Suppose the trolley is not moving toward anyone until you decide its course. You must direct it either toward three people or toward one person. There is no longer an option to “do nothing.” Every outcome stems from your deliberate agency. — Copernicus

What are the consequences if I don’t choose and just do nothing? Will everyone die?

One thing you haven’t taken into account is liability. When I choose, I take on liability for the consequences. It might not be unreasonable for me to make no choice at all as a way of protecting myself from that liability.

Yet as our reason does not represent shape, size, or any other physical property essential to extended things to be relevant to our moral value, it is representing us not to be extended things. To put it another way, if we are physical things then our intrinsic moral value would have to supervene on some of our essential features.....but it doesn't. Thus we are not physical things. — Clarendon

Welcome to the forum. I might argue that people do not have intrinsic moral value, but I won’t do that here because I want to keep to the terms of your OP.

I don’t understand why a person cannot have both moral value and an essential physical nature.

The difference, I take it, between something being 'intrinsically' morally valuable and 'extrinsically' morally valuable is that in the former case the moral value is supervening on essential properties of the thing, — Clarendon

I don’t understand the basis of the claim that something being intrinsically morally valuable implies the moral value is supervening on essential properties of the thing. Alternatively, I might claim that it is God‘s judgment that people have intrinsic moral value. I think it would be fair to characterize that as an essential property. That brings us back to the possibility of having both a physical and a non-physical nature.

I guess what this boils down to is that I don’t see you’ve demonstrated your claim from the OP.

Doggerland by Ben Smith — Jamal

I was intrigued by this. Doggerland was an area of dry land between what is now Great Britain and France. It was inundated about 8000 years ago by a mega tsunami caused by the collapse of the continental shelf off of Norway.

Alas, that’s not what the book is about.

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer is no.1, hands down. — Manuel

I didn’t have my glasses on when I saw your post and I read that as “Naval Explosives.” I thought that was an interesting choice until I reread it, this time wearing them.

But I just finished The Magus by John Fowles yesterday and it's vying for the top 5 spot - it's astonishing, still reeling from that experience. — Manuel

I gave that to my daughter for Christmas one year. We share a love for it. Have you read “The French Lieutenant’s Woman?”

rambling OP of opposition to some vague notion — Gnomon

HA!!

Sorry it took so long for me to respond.

But my argument would be that the mechanical notion of causality only arises within the context of intentional being. — apokrisis

This makes sense, although I hadn’t put it in these terms to myself before. Maybe it’s really another way of saying what I was trying to say in the OP

So often, causality is an important concept in interpersonal relationships where people try to exert control over one another. Often, it's in the form of assigning blame; attributing a single cause is necessary in oder to effectively blame someone for something happening. — baker

Rather than blame, I would more likely say responsibility or accountability. As you note that’s in relation to causality as it applies to human action. I intended to avoid all the complications associated with that by limiting the discussion to non-intentional causality.

@apokrisis

I think the primary difference between what you’re saying and what I’m saying is about language— the words we use to describe things. — T Clark

This has always struck me as a bit unfair. I know how seriously they take coffee in Australia.

…so naturally I thought that was the direction you might explore. The systems perspective. Causality as so much more than cause and effect. The story of just efficient cause. — apokrisis

I thought that’s what we were doing. This has been a very satisfying thread for me. It’s given me a chance to flesh out some of my thoughts. You’ve thought about this a lot more than I have, but I think we’re talking about the same thing. I think the primary difference between what you’re saying and what I’m saying is about language— the words we use to describe things. I think the word “causality” is misused and misleading. I think it would be better to dispense with it except in a certain limited number of cases.

That seems odd on what is supposed to be a philosophy board. Again, you introduced constraints as a better approach in the OP. Was the thread meant to tread no further in that direction? — apokrisis

Again, I think this is language. Yes I do want to talk about constraints. I don’t think it was me who limited discussions of causality to just efficient cost. That, as I
understand it, is the common way it’s thought of. That’s what I’m resistant to.

Thanks

Reduction to efficient cause is a mindset based on certain metaphysical presuppositions. — apokrisis

No. My mindset is based on my understanding of how the word causality is generally understood by people who don’t recognize the limitations of the concept associated with complex systems.

My suggestion was to get back to the metaphysics as it was first envisaged in Greek discourse. — apokrisis

No. Again, what the Greeks said isn’t what people today say. That’s what I was talking about.

