But that is the metaphysical architecture that sets up the dynamic interplay over time. It is boiling causality down into the logical account rather than describing it in terms of the blooming, buzzing confusion one might appear to experience. — apokrisis
OK, how would you describe "changes in energy", while avoiding the notion of Causation? — Gnomon
I’m curious as to how it resonates with your reading of Collingwood. — Joshs
(a) ’In Newtonian physics it is presupposed that some events (in the physical world; a qualification which hereinafter the reader will please understand when required) have causes and others not. "Events not due to the operation of causes are supposed to be due to the operation of laws. Thus if a body moves freely along a straight line pi, p^, pz, A • • • its passing the point at a certain time, calculable in advance from previous observation of its velocity, is an event which is not according to Newton the effect of any cause whatever. It is an event which takes place not owing to a cause, but according to a law. But if it had changed its direction at p^, having collided there with another body, that change of direction would have been an event taking place owing to the action of a cause (see Note on p. 57).
{b) -In the nineteenth century we find a different presupposition being made by the general body of scientists: namely that all events have causes. About the history and interpretation of this I shall have more to say in the concluding chapters. Here I will anticipate only so far as to say that I do not know any explicit statement of it earlier than Kant ; and accordingly I shall refer to the physics based upon it as the Kantian physics. * The peculiarity of Kantian physics is that it uses the notion of cause and the notion of law, one might almost say, interchangeably : it regards all laws of nature as laws according to which causes in nature operate, and all causes in nature as operating according to law.
(c) In modem physics the notion of cause has disappeared. * Nothing happens owing to causes; everything happens according to laws. Cases of impact, for example, are no longer regarded as cases in which the Laws of Motion are rendered inoperative by interference with one body on the part of another; they are regarded as cases of ‘free’ motion (that is, motion not interfered with) under peculiar geometrical conditions, a line of some other kind being substituted for the straight line of Newton’s First Law. — R.W. Collingwood
It isn’t a fixed logical schema but a dynamic interplay that unfolds over time. Organisms live causality as an ongoing, enactive process, not as a formal reciprocal equation. — Joshs
I was just saying that the links in the chain of events you listed represent two very different types of cause. — Patterner
Mechanical forces are quite a particular subset of physics. They depend on the simplistic ontology of atoms in a void. Particles that have mass, shape and motion. They can stick together or recoil at the instant they happen to come into physical contact. They can compound or scatter as a second order topological fact.
So yes. This is a very restricted, if very useful, model of causality. — apokrisis
It is exactly what you want if you are in the business of turning nature into a system of machinery. — apokrisis
So the natural world has a rich causality. — apokrisis
I was trying to distinguish between different types of causes. Cue hitting cue ball, cue ball hitting 8 ball, and 8 ball falling in the pocket are all one type. I don't know what anybody else might call them, but I would probably just call them brute force causes? Thing 1 bangs into Thing 2, and Thing 2 moves. — Patterner
But all you keep doing is collapsing causality to the notion of efficient cause and then talking about the other thing of "context". — apokrisis
I don't think the asteroid and Hitler were constraints. The asteroid prevented the continued evolution of dinosaurs by wiping them out. Or, iirc, it wiped out land animals above a certain size. — Patterner
Mutations perhaps? — Janus
The final cause was traditionally considered to be the telos or purpose of a thing. That would involve how it fits into the overall web. We can think of the global conditions, which include both constraints and opportunities, as providing for the possibility or impossibility of the existence of particulate things and kinds of things. Think of environmental niches, for example. — Janus
the primary Cause for physical science is Energy. — Gnomon
The 8 ball went into the pocket because the cue ball hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue ball hit the 8 ball because the cue hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue hit the cue ball because your muscles and bones moved in specific ways. It couldn't have done anything else. — Patterner
Here's where the break comes. Your muscles and bones moved in those specific ways because you chose to move them in those specific ways, because you intended the cue to hit the cue ball, because you intended the cue ball to hit the 8 ball, because you intended the 8 ball to go into the pocket. (i'm assuming you intended to hit the 8 ball into the pocket.) But that didn't have to happen. — Patterner
The section on 'Complex Systems' doesn't actually mention causation. — bert1
