@apokrisis

Let's say we just get rid of idea of causality. Doesn't your way of seeing things just revert to the hierarchical system we talked about last week - laws from below, constraints from above? What advantage do you get when you add cause to the mix?

Thanks.

It's rather like learning to be bilingual. You need to become fluent in both reductionism and holism to see how they are in fact the two poles of the one larger epistemic dichotomy.

So first comes the reductionist conviction - the standard model idea of efficient cause, or chains of cause and effect.

Then comes the holist backlash - the rejection of the mechanical model and the discovery of other "logics" like Aristotle's four causes.

Finally, after thesis and antithesis, comes the resolution. Colliding billiard balls sit at one extreme pole of our conception of causality, the random decay of a particle sits at the other. — apokrisis

I have no trouble holding two apparently contradictory ideas in my head at the same. I remember in high school physics when we talked about particle-wave duality. It struck me suddenly that the universe doesn't work the way our minds say it should. Why? Because it's the universe. That's not why I want to reject causality. In an earlier post you wrote:

What this thread demonstrates is just what a baked in conception of causality folk have. They believe that the laws of mechanics, logic and computation all point to the same small narrow device of the "cause and effect" connection of temporal chains of efficient causes. — apokrisis

That's what I'm responding to. I'm chewing on your broader definition of causality before I try to swallow it.

And stand back to watch a particle decay carefully, you will discover that it then never does. — apokrisis

I looked this up and didn't understand. Can't you observe a particle decay without affecting it just by detecting the decay product?

It's rather like learning to be bilingual. — apokrisis

Je parle un peu Francais.
Ich spreche Deutsch Ein bisschen.
Me talk English good.

Or alternatively, you can stick with philosophical naturalism and instead conclude you haven't quite understood the complex nature of causality. More work needed. — apokrisis

I still have lots of thinking to do on the subject. This has been a really useful thread for me in that regard.

Seems you would jump straight to the pragmatic vindication — Banno

Yes. Always.

The Humean issue is only about the certainty that can be ascribed to some causal belief, — apokrisis

For me, that's a big part of the issue with cause. To say that something is caused when we can't be certain of, or even close to knowing, what causes what, which is generally the case, is meaningless. What we call "causality" is an un-disentanglable tangle.

What this thread demonstrates is just what a baked in conception of causality folk have. They believe that the laws of mechanics, logic and computation all point to the same small narrow device of the "cause and effect" connection of temporal chains of efficient causes. — apokrisis

I'll say it again - I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but to call it "causality" no longer makes sense.

What, that some events seem to need a push - an impressed force - like the billiard ball, while other things, like the decay, the quantum fluctuation, have only a global probability, the certainty of a statistical half-life, that bounds them? — apokrisis

I meant that radioactive decay seems like an instance when the idea of cause doesn't fit.

Some situations conform to one end of the spectrum - where cause and effect seems to rule in strict counterfactual fashion. But others are somehow locally unprompted and yet exactly constrained by some probability curve or wavefunction.

Doesn’t this show that causality must be a bigger picture? — apokrisis

Or, alternatively, that there is a bigger picture, but it doesn't make sense to call it "causality" anymore. I have no doubt that the universe is an historic entity. Events in the past are connected to those happening now.

I think its a fairly straight forward notion in science that we look for a cause to explain why a state exists as it does. — Philosophim

I think it is common, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is straight forward. And I don't think it is.

Deleted

I avoid dead metaphors like the plague and never use them in any way, shape or form. — Cuthbert

Amusing.

Needing to apply scale does not make anything special or questionable. Its completely normal. — Philosophim

Agreed.

We scale it to what's reasonable. — Philosophim

We scale it to what is relevant to us as humans. I'm not disagreeing with you.