And didn't Collingwood offer his own update on Hegelian dialectics – one that boils down to the unity of opposites – as well as being an epistemic idealist? — apokrisis

I’m not familiar with that. I only turned to Collingwood when he confirms my prejudices.

We can't – in Kantian fashion – know the truth of our metaphysical presuppositions directly. They are after all logical arguments if they have any rigour wort — apokrisis

Here’s one of those Collingwoodian prejudices—absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false.

Complexity is different as it speaks to emergence, self-organisation and topological order. A theory of the Universe has to be able to model the emergence of space, time and energy as its three major ingredients. And why shouldn't physics and cosmology have that ambition? — apokrisis

I agree with all this, although, as I’ve said many times in this thread, I don’t think it makes sense to call this causality.

If you, any of you, think you have a clear notion of what abduction is, and why it is useful, set it out! There's be a Doctorate in it for you. — Banno

I’ve already answered that question. I recognize you don’t like my answer.

It's presented as "given some evidence, infer the hypothesis that would best explain it" where "best" is left ill-defined. This leaves it entirely open to arbitrarily inferring any explanation to be the best. — Banno

It’s not the explanation that’s the best, it’s the hypothesis that’s a good one and worth testing. A strawman from the king of strawmen. You are waving words around as if they were arguments.

Indeed, at its heart, it remains unclear what abduction amounts to; and as such, it is ineligible as a grounding for rational discourse. — Banno

Abduction is brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a creativity technique in which a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously in response to a prompt. Stress is typically placed on the volume and variety of ideas, including ideas that may seem outlandish or "off-the-wall". Ideas are noted down during the activity, but not assessed or critiqued until later.

Is it rational? Yes, of course. It’s a method that works to generate new ideas that can be evaluated and justified. It can be very effective, as I know from my own career. It would be irrational not to use it under the appropriate circumstances.

A book well worth reading is Peter Hoffmann's Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos. — apokrisis

I really liked that book. It changed the way I look at living organisms and the world in general. Oddly enough, it’s one of the books that led me to seeing the world as I described it in the OP.

So the OP was about the limits of the efficacy of the mechanistic mindset. The complaint was that because it seemed a severely limited view of Nature in practice, one might as well give up on the very idea of believing in “causality” — apokrisis

Ahem…

Collingwood's abstruse concept is over my untrained head — Gnomon

Here’s an idea— if you don’t understand a word don’t use it.

I simply construe the term to mean that the conclusions follow logically from the premises. — Gnomon

This is not correct.

I don't see how it's possible to deny that there is order in the universe, regardless of humans perceiving it. — Patterner

Ever since I read this, I’ve been thinking about it. I started out writing a response where I said I denied there is order in the universe, but I am not ready with an argument right now. I’m going to think about it some more.

In that simplistic dichotomy, where is the "logical efficacy" of the OP? Is it in the "top-down constraints" or the "bottom-up degrees of freedom". Is it the top-down logical or intentional efficacy that the OP was arguing against? :smile: — Gnomon

This is not what Collingwood meant by logical efficacy.

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. — apokrisis

How does this relate to the sign, the object, and the interpretant.

As usual, I enjoyed your interesting post. It does just strengthen my understanding that the way you see the world and the way I do are not compatible. I’ll use my new favorite word again—incommensurable.

I looked back over all my posts in this thread and the responses to them. The only question on the table as far as I can tell is whether or not relying on memory is rational. That seems like a very simple and straightforward judgment to make. I would even say obvious. Clearly you and. @unenlightened disagree with me on that.

But rationality WAS decisive for both of us. Contrast our rational choices with IRRATIONAL means of making a choice: basing it on the alignment of the planets, consulting a Ouija board, or basing it on an inscription in a fortune cookie. — Relativist

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not sure you’re right. I guess it depends on whether he didn’t take the bet because he really thought the odds were against him or because Hume said he shouldn’t.

He is not going to recommend that you abandon your science or your common sense. But he is going to ask you to abandon your arrogance and righteousness. — unenlightened

This seems like kind of an arrogant and righteous comment.

While for the last fifty years or so the news has been reporting many issues that threatens to effect our lives there has been one problem that hasn't been really talked about and that there is a problem that world population is not only not growing but it is actually deceasing world wide. In many of the industrial countries of the world there is talk that there isn't going to be even younger working age people to do enough work to support those that are retired. I wonder what the thoughts are of the members of this forum on this subject. — dclements

This is an issue that gets talked about all the time, including here on the forum. The current world population is about 8 billion. That’s expected to reach about 11 billion within 70 years I think. Then it’s supposed to shrink. I don’t think that takes into account the possible consequences of climate change.