But isn't my argument here that holism means all four of Aristotle's four causes. And reductionism just means material and efficient cause. Or even in very reduced renderings, just efficient cause. Closed patterns of logical entailment. The stuff of logical atomism. — apokrisis
So that is why I don't understand why you would seem to say you would rather let go completely of causality – and in return for what exactly – while I instead make causality my preoccupation. — apokrisis
Causality is the primary metaphysical fact. It is the basis of any explanation or narrative we might have. — apokrisis
"causality" is a metaphysical concept, by which I mean it represents a point of view, a perspective, not a fact. As R.G. Collingwood might say, the Principle of Sufficient Reason - everything must have a reason or a cause - is an absolute presupposition, not a proposition. Absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, they have what Collingwood calls "logical efficacy" - they are useful. — T Clark
So – with my ecology hat on – the causal explanation for climate change is as plain as the nose on your face. Nothing would even have gone wrong if the damn planet had the atmospheric physics which would have released the heat all this industrial burning was producing rather than trapping it with the greenhouse gases the burning also created. — apokrisis
Those are what I facetiously call "Faith communities" because their worldviews are based on non-empirical Axioms. As Hume noted, specific Evidence & formal Logic may support the general (universal) conclusions, but do not prove them. The degree of Faith may be measured in terms of Bayesian Belief*2. — Gnomon
But seriously, I think you're using the term "beautiful" here in a pretty broad way, so maybe a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset. This issue isn't a small one because the definition of "beauty" is obviously central to aesthetics and this whole conversation.
So, define "beauty" so that the term makes sense in claiming a legal brief is beautiful in some way as is a sunset beautiful so that the term can be applied to both. — Hanover
What saith Collingswood on it? — Hanover
Now think about it the other way : I take a walk in the woods. Does that affect, say, the orbit of Jupiter? Let's think about one of the countless human actions. Since there are so many, shouldn't they alter the orbit of Jupiter? — JuanZu
For convenience, perhaps, we impose boundaries on causes for effects; however, causes go all the way back… — PoeticUniverse
I have no problem with this, but I think sometimes, often, it doesn't make sense to consider causality at all.
— T Clark
That is an idea completely baffling to me. How can you even think if not causally? What would that even look like? — apokrisis
Well there is nothing wrong with efficient cause in itself. It is part of the Aristotelean package. And clearly it is the notion of cause that we humans have in front of mind. We are always looking for the switches to switch and the levers to pull. Where we fit into nature, into the flow of the world, is where we can insert a choice - a difference that makes a difference. — apokrisis
Context would be the facts about what constrains the possibilities as the other kind of facts. — apokrisis
Then life and mind come along and note that this is the causality of physics. You are allowed to exist under the scope of becoming an informationally-complex dissipative structure. If you can add efficient cause – some system of levers and switches that unblock pent-up entropy flows – then physics will pay for you for that small service. Become the blades of vegetation intercepting the sun, become the little critters with legs, mouths and arses. Get focused on imposing a causal mechanics on the world and you can have a job for life, even if you accelerate the entropification of nature just a tiny bit. — apokrisis
There are efficient causes and then there are overall conditions. Perhaps the overall conditions for the evolution of humans would not have obtained if the asteroid had not hit. — Janus
Some seem to consider overall conditions to be equivalent to final causation not efficient causation. — Janus
No. I mean, is the discontinuity in the chain of causality something that we simply draw subjectively so that we do not have to go to infinity, or is it something objective in the world, that there is actually a type of discontinuity in the causality of the world that explains why we explain some things better with a specific causality and not with just any causality? — JuanZu
The question is: when we separate the events in question from their surrounding environment, is it simply an epistemic construct or is there really an objective kind of disconnect? — JuanZu
So causality is the narrative we tell, the map of how to get to where we want. But then philosophy came along and started injecting a little more metaphysical rigour into this exercise. What was causality as a narrative at the level of the Cosmos itself? — apokrisis
Is everything causally connected to everything else? If I throw a ball from the fifth floor, I know that the cause of the ball falling is because I threw it. And I don't have to look for the cause in, say, the movements of the stars. So it seems that not everything is causally connected to everything else. There are limits to causal influence. — JuanZu