If I would guess at the real underlying criticism of the word "causality", its that it has sub-concepts that are not easily conveyed through the context of a conversation. I'm not saying Aristotle's break down is correct, but you could construct a sentence with "causality" which could mean any one of the sub-types. Again, this does not mean "causality" does not exist or is useful. What is really being asked is. "Which sub-type are you intending through your context?" When conversation requires the accuracy of those sub-types be conveyed cleanly without possible ambiguity, then we should use a sub-type of causality. — Philosophim

Reading Aristotle, it struck me that, generally, when he is talking about cause, he is talking about it in a human context. The formal cause is the planning, design, that goes into an event, human activities. The final cause is the human purpose to which it will be put. The efficient cause is the guy who does the work or the skill and understanding that allows him to do so. It is my understanding that Aristotle also acknowledges that some non-human entities may cause things, e.g. fire (heat) causes things to rise.

R.G. Collingwood wrote that cause is a process that started out referring to human action and only later took on meaning as a non-human physical process. He saw the term cause as it is used by philosophers to describe physical action as a metaphorical usage from that original meaning.

But why when that approach can only make causality incomprehensible? — apokrisis

That's a good point. I think that's the right place to start because that's where everyone else starts. That's what people mean when they "cause" in a physics context. I know that needs to be broadened in order to get anywhere, but I think I need to figure out what the standard meaning of the word is.

That being said, I've been really happy with the way this thread has developed. As usual, it's helped me get my hands around the subject, which is a good start.

And how could you explain why the radioactive atom decayed at some particular moment? If a triggering event is ruled out by physical theory, what then? — apokrisis

Isn't that an argument for my position rather than yours?

If you are serious about causality in a physical context, you are going to need to arm yourself with more resources. — apokrisis

Working on it.

Logical, no conjunction of observations leads to the truth of a general rule; no finite sequence f(a) & f(b) & f(c) implies U(x)f(x)... That's clear enough isn't it? — Banno

Logic schmogic. Induction works. Pragmatic logic:

• If it works it's true
• Induction works
• Induction is true

Yes. Final cause and formal cause combine like that in the pansemiotic view. But at the level of physics, this is no more than saying the second law of thermodynamics imposes a thermal direction on nature. The finality is the need to maximise entropy production and reach equilibrium.

So that is both sort of “mindful”. But also the least mindful notion of teleology we can imagine. — apokrisis

I can understand that approach, although it's a stretch for me to think about it that way. I keep wanting to keep it simple. Simpler.

So you can either see causality as being about two different realms - res cogitans and res extensa - each with their own non-overlapping logic. — apokrisis

This is more like how I see it, without much interest in the cogitans, at least in this thread.

in Newton's law, what causes an object at rest to move? — Philosophim

It all depends on where you place the frame and what you set as the scale. The object you're describing is travelling with the Earth's rotation at about 1,000 miles an hour. It's also travelling around along with the Earth as it revolves around the sun and as the sun travels around the galactic center. I guess it's also moving along with the expansion of the universe. It's status as at rest in relation to the Earth's surface is the result of the forces of gravity and friction. If you start it moving, you'll also have to deal with air drag and impacts with whatever it bumps into.

If you look more closely, unless you apply a body force such as gravity to the object, the force you apply will be distributed from the point of application to the rest of the object by elastic deformations which are the result of intermolecular forces. The frame you've chosen is based on your particular point of view which results from the fact that you are a human and live at human scale.

And yet induction is logical invalid, — Banno

I've never understood that. It seems like a throwback to Descartes and universal doubt. Induction works...imperfectly. There isn't any other option. We do the best we can. We're still here. Bridges generally don't fall down. Aircraft don't generally fall from the sky. Ergo induction works.

But you say you understand causality to only mean efficient cause. And that to apply only in classical physics.

That is bonkers as far as I am concerned. — apokrisis

This makes sense to me based on things you've written about biosemiotics and DNA as a kind of formal cause. I see you as walking a path between nuts and bolds reductionism and Thomas Merton and his hippie noosphere cohort. I find it really interesting.

My problem is that my understanding of formal cause includes a need for intention. Formal cause doesn't make any sense unless the form is intended to achieve the final cause - purpose. Purpose requires intention. That gets too close to the noosphere for my taste.

I'm trying to decide if the difference between your understanding and mine is just one of language. You certainly have put a lot more thought into it than I have.

How can the interrogation take place while avoiding the more fundamental level? — noAxioms

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "more fundamental level." For me, whether or not we use the concept "causality" is a metaphysical question that doesn't really come up except in classical mechanics. I think it's a very simple and straight-forward idea. The only question to me is whether or not it is useful.

