The strange thing is, I don't understand why I wrote that up and what I meant by it! I think I meant physical causes, as that's what the thread is about. Personal causes can indeed be quite obscure... — Hillary

I agree, though I think that medicine shows that physiological causes can also be quite obscure.

If nihilism is the idea that there is no purpose behind the manifestations of the cosmos, and teleologism is the idea that there is a cosmic purpose;and given that the very meaning of 'purpose' is something like " the aims or wishes of a conscious agent", how are we to avoid anthropomorphizing the notion of cosmic teleology? Surely the human imagination is bound to think god or gods in terms of the human writ large, or else the whole notion of cosmic purpose becomes too vague to be of any use, no?

Reasons provide clarity about personal causes. — Hillary

Or obscurity.

I've mentioned before that I read many of Freud's 'humanistic' essays as an undergraduate. Totem and Taboo, Civilization and its Discontents, and others of that genre. He was clearly brilliant - after all along with Marx and Darwin, one of the main intellectual influences of the early 20th Century - but also 'scientistic' in the sense of attempting to address all and any problems through the lens of what he understood as the objective sciences. Basically thoroughgoing positivism, in the Comtean sense. That was really why he broke with Jung, who had a vastly larger understanding of human nature and the human situation. — Wayfarer

I think this can't be right for the simple reason that for Freud's theories and therapeutic methodologies first-person accounts of experiences were all important. An objectivist psychology would consist in taking into account only behavior or brain chemistry in attempting to understand and treat psychological "disorders". That is not Freud.

Freud may have aspired to develop psychology and psychoanalysis into sciences, but his approach certainly did not consist in any reductive materialist approach. He, like Jung, was interested in the role of symbolic archetypes in human psychology, even if he didn't allow them the esoteric spiritual significance that Jung did.

So, it is true that he wanted to rule any supernatural factors out of consideration, and considered religion to be a manifestation of infantile needs for guidance and generally a phenomenon which finds its origins in fear of death, but to paint him as a positivist is not at all accurate, in my view.

Behaviourist after making passionate love — Wayfarer

Is that possible?

:smile: Good to hear!

So, you and your arse are involved in a schizoid delusion?

Dear god... what is this forum turning into...? — Hillary

Do you find yourself offended?

I know: human sexuality...shocking isn't it? Until it isn't...

↪Janus
You got the question wrong, Janus. The right question is __ Which is best? Lick or get licked? — Ken Edwards

Would I rather lick an arse or have my arse licked? Neither sound at all appealing, unless it were a beautiful, clean young woman, but, otherwise, if I had to choose, I would definitely go with the latter.

Yes indeed!

Ken Edwards — jgill

Nice work!

I should have said, and almost did: "My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe." — Ken Edwards

No, you should have said "My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe's arse".

Logically necessary per se. In my mind, that translates to....what is logically necessary because it is logically necessary. What is logically necessary just because it is. I honestly don’t know what to do with that. — Mww

What is logically necessary is simply that which, if its negation were thought, would involve a contradiction. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.

The fact, if it is one, that we can only understand events by thinking causally does not entail that the events must be causal. Also, I haven't said that events can happen without cause. I have said there is no logical contradiction involved in thinking that they could happen without cause. And that is why I say that causation is not logically necessary. This does not preclude the possibility that all events are in fact causal; we just don't know.

Neither of these will work for stones, though, or any possible experience of ours. We know stones, so we are restrained by the logic of physical causality because of that knowledge. If we deny logical necessity for that which we claim to know, we jeopardize the very conception of entailment for empirical knowledge itself. — Mww

I agree with what you say except, I would still maintain that it is not logically necessary that a stone could not have just popped into existence. I don't see why we need to think of our empirical notion of causation as logically necessary when we know it works and has worked very well for us. Why must it be apodictic?

Can we agree that what might be thought to be logically necessary for our rational thinking (what is psychologically necessary) can be distinguished from what is logically necessary per se?

Then how do you justify your other statement, that causation is not logically necessary? — Metaphysician Undercover

For something to be psychologically necessary is not always for something to be logically necessary.Thinking in terms of causation may be necessary for our rational understanding of things; our rationalizations so to speak, but this is not the same as to say that thinking in terms of causation is logically necessary.