This is a truly bizarre argument. I give up.

We rarely have enough information to prove something true beyond all doubt, so navigating through life entails making informed, rational predictions and decisions. Occasionally, wild guesses work out, but informed, rational decisions are more apt to do so. Example: for any given vaccine, it's possible it will do more harm than good, but we can look at studies (or trust those who've done so) to weight the good vs the bad. — Relativist

I would go a step further. It would be irrational not to do things the way you’ve described.

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.

I have already explained why it would not have been rational, viz. that your offering the bet in circumstances where you had expertise that I lacked, especially when you had been plying me with alcohol made me suspect a scam. Thus I had legitimate Wittgensteinian reasons for doubt in the particular circumstances. — unenlightened

This is why we pragmatists rule the world.

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.

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.

I'll just leave it there, and see if it appeals to anyone else. I think you didn't understand Hume's problem in the first place, so an argument that addresses it might like — unenlightened

You still haven’t answered my question. Would your decision to take the bet be rational?

I won't take your bet, — unenlightened

Too late, you already took the bet. The question is was your decision rational? If you say no, it’s kind of hard to take your argument seriously.

imagine a world where the future is not always like the past. — unenlightened

I don’t have to imagine it, I live in the world where the future is not always like The past.

In other words, if the future fails to be connected to the past and related to it, it fails to be the future. The future is necessarily similar to the past, otherwise it is not the future. The timeline has to hold together, or else it is broken, and a broken timeline is not a timeline at all. — unenlightened

Sorry, I really don’t understand this argument

The problem is that it is not rational, in the sense that no amount of past evidence can constrain the future in any way, logically. And you just saying it seems rational does not make it so either. It goes something like this: — unenlightened

So let’s say you and I are sitting out on my front porch drinking whiskey sours. I live on a pretty busy road so cars are going by often. Let’s say every 30 seconds. We sit there for 10 minutes or so watching cars go by and keeping track. During that time 20 cars go by. Fifteen of them have Massachusetts plates, two have Rhode Island plates, and three have New Hampshire plates.

Then I say “I’ll bet you $50 the next car will have Rhode Island plates?“ You say “sure.” I’d say your decision to take that bet was rational.

But because my memory is sometimes unreliable does not mean that I can or should never rely on it, because even the interpretation of immediate sense data relies on memory, and thus there is nothing at all without it. — unenlightened

It seems to me the reliance on memory you are talking about is rational. So, what’s the problem?

ordinary usage intervenes. — bert1

I’m a big fan of ordinary usage, but it comes into conflict with philosopher’s desire to make up new definitions and new words.

I've been been considering whether the distinction between intentional cause and non intentional is sustainable. I think it may be, but the non intentional would be derived from the intentional. The only causes we actually know about are intentional. Other causes are often attributed to laws, which are descriptive and don't need the notion of cause to work, perhaps. Not sure. — bert1

Off the top of my head, this makes sense to me, but I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about intentional cause. I specifically left it out of this thread because I didn’t want to complicate things.

You don't see the value of the distinction between rational and irrational? — unenlightened

Hume’s idea of legitimate belief is not irrational. If anything it’s non-rational. Very few of our beliefs are rational. Even fewer are irrational. The large majority are non-rational. Rational belief comes into play when a monkey wrench gets thrown in the machinery.

Or memory and imagination? — unenlightened

I don’t understand how this is relevant.

This is supposedly in line with what working class and lower middle class people do prefer, in comparison with the suggestions of OP, which is more in line with the ideas of progressive people of more prosperous beginnings. — Ansiktsburk

Good post. As a registered Democrat here in the US, what you’ve written is in line with my criticism of the party. We’ve lost contact with our purpose.

I hadn’t heard of Bourdieu. Sounds interesting. Any particular recommendation?

My initial interest was in how the idea of cause applies to historical events (which is terribly fraught, slightly different and more nebulous to the matters you have raised). — Tom Storm

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.

Quoting Freud is ironically more a disproof of your claim than anything else. He didn't recognize two different types, he guessed. Thankfully no one really buys that anymore. — Darkneos

None of this is true

Now how on Earth could anyone discover that, other than just guessing in a manner of which seems to offer no room for any argument to the contrary? — Outlander

It didn't say Freud discovered it. It said he recognized it. I also recognize it based on my own experience. I wouldn't have put it in my post otherwise.