Wiki gives a very classic definition of causality, and I'm willing to concede that the whole cause-effect relationship is a classical one that doesn't necessarily carry down to more fundamental levels. — noAxioms

That's how I approached it. I think you're right, cause is classical mechanics if it has any meaning at all. I've purposely stayed away from quantum mechanics in this discussion because I think it muddies the metaphysical water.

I read somewhere that there are languages which use the same word for "weakness" and "strength." Can't remember the source or which languages. It makes sense to me that our weaknesses are also our strengths.

an apparently simple concept could be a kind of trick of usage. — Tom Storm

Aren't all concepts tricks of usage? Not trying to be funny.

We know force = mass * acc and it's valid necessarily and therefore never changes. — Shwah

I think the reason it is "valid necessarily" is because it is a definition. Force is defined as the product of mass and acceleration.

statistical mechanics similarly doesn't imply emergentism except in an epistemological sense and it doesn't preclude regular causation. — Shwah

I think they call the results of statistical mechanics "weak emergentism." I think you're right, though. Emergentism, weak or strong, doesn't address causation one way or the other.

I agree and it seems clear to me that we are generally socialized to view the world as a vast realm of cause and effect. It's part of our 'commons sense' heritage. — Tom Storm

I think maybe its use in physics and philosophy is metaphorical. I have read the idea arose in the context of human responsibility for human actions and spread by analogy. That makes sense to me.

At issue is whether the notion of cause can stand interrogation. — Banno

That's what this thread is about for me.

The utility of that habit might suit a pragmatists, but does it suit a philosopher? — Banno

I don't see the idea of cause as having much pragmatic use except in the simplest situations or in ethical theories about human responsibility.

We may want to claim something like that if A causes B, then in any case in which A occurs, B must follow; but a moment's consideration will show that not to be the case. It seems from SEP that the present thinking leans to probabilistic accounts rather than modal accounts; that A caused B means B will follow A on most occasions. But I share your concern that such an account seems unduly complex. — Banno

Not only is it unduly complex, but it loses it's explanatory power if when you make the relationships too convoluted.

here sits the problem of explaining induction; how we move from a limited number of specific cases to a general law. — Banno

I hadn't thought of the two, causality and induction, as being connected. I've never really understood the whole "problem of induction." Induction seems defensible and useful to me. Actually, it's indispensable.

Perhaps the error here is to suppose that there might be a way to firm up our talk of causes to anything more than a colloquial way of speaking, of a habit. — Banno

I have no trouble with that approach, but it takes cause out of the realm of philosophy and science.

I mean good luck trying. That would be a counterfactual approach. Deny the obvious, and when that fails, you have no choice but to accept the obvious. — apokrisis

Pfftt. Who has studied metaphysics, physics or philosophy of science?

Causality must be the hardest subject there is. And that is because it is the most abstract and fundamental level of metaphysical analysis. — apokrisis

At first, I was thinking you were agreeing with me that causality is not normally a useful metaphysical idea. Now I'm not sure.

Your comments have been interesting and helpful, especially the ideas about how we keep conceptually emptying and then refilling the void.

But how could you define your deterministic efficient cause except counter-factually in relation to that which it is not. — apokrisis

That's what I was trying to do in my billiard ball example.

The determinism in any causal situation owes everything to the downward acting constraints. And that rather precisely defines the accidents, the randomness, the freedoms, the causal particularity, as the upward acts of individual and constructive action. — apokrisis

I'll need to think about this.

You are hoping to project an intuitive notion of efficient cause onto the physical account - one where, as you say, you can ignore the rest of Aristotle's holistic account. Yet the physics will always let you down. — apokrisis

Well, I'll try out a little literary foreshadowing... It isn't my plan to do it in this thread, but I want to be able to convincingly argue that the idea of causation is a metaphysical principle that is not of great value in any but the simplest situations. Many, most of the responses so far have seemed to be in that vein, and it surprises me. I thought that the idea of cause was fairly universal.