What constitutes "understanding" to you? — Metaphysician Undercover

Pre-reflective understanding consists in seeing things as having their various significances for us; seeing things under some basic conceptualization/ category or other. Reflective understanding consists in stories we use to explain how things came to be the way we find them.

Then our method for determining the truth about the past, is designated as invalid (by your proposition), and such claims about truth are unjustifiable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that understanding events in terms of (some kind of) causation is somehow "invalid"; in fact it is the only way we can understand events. Any explanation of the connections between events must posit some hidden forces or powers; whether those are gods, animating spirits or mechanical causes.

It is good to divide out cause in this way, insofar as attribute implies identity of an existence while cause implies the relation of an existence. In this regard, I would agree cause is not a primary category for what an object is to be known as, but would add...neither is existence. — Mww

I would say though, that an object is only known (as such) insofar as it does exist. If this is so, then we must allow for different categories of existence: possible, fictional, actual and so on. So, I agree that objects do not have an "extra" attribute: existence; on the contrary to be an object is to exist.

Trivial sidebar: existence has to do with representation of each object in general in a time, cause has to do with representation of objects in general in successive times. — Mww

Right, but objects do not exist "in a time" in isolation, either temporally or spatially. We could represents a succession of objects appearing or successive events that have no causal connection, but such a representation would not be an explanation of anything, but would be a mere description.

.....but rather, time is. And we already know this, because time is already stated in the transcendental method as the form of all phenomena, to which every single category subsequently applies. — Mww

Agreed.

But can it be said with equal certainty, that a stone is not an effect? If it cannot be said, or it is said but contradicts empirical conditions, therein lay the validity for those categories with complementary, what Kant calls “dynamical”, nature. As opposed to “mathematical”, which do not have complementary conceptions belonging to them. — Mww

We cannot say with "certainty" that a stone is or is not an effect, it seems to me; although of course we feel certain that stones originated somehow. But there is no strictly logical contradiction involved in thinking that a stone could have randomly popped into existence for no reason and caused by nothing at all (as incomprehensible as that might seem). That has been my only point in arguing against the idea that causation is logically necessary.

I agree that causality is, like freedom or truth, irreducible, insofar as it cannot be explained in terms of anything else. But It is not logically necessary. There is no logical contradiction involved in thinking that events might simply happen without cause or reason.

I’d go so far as to say....objects must relate to one or more categories, cause is a category, therefore inferred causation is logically necessary for human empirical cognitions. — Mww

That raises an interesting point. Cause and effect are categories of events, but I would say they are not "primary" categories. So, form is a category of objects; insofar as all objects have form and I would say it does count as a "primary" category.

I would say cause is more a category of judgment. I get that all these categories are categories of judgement, but I mean here that cause is more strictly just a category of judgement insofar as it is not an obvious attribute of objects. Think of a stone, for example; a stone is not in itself a cause, but it does in itself have form.

An inference can be derived from observation alone — Janus


Not if “.....intuitions without concepts are blind....” is true. — Mww

The thing is that observations are always already conceptually mediated as the quoted phrase states. We always already observe anything or any event as something. Events are observed to succeed one another, with certain events being constantly correlated with certain other events. None of this involves inference yet. The inferences come when we imagine hidden connections between the correlated events.

An inference is a kind of logical associative relation, but it doesn't follow that it is a necessary logical relation. We can, and humans have, imagined many different kinds of causal forces at work in the world. We might say that some kind of inferred causation is logically necessary....to our ability to be able to associate events intelligibly with one another. But that does not mean we have to think in terms of efficient causation. We could instead think the animal spirits, or God. or whatever, did it.

An inference can be derived from observation alone, but all observation is always already interpretive. Anything that could count as an event is primordially seen, or understood, as being this or that kind of state of affairs; so conceptual judgement (not inference) is obviously directly involved in perception. There is no "raw data". "Intuitions without concepts are blind" is indeed true.

