What philosophy buffs have against Science buffs

[Qfwfq]

Can you think of an example of a cause that cannot be excepted that is not part of the definition of the effect?

Decapitation causing death?

 

I think you're somewhat missing my point by picking at the details. I said "unless you consider falling water from any source rain" to protect the point against hacking, admittedly because it suffered from this weakness but only a linguistic one. My real point is that the whole argument here has been due to glossing over some distinctions but you seem to think I'm blindly saying implication is causation.

 

In the case of necessary and sufficient condition, I think that we would simply define whichever event occured first as the cause and the subsequent event the effect. As I believe our use of the concept of cause is driven by subconsious use of an algorithm which involves only order of events and correlation.

This is Kantian but I don't 100% agree. I posed that example because it is indeed tricky. There are good reasons for our notion of causality, and also for it not contemplating a later event causing the previous. However, causation is not the only possible interpretation of a coimplication. Further, we now know that before and after isn't enough, a necessary condition is for the interval not to be spacelike else the before-after depends on the observer. When the two particles of a singlet state are separated and their spins are observed at a spacelike interval, we observe a strong correlation. Which of the two events is the cause?

[Kriminal99]

Decapitation still subject to induction issues

Anotherway of wording global skepticism or the problem with induction is as follows.

 

For every belief, there is a possible coherent model of the universe that if true disproves the belief in question.

 

What if a person is really a robot with wireless energy and information transfer in the case his head was seperated from his body?

 

Causation is never an inherent part of logic

 

I am not saying you are blindly saying that causation is the same as "if p then q". I am saying that causation never has anything to do with "if p then q" logical statements except when you make it so by defining events as the cause or effect of each other. If you do not disagree then why did you respond to my argument towards TFS, who WAS saying that causation is a fundamental part of logic. Though you may not be saying the same thing as he was, your actions seem to imply that you think it sometimes is... unless you are just making the point that you can define things such that causation is part of the definition of a concept and in those cases deductive reasoning refers to cause.

 

What is cause?

 

Would you mind elaborating on these "good reasons for our notion of causality"? The textbook definition of a concept of causality doesn't allow us to know the answer to a question like the one you provided. Which tells us that it isn't really a definition at all, but rather a primitive attempt at definition. So we really don't KNOW what we are even talking about when we mention causality - but there is some precise algorithm that allows us to determine that our every day experiences are either causes or not causes and this algorithm is useful in our everyday experiences (but perhaps not elsewhere). Once we know what that is, we can simply apply it to any situation and immediately come up with an answer.

 

Your example highlights the benefit of reducing cause to correlation

In the example you provided, I believe the answer is that the concept of cause is no longer needed or meaningful which I believe proves the point I was making to TFS earlier. Instead we need only consider the strong correlation on its own, the only difference between this and the REAL definition of cause anyways being the order of events. But here there is no clear order of the events.

 

Build a language based on nature and make it our native tounge

 

We can still use causation to examine our every day experiences, but now that we know better why bother? Just recognize the connection between events by how correlated they are rather than labeling cause and effect.

 

Dream in correlation rather than just translating everything to causation first to understand it.

[Qfwfq]

I wouldn't say that you are debating in a reasonable fashion Krim.

 

Dream in correlation rather than just translating everything to causation first to understand it.

And what's that supposed to mean?

:shrug:

[Kriminal99]

I wouldn't say that you are debating in a reasonable fashion Krim.

 

And what's that supposed to mean?

:shrug:

 

It is a metaphor relating the learning of a new language to the current subject. If a native english speaker learns spanish, at first they will translate everything into english. How they think of many concepts will be dictated by english grammar. But later on, they will use the spanish language without having to translate and instead will think in spanish, and it is thought by some that when you begin to dream in the foreign language it is a sign that this has occured. The grammar of the new language also gives people a new way to think often times.

 

I do not believe this is limited to language. I have read about studies where a person who has become blind uses the part of their brain related to visual stimuli for a while after becoming blind, but then later does not. I believe in this case at first they are translating sounds into images, but later learn to think of the sounds of objects as the objects themselves.

 

In the current subject, I think the concept of causation can be abandoned, and we can just use the concept of correlation instead.