Efficient cause can't explain anything all on its lonely ownsome. A holism which can provide the context is always going to be the other half of the story that completes the causal picture. — apokrisis

All of the issues you raise in your post are what I'm trying to get clear in my own mind.

I've generally found that 'cause' is one of those words so beloved of apologists and their cosmological arguments. I rarely see it elsewhere, except when people are talking about wars... — Tom Storm

Oh, yes. A hangover of Aristotelian physics, used with ulterior motives. — Banno

I think the idea of cause has a very strong, intuitive power. People in general think that the fact that events are caused is self-evident. I feel the attraction of that attitude.

The alternative, for which I have great sympathy, is that the notion of cause cannot be cashed out in any great depth, to follow Hume in concluding that cause is more habit than physics. — Banno

I neglected to respond to some of what you wrote.

As I noted, this view of cause is one I also find convincing. At this point my goal is finding a more formal and convincing argument than "seems to me."

A few things to note. Firstly, by taking the example of billiard balls, and especially the description of electron repulsion, as epitomising cause, we run the risk of falling into the common philosophical trap of reaching a wrong conclusion by limiting the examples we are considering. — Banno

Sure. I wanted to start with a very simple, familiar example of cause and then break it out in as much detail as I could think of. I found it helpful. It raised interesting questions with me. I guess I figure, if I can't figure this one out, I won't be able to get anywhere with more complex examples.

And secondly, it is well worth noting that scientists, especially physicists, rarely if ever make use of the word "cause". — Banno

In 1912, Bertrand Russell wrote an essay called "On the Notion of Cause" in which he makes a similar point.

Perhaps the breadth of the issue will become apparent as the discussion proceeds. — Banno

I think you're right. My hope to keep things focused on simple physical causes as a way to getting an understand what causality is probably isn't going to work out.

I'd suggest that the apparent way to cash out the notion that A caused B, where A and B are considered to be two distinct events, is something like that in each and every case in which A occurs, B follows. Implicit in this are modal considerations, the is, necessarily, A causes B if and only if every event A is followed by event B. We thus arrive at counterfactual theories of causation, which, despite having all the apparatus of possible world semantics at hand, fail to produce a coherent account. — Banno

I read through several paragraphs describing counterfactuals and causality. I think I understood what it was saying, but it seems much to complicated. That's why I wanted to start out with such a simple example. I guess my take, perhaps my prejudice, is that, if it's all that difficult, why not just get rid of the idea of causality completely and look at it some other way.

A second try might be to soften "A causes B" from B always following A to B mostly following A; to treat causation as probable rather than certain. Hence the present preoccupation with causal models, which I am forced to admit show great promise in both their usefulness in practical application and to some extent their correspondence to our mundane notions of cause. — Banno

I read through the section on probabilistic models of cause. Again, I think I understood it, but I think it's too complicated. Maybe this is my problem - at bottom, I've always seen causality as a complement to determinism. The ways of seeing things that you've described are much less rigid, I guess deterministic, than that, which is a good thing, but it seems like it loses whatever philosophical explanatory power it originally had. What value is there in loosey-goosey causality.

Causes always lead to events if we accept that every event has a cause, which is a basic metaphysical assumption. What you have identified isn't a metaphysical problem, but an epistemological one, meaning every cause doesn't have a predictable event, and by "predictable," I mean knowable. That we don't know whether you will contract Lyme's disease by the bite of an infected deer tick doesn't mean that there will not be an event that is caused by the bite of the infected deer tick, it just means you don't know what it will be. — Hanover

I've thought about this some more and I don't think I have much more to add. Your point about causes having effects that aren't, and perhaps can't, be known is interesting. It's something I've thought about before without coming to a final conclusion. I'm not sure that is at the heart of what I'm calling the metaphysical issues with the idea of causality.

So an identity is set, as well as its scale. We might consider the cue ball, but ignore the subatomic level. Time is one of those identities that we can consider, but we set a scale for this as well.

Do we want to consider seconds? Nano-seconds? Months, years? The scale and identities we pick for our consideration all need to be considered. — Philosophim

I think you're exactly right, and that's why I wanted to look at the billiard ball example at a molecular level. I wanted to bring those framing, scaling issues out into the open so I could take a look at them. I think they are really important. The fact that we have to choose the scale and frame we are going to look at things at is also important.

