What do you think is missing in the physical explanation of the workings of traffic lights? — Janus

Well, first set out for us "the physical explanation of the workings of traffic lights".

Then we'll be able to tell you what's missing.

I claim that signification always has a dead but totally active face. — JuanZu

I've been unable to follow this.

So, a Wittgensteinian, eh? — Alkis Piskas

Philosophy is not like football. Although some folk treat it that way. it's not about teams.

Behold, your overman.

Currently, there are two: The very successful use of scientific method in the West, and reductionist arguments as possible explanations of seemingly non-physical phenomena. — J

Odd then, that physics can't even explain how traffic lights work.

Wittgenstein's theory is incomplete without a theory of the sign. — JuanZu

An interesting idea.

The Tractatus is of course a work about signs, much of which was carried over to the Investigations, but a large part of which was dropped. He intended the two books to be read together, the Investigations as a critique of the system of signs Tractatus.

So what is problematic about signs? Simply that there is so much that is not captured by the signs we use, or that changes depending on the situation in which one finds oneself. It might be more accurate to say it is the utterance, not the sign, that holds meaning.

If your case is that language requires both signs and use, then you will not be at odds with Wittgenstein. It would be a mistake to think Wittgenstein did not understand the need for signs. Much of the Investigations concerns the rules and limits of the use of signs.

So again, understanding the relations between signs will leave the language dead. To understand it is to make use of it. Hence the emphasis on language games and forms of life.

Well, that'll save you from thinking.

Which reminds me of Russell's joke that while every individual human being has a mother, it is a fallacy to supose that therefore the human species has a mother...

The mother of the race is a limit, not an item in the sequence...

But Mitochondrial Eve ruined the joke.

My understanding is pretty limited (see what I did there?), and this will be wrong, but what I understand is...

So z is an input to a calculation f such that each result of f is then fed back into f to get the next result, and you do this n times? And the question is, what do you get at n? And the interesting result was that regardless of the input the result turns out the closer and closer to a given value as the number if iterations increases...?

The salient bit is that the regression is in the design of the structure of the problem.

And that correlates to what happens with causation as considered in the OP - the regression is implicit in the way causes have been structured, alpha being a limit, not an item, in the causal chain.

Roughly?

:lol:

Cosmological, not ontological. My mistake - Aquinas, not Anselm. Thanks!

You open and leave a lot of doors open, Banno ... — Alkis Piskas

Thank you. One does one's best to help.

Can you make this a little more clear to me? — Alkis Piskas

In first aid, consciousness is assessed by obtaining a reaction. Would that philosophers might learn first aid.

What is this way? — Alkis Piskas

Philosophical investigations, §201 and thereabouts.

I'm not sure you understand it at all. — Philosophim

You borrowed from Anselm but left off "and this we all call god".

For my part, the issue is that existence can only be rationally concluded absurd in so far as its being is, and can only be, a-rational — javra

This seems to me about right, although I baulk at existence being irrational - rather it is a given, outside of, or presupposed by, explanation. But that may be much the same point.

That, again, requires an observer's changing/moving mind to discern. — javra

There's a difference between something's being true and it being discerned. It's true that the colour changes over distance, whether you discern it or not.

And here we are off into realism against antirealism, and the thread goes on...

I'll get back to you on this early next year my time. :smile: — javra

Hippo Gnu Dear.

Yes, indeed. But it relies on the same supposed logic.

It is only within it that changes occur form one part of it to another. — javra

And this is exactly the point. There is a change over distance.

Not on the pacific side of the Americas ... still procrastinating in preparing for the folks that will show up :grin: — javra

It must be odd to live so far in the past... :wink:

May I ask, Javra, where the insistence that change requires time comes from? Why is it important to preserve this idea? this by way of trying to understand why folk seem so adamant about something that to me seems obviously wrong. Thanks.

Ouch.

Too much invested, it seems. The cosmological argument is not as straight forward as you supose.

One sees the image as a whole, not only by scanning it; and Hook's law does not assume a block universe.

2024 must be almost everywhere by now...?

It's worth pointing out that the notion of causation at play here is metaphysical, not physical.

And here I am using "metaphysical" in the sense used by Popper and friends, as not falsifiable. Indeed, causation is one of the examples used by Watkins in Confirmable and influential metaphysics, as a "haunted universe" statement. (p.348)

The idea is that every "thing" has a cause. We can parse this as that for every "thing", there exists another "thing" that is its cause.

