinctions that go beyond the above-mentioned one of whether or not we have a theory that describes a mechanism, that's great news. — andrewk
I'm afraid I can't see what this account gives us that we don't already have with a simple physical theory that describes a scenario in which a hammer strikes the head of a nail, with a certain configuration of hammer, nail and wood, and predicts that the nail will enter the wood. Who needs a cause when we have a mechanism?In the physical context an efficient cause is something that acts on something else to produce a change in the latter. So, for example, the force of striking a nail with a hammer causes a nail to be driven into timber. and thus we understand the striking to be the cause. The striking of nails with hammers (or some other instrument) is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is not considered to be a mere correlation. The sound of striking is also more or less universally correlated with nails entering timber, but it is considered to be a mere correlation, and not a cause, of the nail entering the timber, because the sound exerts no force on the nail sufficient to drive it into the timber. — John
A far as I can see, all this description does is introduce confusion into an otherwise clear situation. for instance:
1. we have the phrase 'acts on' which appears to be either undefined or a loose synonym for 'causes' and hence ties up in circularity the attempt to impart meaning to 'cause'
2. why is the striking the cause and not the motions of the carpenter's arms, or the carpenter's decision to hammer in the nail, or the softness of the wood, or the manufacture of the nail or any of a thousand other things? — andrewk
We can describe the mechanism of how all the tributaries flow into one another to end up at the Nile Delta. — andrewk
In a climate model it's going to be more likeEvery single step will have inherent to it B happening because A, even if it's some A radiation and some B H20. — Marchesk
My point is that we don't need a notion of causality to obtain that understanding. Of course we can label the mechanism 'causality' if we want. But that does nothing other than add a superfluous label to a concept that was already perfectly clear. — andrewk
The correlation vs causation dichotomy is one that has occupied my mind a fair bit over the last couple of years. I used to think there was a clear distinction between the two, but now I am not so sure. — andrewk
That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself. — Roke
If we want to say that the state of the entire system at time t was the cause of the state of the entire system at time t+1 then I'd be happy to agree, but I doubt Aristotle would like it. — andrewk
I'm with Andrewk on this. He's not merely being pedantic. I believe he has something coherent in mind, a perspective from which the concept is a distraction that just doesn't lend itself well to effective communication. That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself. — Roke
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