It certainly seems to be the case that the action, the purported actual energy exchange, which is involved in causation is not directly observed, really not observed at all, but is inferred on the basis of the notion of causation. The fact that all observations are already conceptually mediated does not entail that all concepts are observations,and is derived only from understanding what is directly observed and what is involved in something being directly observed. Again, I think it is indisputable that there is no "raw data" which could becomes conscious, simply because any purported "data" would have to be understood as something (in other words conceptualized) in order to become conscious and thus have any influence on judgement.

There may indeed be physical necessity. For all we know it could be physically impossible that things could have been different. But logical necessity is another animal altogether.

Also there is such a thing as empirical inference; it is based on the expectation that comes from invariance of observed correlations. I agree with Hume that we don't actually witness causation, but I think he also neglected to notice that we experience ourselves, feel ourselves, as causal agents, as being able to apply forces to other things, and also as being acted upon by various forces.

what I think it means, is simply that you can make reasoned predictions and draw conclusions based on both observation and inference. Something very close to Kant's synthetic a priori. — Wayfarer

Yes I agree, you can think inductively and abductively based on accumulated past experience. However, logical necessity is not inductive or abductive but deductive, and that is the part that is missing from empirical inference

But what do I know? Virtually nothing about the subject. — jgill

You're not alone!

I like a truly simplistic explanation: When embedded in spacetime logical necessity becomes physical causation. :nerd: — jgill

Is it logically necessary that spacetime must be always the same?

My conclusion is that scientific law is where logical necessity meets physical causation. — Wayfarer

"Logical necessity" in this context implies that for the laws to be different would be a logical contradiction. And yet this is not so. which is why I'm having difficulty following your argument.

Taking into account one's entanglement with actions that are to have future consequences. In other words, living fully in the present would imply the ending of all such ties - holding no hopes, no regrets, fully reconciled in the moment. — Wayfarer

That's the spirit!

Eternal life, if it does exist, DOES NOT belong to those who live in the present, because eternity, unlike time, is dimensionless; it lacks past, present, and future.

Eternal life, if it does exist, transcends ALL temporal dimensions. — charles ferraro

If eternal life transcends all temporal dimensions then it cannot be "after" anything, least of all death.

It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience. I don't see how that is different from what is called a posteriori knowledge. — T Clark

The distinction is between what can be known only contingently on the basis of ongoing events and what can be known as necessary based on reflection about the nature of all our experience. So I know a priori that I won't know whether it will rain today until it does or the day is over, and I know a priori that rain can be more or less intense and comes in different forms, that it will have a certain duration and that like all things in nature it is never exactly the same from one event to the next..

but there's a difference between discussing the philosophical implications of physics, and the kinds of debates going on inside physics, which are pretty well by definition only intelligible to those trained in it. — Wayfarer

Would it be possible, though, to unpack "the philosophical implications of physics", without understanding "the debates going on within physics"? (This of course assuming that there must, or at least could be philosophical implications of physics).

The noumenal is not. The very term ‘noumenal’ is a ‘phenomenal’ (both technically and literally!). — I like sushi

'Noumenal' is a polemical distinction from 'phenomenal', so I don't know what you are trying to say here, unless it is just the (unquestionable?) truism that all ideas are phenomena. More explanation required.

Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is the way to refer to the absence of something somewhere not nothing nowhere (because that is meaningless drivel much like ‘potato on yellow under the is and but of it one two trousers’) — I like sushi

Again not sure what your point is. What you say here doesn't seem to relate to anything I've said. I will say though that the idea of there being absolutely nothing is not meaningless, even if it might seem impossible or contradictory. But again this is far from anything I've been addressing.

But isn’t that what we would say about the running of a computer program?

So it is the other way around. The problem is the need to amend the usual notion of material cause so that it ain’t so robotically determined. — apokrisis

I'm not clear on what you're saying; can you explain? I wasn't asserting the idea of strict determinism, just outlining it, and pointing out that there is no logical contradiction in the idea that it doesn't obtain.

Bear in mind that the Cosmos exists to serve the second law and thus its aim is to maximise entropy. So even without the inherent quantum uncertainty, the Cosmos is committed to the production of uncertainty at every turn. — apokrisis

How do we know that this is not just the way it appears to us, time-bound creatures that we are? Also why could entropy not also obtain under the dominion of strict determinism wherein the only uncertainty would be epistemic?