[Qfwfq]

Well that was obscure, despite the fact that I became bilingual at an age that I can still remember quite well. I would never have understood dreaming in X as being a more definite discriminant of linguistic assimilation. I think it's a matter of recognizing a "symbol" and doing away with the need to translate it into some other "symbol" with the same meaning. Call it familiarity with a symbol. I agree about your example of a blind person, who previously wasn't, it is illustrative and the conclusion would be that the visual symbols become useless and hence superfluous.

 

In the current subject, I think the concept of causation can be abandoned, and just use the concept of correlation instead.

In a sense, you make it a merely linguistic matter of choice. Why don't we agree to call it neither causation nor correlation, but instead call it (mental) masturbation? I'd like to see how many reasonable people you could persuade that decapitation will not so surely cause death. :shrug: Is the decapitated robot any more dead than before it was decapitated?

[TheFaithfulStone]

So we really don't KNOW what we are even talking about when we mention causality - but there is some precise algorithm that allows us to determine that our every day experiences are either causes or not causes and this algorithm is useful in our everyday experiences (but perhaps not elsewhere). Once we know what that is, we can simply apply it to any situation and immediately come up with an answer.

 

So? Whether it is the nerve signal that causes your foot to hurt, or the impact of your toe on the rock, there is a cause for every effect. Things do not happen for no reason. "Objects in motion..." Even at the quantum level, where cause and effect is a different animal (which observation causes the wave function collapse in an entangled particle?) the particle will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Unless observed, the wave function will not collapse.

 

You can qualify this infinitely - if this, and this, and this, then THIS.

 

Your notion seems to be an interesting answer to the "Problem of Induction" - that is, just because the Sun has risen every morning does not mean there is a logical reason to believe it will rise tomorrow.

 

If you believe the will rise tomorrow simply because it has always risen, that's just blind induction. But if you believe the sun will rise tomorrow BECAUSE earth rotates on it's axis, and the force necessary to stop this rotation is unlikely to occur within the next twenty four hours BECAUSE your telescope sweeps have not found anything within striking distance that is the size of mars, that would be a logical theoretical conclusion.

 

Your conclusion (the sun will rise tomorrow) is based on sound theory (orbital and planetary mechanics) which is based on Newton, which is derived the the existence of force, and three dimensions which you can move through - which we know exist through observation.

 

Of course, most people don't go through that kind of thought. The sun has always risen, the sun will always rise.

 

Your implication is that because we cannot fully understand causation that it does not exist? Or that even if it does exist, we can't fully understand it so that we should just replace it with correlation?

 

That seems like much more of an induction problem than just saying "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." In other words - there is a correlation between it being 6:30 or so in the morning, and the sun rising. There is a correlation between the moon setting and the sun rising. There is a correlation between the rooster crowing and the sun rising. But eliminate any of those things and the sun still rises. Just because it's always been that way doesn't mean it always will.

 

As for causation being an inherent part of logic - I'm not sure if you're drawing the distinction, but it's certainly an assumption of logic. Thus, it can be said to be logical to say "If I hit my toe on a rock, it will hurt."

 

Of course, you can build infinite "what ifs" into this equation - "what if your toe is covered in keratinous armor?" "What if it's a rock made of jello?" But you're arguing with assumptions.

 

Like in your example of the person being a robot. You're arguing with the definition of "person."

 

If I define "universe" as the chair I am sitting in, then I could say, that me sitting here causes the universe to develop a warm, butt-size spot.

 

As to why it's necessary to understand cause and effect - I will pose this question again - say you wanted to solve the problem of high out of wedlock births in the African-American community. What would you do?

 

TFS

[Kriminal99]

Well that was obscure, despite the fact that I became bilingual at an age that I can still remember quite well. I would never have understood dreaming in X as being a more definite discriminant of linguistic assimilation. I think it's a matter of recognizing a "symbol" and doing away with the need to translate it into some other "symbol" with the same meaning. Call it familiarity with a symbol. I agree about your example of a blind person, who previously wasn't, it is illustrative and the conclusion would be that the visual symbols become useless and hence superfluous.

 

In a sense, you make it a merely linguistic matter of choice. Why don't we agree to call it neither causation nor correlation, but instead call it (mental) masturbation? I'd like to see how many reasonable people you could persuade that decapitation will not so surely cause death. :) Is the decapitated robot any more dead than before it was decapitated?