Leave aside, for the while, that it is not obvious what a "thing" might be - an event, an individual, a state of affairs; This is indeed one of the problems with the Kalum Cosmological argument, and with the notion of cause more generally, but is besides the point here.

Watkins points out that such haunted universe doctrines are neither falsifiable, not provable. For they have the structure of an all-and-some statement: u(x)∃(y)f(xy).

Supose someone proposes as a law of chemistry that for every metal there is some acid that will dissolve it. Can we falsify this mooted law? Well, no, for if we have before us a metal which we have tested with every known acid, it does not follow that there is not, somewhere, another acid that we have not tried, and which will indeed dissolve the metal. Then can we prove the law true? Again, no, since we might never test every possible alloy, amalgam and meld in order to show that they are all dissolvable.

The same applies to the metaphysical doctrine that every "thing" has a cause. We cannot falsify the doctrine, because for a given "thing", that we have not yet identified the cause does not rule out there being one; and we cannot prove it true, for we cannot list and identify every singe instance of a cause.

This is mentioned by way of adding yet another reason to be dubious of the was causation is used in the OP.

Generic references to papers are not a discussion — Philosophim

Silly of me to offer some familiarity with the literature.

Here's the ChatGPT summary of Russell's article for you:

Russell's essay "On the Notion of Cause" challenges the traditional notion of causality. He argues against the idea that causation involves necessary connections between events, instead suggesting that our understanding of cause and effect is based on our observations and experiences. Russell explores the limitations of our understanding of causality, emphasizing the role of empirical evidence and the possibility of alternative interpretations of causal relationships. He questions the absolute certainty of causation and proposes a more probabilistic view, highlighting the complexity and uncertainty inherent in our concept of cause and effect.

And here's the same for the Anscombe article:

In "Causality and Determination," Anscombe delves into the relationship between causality and determination, focusing on the distinction between causes and conditions. She argues that causality involves a certain kind of dependence between events, which is not merely conditional but also explanatory. Anscombe challenges the idea that causality is solely reliant on necessary conditions, proposing that causal relationships entail a direct influence rather than just a conditional connection. She emphasizes the need to differentiate between causes and mere conditions, aiming to refine our understanding of causality and determination. Anscombe's work prompts a nuanced examination of causation, shedding light on the complexities inherent in establishing causal relationships.

There. No need to actually read.

The absence of an icon next to your name makes it difficult for old folk such as I to spot your posts, as I scroll up and down on my laptop.

If I have understood your post, you would like to define a sub-class of causes, which after Aristotle are to be called efficient causes, and which require change over time. That's fine, but it does not follow that all causes occur over time.

If I have a spring under tension, the force will be give by Hook's Law,

F = − k∆x

Notice that the change is ∆x, not ∆t; the force depends on the distance the spring is stretched or compressed, not on time.

This is the mathematics that is needed to set out the deformation in the cushion. ∆t does not enter into the equations.

I was not disagreeing with your conclusion, only with your argument. I agree that it makes no sense to ask what causes time, and only disagree with the idea that a cause must be prior to its effect.

There was an unnecessarily long thread a few years ago on the topic of change not requiring time. It was one of those odd threads that apparently pit those with a background in Kant against those who had understood a bit of mathematics.

Does anyone recall it? What's the big mystery about time?

This diagram seemed to cause considerable consternation amongst those who's ideology demanded that change only occur over time:

It changes from yellow to white over distance, not time, you see.

And then Jgill pointed out that

A derivative can describe a rate of change with regard to a non-time variable: dy/dx — jgill

That should have been an end to it.

But there are a number of folk who are dedicated to anachronistic notions. Ideas of causation and change that come from Aristotle or Kant and which have long been superseded.

Much the same thing seems to be happening here.

Just to be sure, I'm offering more than just that. The notion of cause being used is broken.

There's the classic philosophical assault from Russell in On The Notion Of Cause, in which he argues that 'the word "cause" is so inextricably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable'.

There's the more recent, and perhaps more influential, Causality and Determination from Anscombe.

There's also various criticisms of determinism and causation from within physics, such as in Has physics ever been deterministic?

And then least of all the undermining of causation in quantum accounts.

In addition, the very notion in the OP that something is cause to exist is problematic in logical terms. In classical logic things pretty much either exist or they do not; their existence is guaranteed by the domain of discourse. The special existential predicate "∃!" requires it's own special variant.

Finally, the structure of the argument in the OP is quite unclear.

There is however a difference between setting out how a word is used and actually using it.