I'm long past expecting anything like that to happen to me, but I still believe that it is central to metaphysics proper. — Wayfarer

That's true of me also; but I think it is good to remain open to the possibility. In my view, "metaphysics proper" would not be some set of true propositions, but would consist in metaphors that allude to the experience of illuminated certainty, or if it is preferable because less presumptuous, illuminated lack of doubt..

It depends on what sense of 'knowing'. This writer says that Kant claims that the noumenal is unknowable - but that both Hegel and Schleiermacher then point out that, even though the noumenal might be unknowable in any objective sense, in another sense, it constitutes our own being, that it constitutes us, as subjects of experience. — Wayfarer

So, the idea here would be that of intellectual intuition; that in virtue of being the noumenal we can somehow directly know it's nature. The possibility cannot be ruled out, but even if such direct knowing were possible; there could be no discursive "knowing that we know".

Our whole warrant for such direct "knowing" would be its sense of total illumination and complete lack of doubt; there would always remain the possible of being deluded, though.

But then if we actually experienced a sense of total illumination and complete lack of doubt we likely wouldn't care about that possibility in the least. Only one way to find out if such a state is possible, and sustainable, though, and that would be to experience it in a sustained way. How to achieve that is then the problem.

So, it seems that what you are looking for is that experience of illumination and total certainty that would tell you that causation is logically necessary, despite the mundane logical fact that there is no contradiction in, to cite Anscombe's example, thinking that the kettle might not heat up when it's placed on the fire.

To go back to the beginning of this thread after some derailment, the idea of physical necessity such that given exactly the same causal conditions, exactly the same result must always reliably follow, no matter how well attested we might think it to be by science, does not equate to logical necessity.

We do not, and cannot, know if such a physical necessity rules, simply because of the vanishingly small sample of the universe, both temporally and spatially, that we have observed, and will be able to observe.

If such a physical necessity does rule, which is questionable given quantum indeterminacy, then it would follow logically that given exactly the same causal conditions, then exactly the same effects must follow.

But in this case the logical necessity would only obtain in the context of a closed situation entirely subject to the aforesaid physical necessity, and there would still be no universal logical necessity to the same effect.

Even if there were nowhere anywhere free form this strict physical determinacy, it would still be logically (if not physically) possible that there might have been. And of course, in any case, we don't, and can't know the truth about any of this.

(W)hol(l)y shit!

If that's the quality of reply you're reaching for just a few posts in we'll leave it there. — Isaac

But the moment you claim - the rule is "all balls hitting the line are declared out", you're no longer demonstrating an understanding of the rule, you're declaring a belief of your about the rule. — Isaac

If the ball lands outside the designated lines, it is called out and the player who last hit the ball loses the point. There is nothing more to understand about the rule.

There are two possibilities here; either you are talking crap, or what you say is true but beyond my comprehension. If the discussion was about QM, I would probably concede the latter. In either case, and in different senses, what you have been saying would be, for me, an embarrassing load of crap.

Having admitted that it is the agreement of others which determines the rules, how can you then say that your own personal judgement of whether you have understood what the consensus is, is now sufficient? — Isaac

Irrelevant. I acknowledged that the rules are established by consensus. If can describe the rules then I understand them; I don't have to play tennis, which I would need to do to enact, to implement, them. My question about consensus was not about established convention, but about whether, if I described the rules of tennis, I could be sure that there was universal consensus, or not, that I had understood them. If I can't understand a rule without demonstrating it, then how could I be sure that I had understood consensus without demonstrating it, in other words? You and Isaac are clutching at straws, and you haven't grasped enough to even construct a decent strawman.

An embarrassing load of crap, Isaac; you should be ashamed.

Having admitted that it is the agreement of others which determines the rules, how can you then say that your own personal judgement of whether you have understood what the consensus is, is now sufficient? — Isaac

Convention establishes rules. It also establishes language, which enables me to understand the rules, without having to implement them. If I couldn't be sure that I understood rules, how could I be sure that I understood that there is consensus? I think you like arguing just for the sake of it, and that is against the rules.

If it is the agreement of others that shows what the rules are then my having watched many games and finding an infallible consensus about the way the game is meant to be played is sufficient to show me that I have understood the rules.