 

Well lots of people I have known learning new languages, as well as people who teach and tutor languages have told me that it is a common phenomenon that as people become more fluent in a language they begin to have dreams in the foreign language and are surprised by it and mention it to others. It makes really good sense to me since I think dreams are just your subconsious using well understood concepts to invoke various emotions to satisfy chemical and physical needs.

 

It is more than just an issue of choice though, which is why I brought it up. I believe causation is a vastly inferior concept due to its vagueness / lack of precision.

 

Maybe you could do something to the head and body to preserve them and then reattach. Maybe a time dialation field which enveloped the head and body except near the seperation such that the head and body healed together before the person died. The point is there is still induction involved and you cannot say "if decapitation then death" unless you simply define decapitation to cause death, such as in the case of electrocution. What if you lived through being electrocuted? Well then you weren't electrocuted you were just badly shocked...

 

@ TFTS

 

It doesn't matter if you qualify infinitely. Either the cause is defined as the cause adn the effect defined as an effect in which case you can say "if p then q" not because of cause and effect but because it is the concepts definition, or else "if p then q" is not certain and therefore not a logic statement.

 

The belief that the sun will rise tommorow is no more logical if you understand the physics of the solar system. That is exactly the point of the "for every belief there is a coherent world model that disproves it" reiteration of the induction problem... I should have said plausable coherent world model even though that is redundant. So maybe aliens came and destroyed the sun, and then projected the image and heat of the sun for a while until they decided to leave one day. Or maybe the sun was destroyed by a meteor over night (one of the size to approach from behind the sun without detection) and you hadn't gotten word of it for some reason... you just woke up and no sun.

 

Replace causation with correlation because correlation IS what our subconsious evaluates to determine causation before giving us our instinct as to what is and what isn't cause. With correlation we have more direct access to the reasoning being used. IE with the concept of causation we just have our primitive intuitions as to whether or not something is the cause of something else. And these intuitions are driven by information such as "which occured first, could they happen without each other (which answers the same question as how strong is their correlation)

 

The sun still rises if the rooster doesn't crow, and the rooster's crow has a lesser correlation with the sun rising than the cause which is how we know it isn't the cause.

 

How is causation an assumption of logic? Logic functions just fine without causation. Logic deals with things definitions. Causation does not come into play in logic unless you define something to be the cause or effect of something else.

 

I like the "rock made of jello" example. Yes I understand you can say "then it isn't a rock". What I am saying is, unless you define a rock as something that hurts your toe when it lands on it, then you have left room for the rock hitting the toe not causing it to hurt... You have just eliminated (out of an infinite supply of counter examples) the rock being made out of jello. Most concepts are not defined so. For instance what if the person just didn't feel pain. Are you going to define rock such that it is something that causes pain when hitting people that feel it? A bit much for a definition of a rock. Or maybe you wish to define a person as someone who feels pain. So when you give someone novacaine, they cease to be a person?

 

The only place causation has in logic is when it is forcably given one by defining something as the cause of something else.

 

To eliminate OOW births I would remove the most correlated factor which I could control and which altering did not result in worse problems. See how much easier that was then endless hours of spaghetti reasoning based debates about what the "real" cause of OOW births is?

[TheFaithfulStone]

It doesn't matter if you qualify infinitely. Either the cause is defined as the cause adn the effect defined as an effect in which case you can say "if p then q" not because of cause and effect but because it is the concepts definition, or else "if p then q" is not certain and therefore not a logic statement.

 

If I chop off your head you die. If Bob always lies, then what Bob is saying right now is untrue.

 

Unless it's a different Bob, or unless Bob is INTENDING to lie, but accidentally speaking the truth. Those are no more fantastic than saying - unless you're a robot, or unless your head is reattached by a magical Star Trek flashlight. Unless by "lie" you mean "speaks truth" or maybe "doesn't stand."

 

In this situation, all statements are meaningless, because all language could be parsed in such a way that it means something different. (Now I see why physicists use math.)

 

It is more than just an issue of choice though, which is why I brought it up. I believe causation is a vastly inferior concept due to its vagueness / lack of precision.