Just as there is a difference between reading a car manual and driving a car.

There remains a way of understanding how a word is used that consists not in a dictionary definition but in actually making use of the word.

And it is this that will be missed if one places undue emphasis on dictionary definitions.

...over the course of this thread.

But for you they are still of practical import, and that's where I am baffled.They play no role in deliberation, they confer no consequences. — bert1

But you have been shown that this is not correct.

If you refuse to countenance their having a place in deliberation, or conferring a consequence, that's not reaching a conclusion so much as merely being peremptory.

Just because a child learning a language picks it up without reading a dictionary, doesn't mean that the meanings of the words the child learns are not roughly represented by what is found in a dictionary and that the definitions contained within aren't really useful. — ToothyMaw

Of course not. What is shown is that dictionaries can only be a secondary way of understanding a word. Of much greater import is the way the word is used.

I think you agree with this.

Could you remind me of the details of this story? — Ludwig V

I misremembered - it was Philip of Macedon, apparently, who on conquering southern Greece sent a message to Sparta asking if he should come as friend or foe. The Spartans replied "neither".

To which Philip sent a second message saying that if he conquered them he would cast them off their land. To which they replied , "If".

Kastrup is more cult figure than philosopher. Idealism has precious few followers amongst professional philosopher.

Consciousness is not just perception, but also involves acting on the world. Consciousness is not passive.

It is not at all clear from what you say what "the meaning of a word" is. You seem to think it is what is given by a definition, but

One cannot learn one's first language from a dictionary. Therefore there is a way of understanding the meanings of words that is not found in their lexical definitions. — Banno

There was more than just quantum weirdness in the thread cited.

The idea of 'causation' presupposes time, because a cause is defined as prior to its effect, and causation is a temporal process. — unenlightened

The bowling ball causes the depression in the cushion.

Cause is not always prior to effect. Indeed sometimes it is impossible to decide which event is the cause and which the result.

Let's take a different track and listen to Granny Weatherwax in conversation with her nostalgic one-time lover Mustrum Ridcully.

‘Do you remember—’
‘I have a … very good memory, thank you.’
‘Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d said yes?’ said Ridcully.
‘No.’
‘I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing …’
Granny shrugged. It was the sort of thing romantic idiots said. But there was something in the air tonight …
‘What about the fire?’ she said.
‘What fire?’
‘Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.’
‘What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire?’
Granny turned around.
‘Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say “if this didn’t happen then that would have happened” because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say “If only I’d …” because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.’ — Terry Pratchet

Counterfactuals are recondite. You can’t say “if this didn’t happen then that would have happened” because you don’t know everything that might have happened.

Pratchett, Terry. Lords And Ladies: (Discworld Novel 14) (Discworld series) (pp. 162-163). Transworld. Kindle Edition.

Thanks. that's pretty much as I'd understood the sequence. For my part I was initially reluctant to engage with the topic, because there are so very many issues bumping up against one another.

The obvious issue, clear again in what you just wrote, is the difference between counterpart theory and transworld identity - between David Lewis and Kripke. That's no small thing.

Another issue is potential confusion between an individual - the thing picked out by a proper name - and a person - what it is to be schopenhauer1 and not someone else. These are not the same, and it is not a simple matter to set out their interaction.

And there's also the anachronistic notions of essence and substance that will need cleaning.

I became involved when it was clear that there was insufficient distinction being made between individuals and kinds. That at least is handleable.

Each of these is at least an essay, or a thesis, rather than a post.

But to cut to the chase, I don't think it inevitable that genetics determines personhood. Rather that's one approach amongst many.

But there are simply too many threads here.

It just came up in a thread about God, in answer to a question from @jgill.

You want to segregate out the interaction from the individuation. Perhaps they are not distinct.

But my suspicions rest more on what "causal history" might be. It's this that you think somehow "necessary".

How, I don't understand.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8713/causality-determination-and-such-stuff/p1

Various quantum effects, for a start.

But see also https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8713/causality-determination-and-such-stuff/p1

The bits here are not tied together with sufficient clarity.

I asked whether you thought causality didn't exist somehow if there are no labels for it. — schopenhauer1

I didn't notice.

Causality is far from unproblematic.

For example, clearly "individuals" don't need to be picked out with words, or so it would seem to me. There are individual animals, etc all prior to humans designating this or that thing "an individual". — schopenhauer1

Nothing I've said should be understood as suggesting otherwise.

We know some things don't. That ought be enough to put this to rest.

But then threads such as this are not about causation.