Causes always lead to events if we accept that every event has a cause, which is a basic metaphysical assumption. What you have identified isn't a metaphysical problem, but an epistemological one, meaning every cause doesn't have a predictable event, and by "predictable," I mean knowable. That we don't know whether you will contract Lyme's disease by the bite of an infected deer tick doesn't mean that there will not be an event that is caused by the bite of the infected deer tick, it just means you don't know what it will be. — Hanover

I've been thinking about the right way to respond to your post. Your points are good ones and are at the heart of the questions I want to get to eventually, which I think are metaphysical questions. I was going to try to avoid metaphysical issues in this discussion. Maybe that was an unrealistic hope.

I find this an unsatisfactory response to your post. I'll think some more and come back later.

I think currently in physics they haven't put up a narrative as to what's a necessary component of cause and what's sufficient (such as quantum spin etc). It seems they're still trying to find more particles and trying to order them. I know string theory fell out of favor but quantum field theory has an argument for accounting for cause in quantum mechanics and general relativity (which both supplanted classical mechanics in manners of their own). In classical mechanics I believe kinetic energy was what caused things. — Shwah

It is certainly true that I could have gone even deeper into the interactions of the billiard balls than I did. I could, theoretically, done an analysis using quantum mechanics. But where I drew the line makes sense to me.

This seems more of a focus on the physics question of what causation is as opposed to the philosophical issues related to causation. — Hanover

I do, eventually, want to have a discussion about philosophical issues related to causation. I've already tried to have some of those discussions in various threads, but it's been a muddle. My plan is to make sure I am clear on what I mean by "causality" before I dig deeper.

Statistically speaking, the best you can say is that A is 100% correlated to B after n number of trials, but you can't ever say that A causes B. — Hanover

I think it goes further than that. Once you get past over-simplified situations like the billiard balls, it get's much more complicated. Most events have more than one and perhaps many causes. Events we call causes may not lead to events we call results 100% of the time. Being bitten by an infected deer tick causes Lyme disease, but not everyone who is bitten by an infected deer tick gets Lyme disease.

That's why I wanted to start out with something very simple.

Necessitarianism is stronger than determinism because determinism allows for the possibility that the causal chain as a whole could have been different, even though every cause within the chain could not have happened differently, given the antecedent causes. — Paul Michael

To me, as the saying goes - it's a distinction without a difference.

If one takes libertarian (or even certain versions of compatibilist) free will to mean that one could have done otherwise, then necessitarianism being true would make this impossible because nothing in reality could have been otherwise, including our choices and actions. — Paul Michael

How is that different from plain old, vanilla determinism?

If necessitarianism is true, then libertarian free will definitely cannot exist — Paul Michael

I don't understand why this would be true. I don't see why either philosophical option couldn't be consistent with determinism.

On the other hand, I did think of a potential philosophical effect - If necessitarianism were true, then the fine-tuning argument for God would never arise.

There might be a way to determine which is true logically, but I do not think we can determine which is true empirically. — Paul Michael

To me, that means it is a metaphysical question. I won't inflict my oft preached sermon on metaphysical entities here.

Necessitarianism suggests there is exactly one way reality can be, which is the way it actually is. In contrast, contingentarianism suggests there is more than one way reality could have been. — Paul Michael

A couple of questions:

1) Are there any physical consequences if necessitarianism is correct and contingentarianism is not?

2) Is there any way to determine whether necessitarianism is true and contingentarianism is not?

If the answer to these two questions is "no," and I suspect they are, then the difference is either metaphysical or meaningless.

A third question:

3) Are there any philosophical consequences if necessitarianism is correct and contingentarianism is not?

If the answer to that question is "no," then the difference is meaningless.

Those who receive a transplant must pass the "good candidate" test for receiving the organ. Meaning, the person must be suited for the transplant. — L'éléphant

My brother had a kidney transplant about five years ago when he was 67. Before the doctors would allow the operation to proceed, he had to meet health requirements, including losing a lot of weight. There are a limited number of organs for transplant. They want to make sure they go to people who will benefit from them. Makes sense to me.