 

To eliminate OOW births I would remove the most correlated factor which I could control and which altering did not result in worse problems. See how much easier that was then endless hours of spaghetti reasoning based debates about what the "real" cause of OOW births is?

 

What's vague now? You basically said "I would solve the problem by solving the problem." And you also appealed to cause and effect by saying that you wouldn't alter a factor whose alteration would "result in worse problems."

 

Cause and effect is a well defined concept - it is not vague at all except in very special circumstance (quantum mechanics and relativistic interactions)

 

On the other hand The Cause of The Effect is generally NOT well defined. In my opinion, to put this thread back on track, philosophy and science have this in common - they want to know about The Cause and The Effect. Science "knows" the effect and wants to find the cause. Science tests it by going back and doing the cause over and over and over again. When the cause DOESN'T result in the effect, that theory is discarded and a new one put in place. In a sense, Science is never "true" only "not false yet."

 

Philosophy on the other hand knows what effect it wants, and tries to determine what the the cause should be. Thus in the case of a moral philosophy - John Rawls Theory of Justice, Moral Calculus, or the Categorical Imperative.

 

Of course, that's painted with a pretty broad brush, probably too broad - and I can think of several objection to my characterization of Philosophy.

 

It's not like Kant sat down and said "I find that treating other people as an end and not as a mean is highly correlated with a just and moral code of ethics." He said - if you want said moral code to exist, then you will act so.

[Qfwfq]

Well lots of people I have known learning new languages, as well as people who teach and tutor languages have told me that it is a common phenomenon that as people become more fluent in a language they begin to have dreams in the foreign language and are surprised by it and mention it to others. It makes really good sense to me since I think dreams are just your subconsious using well understood concepts to invoke various emotions to satisfy chemical and physical needs.

It makes very much sense to me too, albeit for quite different reasons. It makes so much sense that I consider use of language in dreams as just one consequence of the language being familiar and, along with the fact that dreams are not so especially related to this matter, this was the very reason I did not see the nexus before your explanation. BTW I've done some ELT myself and I can easily see how much a pupil is translating rather than constructing a sentence directly in English.

 

It is more than just an issue of choice though, which is why I brought it up. I believe causation is a vastly inferior concept due to its vagueness / lack of precision.

The matter of causation is tricky and prone to pitfalls, but that doesn't make it inferior.

 

Why do we continue to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, when astrophysicists already know that one day it'll explode as a nova and burn Earth to a crisp? Why was winter solstice such an important feast in ancient times, especially in Scandinavian countries? Every year... Ah! Relief! Yet again the age-old belief is confirmed, the sun's daily path stops sinking and begins rising! And we still celebrate the Nativity at the wrong time of year, just because most Europeans wouldn't have done away with a feast at winter solstice...

 

How is causation an assumption of logic? Logic functions just fine without causation. Logic deals with things definitions. Causation does not come into play in logic unless you define something to be the cause or effect of something else.

Causation is definitely not part of the foundations of logic, implication is.

 

We seem to be confusing issues and going in circles, trying to raise ourselves by pulling up our own bootstraps. Do you seriously think anybody in their right mind would call something a rock, that's made of jelly? I doubt they would, even someone not striving to defend the toe theorem. At most you can show them the hypothesis needs to be re-stated with "heavy rock" but this isn't re-defining the meaning of "rock". A crowing cock obviously doesn't cause sunrise, nobody in their right mind would really think so even seeing that it crows every morning shortly before dawn, it is the light of aurora that causes the cock to crow.

 

Induction is an instinctive basis for evolved animals to suspect a nexus, it has had a great survival value and is fundamental to a capability of learning. No australopithecus ever read Aristotle's book of Logic, the meaning of this title was more or less like, "analysis of discussion". This analysis, with definitions like modus ponens and modus tollens, came when we had been surviving and evolving in the real world for quite a while.

[Kriminal99]

If I chop off your head you die. If Bob always lies, then what Bob is saying right now is untrue.

 

etc....

 

Part of the definition of lying is not telling the truth. Therefore if bob always lies then bob is not telling the truth is a logical statement. The statement "if I chop off bob's head he will die" is not a logical statement, unless you define decapitation as death. If I chop off your arm, you may or may not die from blood loss or infection or whatever else. It is simply more likely you will die from being decapitated because it seperates major organs. You would not define having your head cut off as a cause of death because it is possible for someone to not die. The idea behind that is not fantastical at all... decapitation simply seperates your brain from functional organs. If decapitation was a major problem, it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that people could have temporary back up systems installed inside their head that could sustain a brain for short periods when the technology became available.

 

The statement was not at all vague and I did not appeal to cause and effect. I appealed to correlation. I said I would fix the problem by altering the most correlated factor. That is as precise as you can get. As for not altering one that would "result in a worse problem", that would mean a factor that was strongly correlated with a worse problem occuring...

 

Cause and effect is an extremely vauge concept that is only clear in very specific circumstances when the model has been greatly simplified. It seems simple to say if I kick a ball it will fly through the air to a 3 year old that has no understanding of physics. But to a physicist who is capable of altering many factors and knows how they play into what happens knows better. The order of events issue that arises in QM is just one of many.

 

The rest of your post basically just demonstrates how vague the concept of causation is and how badly your reasoning ends up like spaghetti trying to use it for anything...

[TheFaithfulStone]

Causation is definitely not part of the foundations of logic, implication is.

 

I think you're right, Q. Causation is always logical, but logic does not necessarily depend on causation. It is possible to have a logical statement that is not one of causality.

 

I cede the point, causality is not a fundamental principle of abstract logic.

 

However, I would maintain, that without USING causation, logic is limited.

 

Example: [shamelessly stolen from Wiki]

 

1. Lightbulbs need power to burn.

2. Switches interrupt power.

3. Switch S is in a circuit with Lightbulb B, and is switched off.

4. If I throw switch S, lightbulb B will burn.

 

That statement is both logical and causal.

 

Now, if I do not assume causation there, I can't really "know" anything. If I throw switch S, maybe the lightbulb will burn, maybe it won't.

 

Implicit in any statement of causality is the phrase "all things being equal." There is not going to be a short. The power at the plant isn't going to go out - the bulb will not be defective. I do not have backup chip in my head - therefore I die when when it gets chopped off.

 

Even in the example of Bob being a liar, this is true. Yes, I can find out that what Bob is saying right now is not true with simple logic. But what keeps me from believing Bob anyway?

 

1. Bob is a liar.

2. Bob says something - that something is not true.

3. BECAUSE I know Bob is a liar, I will not listen to Bob in step 2.

 

Yes, you can know that (1 AND 0) is false, but knowing that it's false is kind of empty unless you can take an action based on it.

 

TFS

[Qfwfq]

You are straining the issue instead of catching the essence. Let's go downhll instead.

 

As it's obvious that we cannot quite 100% rule out exceptions, let's consider the matter allowing for them by just changing the premise:

 

<cause> in lack of any of the exceptions ==> <effect>

 

Now, it's clear that this implication follows logically from what we mean by those words. Thus we have constructed one which, by definition, is due to causation. I had the chutzpah to allege the case of a cause with no exceptions and you are invoking the limits of sci-fi to show that it never will 100% have none, but reasonable people will consider decapitation to be a sure cause of death until the day that head transplants have actually become feasible. Strictly, your argument isn't wrong. It is however stretching things till they are very thin indeed and it isn't even the point. It is quite reasonable to relate causation to implication, either by saying "unless" or when there is hardly a need to specify any exceptions, only some caution is necessary to avoid hasty conclusions such as the cock's crow causing sunrise.

[Kriminal99]

Sci fi? If you showed someone from the middle ages half the stuff we can do today what would they think? Back then you might have made the same argument about a number of diseases which we can now cure. Anyone that says that induction failing is unlikely doesn't understand the issue. You don't KNOW how likely it is or isn't because you have nothing to go on... all your experience is based on a situation that you have no reason to believe will be like the situation you will be predicting for. Logic statements like if p then q are supposed to be based on deductive reasoning do not deal with this problem. They deal with things we can be certain and that means they only deal with the definitions of concepts.

 

@TFTS

To begin with statements of causation do not implicitly come with disclaimers ruling out anything that would wreck the causation. Does a 3 year old know anything about air pressure when they say the ball went through the air because they kicked it? Of course not.