how far should we extend our view in casual relationships? If it is true that the movement of the stars does not explain why the ball fell to the ground from the fifth floor, it follows that there is a kind of causal disconnection. In that sense, one might say: there is continuity and there is causal discontinuity. — JuanZu
For philosophers "causality" is a metaphysical notion, whereas for physicists it's a practical principle, to aid in understanding how & why things happen. — Gnomon
Ironically, that swampy quicksand logic allows people of Faith to claim that their metaphysical "reasons" & divine revelations are just as valid as a scientist's physical-empirical Facts & Faxioms. — Gnomon
So, where does that leave us public reasoners on a non-empirical (metaphysical) philosophical forum? Are the conjunctions in our reasoning so weak that none of our arguments will hang-together under the universal solvent of skepticism? Are our fundamental (self-evident) axioms only valid within a single isolated-but-united Faith community (-isms)? — Gnomon
Causality as efficient cause is not wrong. It just is always shaped by some prevailing context. — apokrisis
Constraint removes possible futures, but normally still leaves many possibilities open. Accidents can happen. Asteroids could be on paths that just miss the Earth as there was no constraint on that fact. — apokrisis
So causal accounts are flexible like this. We learn to make good choices about how much events are to be explained by contextual circumstances and how much by accidents or free choices. — apokrisis
I just wrote what I consider a most beautiful work of art. It argued that the condominium covenants did not bind the association to protect against water heater leaks from individual units, but that obligation rested entirely with the individual unit owners. It was a work so maginficent, it made the Sistine Chapel look like a steaming pile of cat shit. — Hanover
I find beauty in the diversity of personalities, including those so boring they find beauty in blueprints. — Hanover
That is, there can be more beauty in an analytical essay than a limerick. — Hanover
Language itself or how language is used? — Tom Storm
Do you have a favourite aesthetic experience out of poetry, painting, architecture or nature? — Tom Storm
You're right. This is probably the sorriest thread I ever started here. — RogueAI
Scientists are now seriously asking if humans were seeded by aliens — RogueAI
For discussion: How do you think the media should cover these events? — BitconnectCarlos
I don't understand why you removed substance from my definition, but something that objectively exists is a substance, as opposed to something that subjectively exists, such as an experience. — MoK
the brain cannot produce the mind and be affected by the mind at the same time. — MoK
Biology, chemistry, etc., are reducible to physics. That means that we are dealing with weak emergence in these cases. — MoK
To me, abstraction and imagination are examples of thinking. Remembering, free association, etc. are not. — MoK
↪T Clark That's an interesting Pinker quote, although I myself frequently think in English sentences - not that I regard that as typical or as something everyone would do. Others have said here there are people who can read and speak perfectly well without ever being aware of a stream of thought in their minds. I think my 'bottom line' with respect to AI (with which I now interact every day) is that LLMs are not subjects of experience or thought. And if ask any of them - Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT - they will affirm this. They are uncannily like real humans, right down to humour and double entrendes, but they're reflecting back at us the distillation of billions of hours of human thought and speech. — Wayfarer
self awareness and introspection is at the core of all understanding of personal need. — Jack Cummins
My point is that your quote is of a position that is generally challenged and not widely held. — Hanover
They stress that language is not primarily a system of communication, but a system of thought. Communication is a secondary use of an internal capacity for structuring and manipulating concepts. Animal communication systems (e.g., vervet alarm calls) are qualitatively different, not primitive stages of language. — Wayfarer
Any particular thought in our head embraces a vast amount of information. But when it comes to communicating a thought to someone else, attention spans are short and mouths are slow. To get information into a listener’s head in a reasonable amount of time, a speaker can encode only a fraction of the message into words and must count on the listener to fill in the rest. But inside a single head, the demands are different. Air time is not a limited resource: different parts of the brain are connected to one another directly with thick cables that can transfer huge amounts of information quickly. Nothing can be left to the imagination, though, because the internal representations are the imagination. We end up with the following picture. People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought.