Are cause - effect sequences always mechanical

[dms1972]

I'd say no.

Based on Cornell logician Max Black saying that the concept of cause is "a peculiar, unsystematic, and erratic notion"

I don't think we understand causal sequences - please note I am not venturing into Humean territory.

To me looking for or positing causal (in a mechanical sense) relationship between things people say or do is ridiculous.

I honestly wonder sometimes if this isn't the one of the biggest areas of misunderstanding in the modern world.

 

[Paradoxum]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. You don't people's thoughts are actions are caused by physics?

I'd disagree... the brain is physical, and it's what controls the body... and it is our thoughts.

 

[Tree of Life]

So what's the alternative?

 

[ananda]

Cause & Effect are mechanical ... yet it can be modified by conscious volition.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

So what causes machinery to work?

 

[The Cadet]

We don't know. There's not a good answer to this, really - we just don't know. It could be that when I take this aspirin, it causes my hangover-induced headache to relent. It could also be that when I take this aspirin, some indeterminate supernatural cause makes my headache go away, and that the effectiveness of the medication is entirely dependent on the whims of this supernatural cause, and to date, it has always deigned to play nice about it.

(For the record: this is why science completely eschews supernatural explanations - if the supernatural is allowed to be a cause, then our ability to know anything flies completely out the window.)

Restricting our viewpoint to the natural, there's very good evidence that causation is, at the quantum level, a non-applicable concept. There's so much weirdness there with no apparent cause that, as Sean Carroll explained, "causality is not the right language" (if you want an introduction to some very interesting concepts in quantum physics, check out his debate with William Lane Craig). However, at the macro level, the level we're all acquainted with, it's basically a given that it's mechanistic if we disregard supernatural explanations (which we should).

At least, as far as I can tell. I'm no expert on this.

 

[Eudaimonist]

I don't think we understand causal sequences - please note I am not venturing into Humean territory.

To me looking for or positing causal (in a mechanical sense) relationship between things people say or do is ridiculous.

I am no closer to understanding what you are talking about. What is mechanical causation? And what alternatives to this do you see?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Paradoxum]

Cause & Effect are mechanical ... yet it can be modified by conscious volition.

I'd say that conscious volition is the product of physical causes and effects in the brain.

 

[ananda]

I'd say that conscious volition is the product of physical causes and effects in the brain.

If a man can live with only a minimal brain (5% of normal) and still have a 126 IQ, then I suggest that conscious volition is beyond the brain.

 

[JJM]

I'd say no.

Based on Cornell logician Max Black saying that the concept of cause is "a peculiar, unsystematic, and erratic notion"

I don't think we understand causal sequences - please note I am not venturing into Humean territory.

To me looking for or positing causal (in a mechanical sense) relationship between things people say or do is ridiculous.

I honestly wonder sometimes if this isn't the one of the biggest areas of misunderstanding in the modern world.

Why couldn't the last three lines of this be true while the answers is yes? One could posit that there is no mechanistic cause-effect relationship between our experiences, etc. and our actions and yet maintain that all causes are mechanistic, and that therefore there are no causes to our actions.

If you wish to posit our act of free volition as a cause for our actions, I would say that it is still mechanistic, but that there is in a sense no necessary cause of that act of volition.

Of course that line of thinking results in the assertion that our actions occur at random. To get around this we would need to posit some sort of nonefficient cause, for efficient causes do always seem to be mechanical. This is the point I was making above. Are formal, material, final or perhaps some other type of cause also mechanical? I assume this is where the question is meant to be going. It would seem to me that formal and material causes aren't properly speaking mechanical, but to some extent logical, but logical without being within a subject and thus they result in nonsubjective objective reality, thus perhaps to some degree they function in a way which is like a mechanism. Hmm... thoughts anyone. Final causes are another way to go. I'm spit-balling here, but I'd say they bridge the gap between logical and efficient causality without being either, in that the logical relationships governing the acquisition of the end seem to function in a sense as an efficient cause of the activities, but because they do not result in the actions of necessity the way that efficient causality always does they are not properly that and certainly not absolutely mechanical.

I caution you are taking this too far though. There clearly are to some degree mechanistic/efficient causes of our actions or at least circumstances which bend our wills one way or the other, as ananda was suggesting.

 

[JJM]

(For the record: this is why science completely eschews supernatural explanations - if the supernatural is allowed to be a cause, then our ability to know anything flies completely out the window.)