 

But what would such a disclaimer really be? It would be defining the concept to be a cause of an event. You just didn't want to admit that because it would show the only connection to logic is indirect, adn because it would be silly to define kicking the ball as only referring to when the ball has air in it and all other conditions are correct for the ball to fly through the air. That has nothing to do with kicking the ball and to make it so would require a million more words to be label every possible enviornment where something similar to kicking under different conditions could occur.

 

Having a system where every statement of causation comes with disclaimers like the circuit is not going to have a short is much more prone to error (especially since you don't know what is going to mess up the cause and effect relationship) than just recording correlations between events and seeing which one is the strongest. It also makes it much easier to deal with situations where the connections between events are much less obvious.

[TheFaithfulStone]

[All things being equal] Decapitation causes death.

 

YES. It's like the "you" at the beginning of commands. Just because you can dream up a situation where the equal and opposite reaction is different

does not mean that it wasn't CAUSED by the action in the first place.

 

To be more concrete:

Why does the lightbulb come on?

 

 

Just as two events may not always be correlated (for example, in the "middle ages" being literate correlated with being a monk. No longer true.) An effect may be caused by a different... cause. And a cause may cause a different effect.

 

Someday a decapitation may not cause death, but all things being equal - RIGHT NOW, yes, it will surely kill ya graveyard dead.

 

TFS

[Erasmus00]

Having a system where every statement of causation comes with disclaimers like the circuit is not going to have a short is much more prone to error (especially since you don't know what is going to mess up the cause and effect relationship) than just recording correlations between events and seeing which one is the strongest. It also makes it much easier to deal with situations where the connections between events are much less obvious.

 

Or, we can record causes and use a tiny amount of common sense.

 

The problem with describing only correlations is that by denying the existance of a cause you miss potential interconnections. The moon rising is nearly uncorrelated to apples falling from trees or bottles rolling off my desk. However, under causal theories these are fundamentally related.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

[All things being equal] Decapitation causes death.

 

YES. It's like the "you" at the beginning of commands. Just because you can dream up a situation where the equal and opposite reaction is different

does not mean that it wasn't CAUSED by the action in the first place.

 

To be more concrete:

Why does the lightbulb come on?

 

 

Just as two events may not always be correlated (for example, in the "middle ages" being literate correlated with being a monk. No longer true.) An effect may be caused by a different... cause. And a cause may cause a different effect.

 

Someday a decapitation may not cause death, but all things being equal - RIGHT NOW, yes, it will surely kill ya graveyard dead.

 

TFS

 

K we were talking about causation being part of logic with the whole decapitation thing not whether or not decapitation causes death. I take it by trying to pretend the discussion was about something else you have given up there.

 

I'll reiterate that the answer to why the lightbulb comes on, and what you are looking for as a response (also what you would call the cause) are not the same thing. What you are looking for is something you know can be altered or is likely to change in YOUR everyday experience - out of the infinite factors responsible for the light activating. To highlight another problem with the concept of causation, alot of times an event needs many factors to be within certain ranges (and these factors are quite capable of not being in those ranges) in order to occur. Yet all of these factors are usually not recognized simultaneously as the cause. Rather one of them is, and then one of the other factors changes and then you say oh its only the cause when that factor is in range blah blah. At least by seperating the concept used in everyday speech and one that can be used to break down and understand complex situations you prevent people from trying to use the less precise version on complex situations and making a mess.

 

Or, we can record causes and use a tiny amount of common sense.

 

The problem with describing only correlations is that by denying the existance of a cause you miss potential interconnections. The moon rising is nearly uncorrelated to apples falling from trees or bottles rolling off my desk. However, under causal theories these are fundamentally related.

-Will

 

Anything that is actually a cause would have a higher correlation with that event then anything else or at least higher than any non cause. If a cause has a low correlation with the event, its because it is rarely the limiting factor in the chain of occurences that results in the event. IE rarely does it make a difference.

[Erasmus00]

Anything that is actually a cause would have a higher correlation with that event then anything else or at least higher than any non cause. If a cause has a low correlation with the event, its because it is rarely the limiting factor in the chain of occurences that results in the event. IE rarely does it make a difference.

 

Then explain to me how to relate the movement of the moon with a bottle rolling off my desk or an apply falling from a tree, without using causal notions. I don't claim that the bottle causes the moon to move, or visa-versa, just that they are fundamentally related.

-Will