This is very insightful, but I would like to add that if the supernatural (and by this I assume you mean -because that's how you should mean it- free volition of any sort) is merely an epsitemic possibility then our ability to know anything flies out the window. Even if you are right though and volition is not free there may still be nonmechanistic causality.

I'd disagree... the brain is physical, and it's what controls the body... and it is our thoughts.

The brain is definitely not our thoughts. At best it contains our thoughts which function as electric, chemical, or electrochemical signals within it. I challenge you at risk of derailing the thread to close your eyes and imagine a pineapple. There is I assume if you have anything close to a good visual imagination an image of the fruit in your minds eye. My question is where is that image. It is not in your brain (though it may be coded chemically or electrically there), because if it were we could in theory -some sort of measurement effect notwithstanding- cut open your head and see it with our physical eyes.

 

[KCfromNC]

This is very insightful, but I would like to add that if the supernatural (and by this I assume you mean -because that's how you should mean it- free volition of any sort) is merely an epsitemic possibility then our ability to know anything flies out the window. Even if you are right though and volition is not free there may still be nonmechanistic causality.


The brain is definitely not our thoughts. At best it contains our thoughts which function as electric, chemical, or electrochemical signals within it. I challenge you at risk of derailing the thread to close your eyes and imagine a pineapple. There is I assume if you have anything close to a good visual imagination an image of the fruit in your minds eye. My question is where is that image. It is not in your brain (though it may be coded chemically or electrically there), because if it were we could in theory -some sort of measurement effect notwithstanding- cut open your head and see it with our physical eyes.

The technology to do so is already being developed. See e.g. http://www.nature.com/news/brain-decoding-reading-minds-1.13989. And no need to cut anyone's head open to do it.

 

[ananda]

(For the record: this is why science completely eschews supernatural explanations - if the supernatural is allowed to be a cause, then our ability to know anything flies completely out the window.)

There is much "supernatural" in science ... such as dark matter, black holes, etc. ... things not understood but theorized to cause certain effects in the natural (understood) realm.

 

[ananda]

The brain is definitely not our thoughts. At best it contains our thoughts which function as electric, chemical, or electrochemical signals within it. I challenge you at risk of derailing the thread to close your eyes and imagine a pineapple. There is I assume if you have anything close to a good visual imagination an image of the fruit in your minds eye. My question is where is that image. It is not in your brain (though it may be coded chemically or electrically there), because if it were we could in theory -some sort of measurement effect notwithstanding- cut open your head and see it with our physical eyes.

I like to think of our consciousness (the "spirit" for lack of a better word) is pure awareness which exercises volition over the brain and body. It can produce thoughts, but it's natural state is peace.

The brain also produces thoughts, but only in the sense that it regurgitates previously stored memories or experiences (instinctual).

The overlap between the consciousness and the brain is, IMO, what the masses consider the "mind".

 

[JJM]

The technology to do so is already being developed. See e.g. http://www.nature.com/news/brain-decoding-reading-minds-1.13989. And no need to cut anyone's head open to do it.

Forgive me KC, but you've failed to see the point. The image being displayed when the signals are decoded is not the selfsame image that one sees in ones mind, even if it were in every other way qualitatively identical to it. It is a copy of the image. One cannot see with physical sight the selfsame image. It does not exist in physical space.

 

[KCfromNC]

Forgive me KC, but you've failed to see the point. The image being displayed when the signals are decoded is not the selfsame image that one sees in ones mind

Of course not. But that isn't the issue. The question was whether the image of a something a person sees is stored in the brain. Since such images can be reconstructed by reading the data stored in the brain, the answer seems pretty obvious. Not sure what I'm missing.

Maybe this

It is not in your brain (though it may be coded chemically or electrically there)

has something to do with what you're trying to say? To me that quote is like saying "it isn't in the brain, except for all the obvious ways that it is", which points more towards attacking a poorly thought out idea of how brains work - and being upset that they don't work as if you imagine they must - rather than actually addressing how they do.

even if it were in every other way qualitatively identical to it. It is a copy of the image. One cannot see with physical sight the selfsame image. It does not exist in physical space.

Depends on how you define physical and exist, I guess. One of the many problems of trying to apply philosophy to something which is really a question for science - the word games and creative writing exercises which make up philosophy get in the way of actually understanding how reality works.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

The brain is definitely not our thoughts. At best it contains our thoughts which function as electric, chemical, or electrochemical signals within it. I challenge you at risk of derailing the thread to close your eyes and imagine a pineapple. There is I assume if you have anything close to a good visual imagination an image of the fruit in your minds eye. My question is where is that image. It is not in your brain (though it may be coded chemically or electrically there), because if it were we could in theory -some sort of measurement effect notwithstanding- cut open your head and see it with our physical eyes.

This is as silly as asking where in the brain the retinal image gets "flipped" the right way up.

 

[JJM]

Of course not. But that isn't the issue. The question was whether the image of a something a person sees is stored in the brain. Since such images can be reconstructed by reading the data stored in the brain, the answer seems pretty obvious. Not sure what I'm missing.

Maybe this
has something to do with what you're trying to say? To me that quote is like saying "it isn't in the brain, except for all the obvious ways that it is", which points more towards attacking a poorly thought out idea of how brains work - and being upset that they don't work as if you imagine they must - rather than actually addressing how they do.

First it isn't a question of whether or not it is in any way stored in the brain (which again to some degree it is not). It is a question of where the imagined image that I am seeing when I think about it is when I'm seeing it. Perhaps an analogy might help. Consider a digital "image" of a pineapple which is stored on a harddrive. The image is encoded in the harddrive and thus is in some sense on the harddrive, but if you were to open the harddrive up and look inside you could not see the image. In that sense the image is not there. If you want to see the image you have to turn on the computer run the encoding through a process of uncoding and the image will be displayed on the monitor. Without the uncoding process the code has no meaning, and in that sense is not properly an image. We've all (at least I have) seen what happens when you force a computer to say open an image through a different encoding process like the one for a .doc file. The image does not appear. The encoded "image" is not really an image, but something which an easily act as a catalyst for the creation of the image. But the more important point is that there is nothing in the brain or anywhere physically within the human person which functions like the monitor.

Depends on how you define physical and exist, I guess. One of the many problems of trying to apply philosophy to something which is really a question for science - the word games and creative writing exercises which make up philosophy get in the way of actually understanding how reality works.

Philosophy is not word games any more than formal logic is word games. If you might allow me an equally biting statement, this is what happens when people believe that science can answer questions more complex that the superficial movements of physical bodies, which is all it is good for and all it was ever meant to do and what happens when people believe themselves competent in higher areas of human thought because they are exceptional in discovering the most simple of human questions, which again was all that science was ever meant to do. Read Bacon's Novum Organum.

 

[KCfromNC]

First it isn't a question of whether or not it is in any way stored in the brain (which again to some degree it is not).

Where else is it stored, specifically? If I vaporize a person's brain, where else is that person's imagination?

It is a question of where the imagined image that I am seeing when I think about it is when I'm seeing it.

I have no idea what you're asking. Are you imagining an image it or are you seeing it?

Perhaps an analogy might help. Consider a digital "image" of a pineapple which is stored on a harddrive. The image is encoded in the harddrive and thus is in some sense on the harddrive, but if you were to open the harddrive up and look inside you could not see the image. In that sense the image is not there.

The image is encoded and stored there in a particular way. It isn't the way you might have naively guessed it would be stored, but all that says is that your assumptions about how things work are incorrect.

Without the uncoding process the code has no meaning, and in that sense is not properly an image.

Sounds like you're defining a problem into existence. "Properly an image" doesn't mean anything to me.

The encoded "image" is not really an image

Same problem here. What's "really" an image?

But the more important point is that there is nothing in the brain or anywhere physically within the human person which functions like the monitor.

No, of course not. Again, not sure why this is surprising.

Philosophy is not word games any more than formal logic is word games. If you might allow me an equally biting statement, this is what happens when people believe that science can answer questions more complex that the superficial movements of physical bodies, which is all it is good for and all it was ever meant to do and what happens when people believe themselves competent in higher areas of human thought because they are exceptional in discovering the most simple of human questions, which again was all that science was ever meant to do. Read Bacon's Novum Organum.

Nice rant. I particularly like the implied claim that philosophy is a higher level of thought than all of those other lowly approaches which only manage to produce actual answers.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Minds are morally apt. Right and wrong apply to minds, primarily, and stem from consciousness. Morality does not apply in a mindless universe, where there are just stars, rocks and sand.

Morality stems from consciousness. This is a new form of causation. Recucing the mind to "merely physical stuff" is a step down into nihilism. It (mind) may well be only physical, but it is by no means merely physical...

Mere:

1. used to emphasize how small or insignificant someone or something is

[source]

If you dont see yourself as intrinsically important and significant, there's probably something wrong with your self concept....

We are different from machines in this respect. The "clockwork universe" is a myth...

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians". - J M Keynes.