Deterministic or Probabilistic Causality, other, etc ?

[TillICollapse]

Hopefully this is the appropriate part of the forum for this thread:

Wanting to get people's thoughts on their causal perspectives. Do you think we experience a deterministic causality ? A probabilistic causality ? A manipulative one ? Other ?

I'm obviously not providing an exhaustive list with the few I mentioned, just giving kick-start examples ...

I was actually wanting to do a poll, but wasn't sure what the more popular perspectives would be to provide an adequate amount of options.

What are your thoughts, and why ?

 

[Chesterton]

I believe it may be a combination of the three things you mentioned. God has set up a system of laws which result in pre-determined events, and may also allow for probabilistic events, but God can also intervene and manipulate when He so chooses.

ETA: I wasn't going to include this, but then changed my mind: My mother's funeral was three days ago. While driving on the highway to the cemetery, I noticed a pair of jet engine vapor trails in front of us appearing approximately over the direction of the cemetery. Many times I've seen two or even three vapor trails in the sky together, sometimes even criss-crossing. But one trail was perfectly vertical, and the other perfectly horizontal, overlapping each other and forming a perfect Cross.

Later in the day, I and a friend were walking through the funeral home parking lot and my friend (a non-Christian rather macho type of guy, who would not normally comment on a sunset) said to me "Wow, look at the sky". The sunset was the most awesome I'd ever seen, and contained no orange, yellow or red; only my mother's favorite colors - intense shades of purple, lavender, and violet, in the western sky (obviously) in the direction where mom was laid to rest.

Now I know some atheists here are laughing, scoffing or even angry at this. "Thousands of people around the world die and are buried every day, and you're interpreting a couple of coincidences to make you feel good because you think your mom or you are so special that God would manipulate physical forces." I see no logical reason why God couldn't, and I have no idea whether anyone other than I and my friend experienced the same visual reality at those particular times.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Wanting to get people's thoughts on their causal perspectives. Do you think we experience a deterministic causality ? A probabilistic causality ? A manipulative one ? Other ?

Many quantum events follow mathematical laws, but are nevertheless inherently probabilistic.

Despite this probabilistic quantum buzzing at the atomic scale, our experience of life at the human scale is practically deterministic.

 

[durangodawood]

....Wanting to get people's thoughts on their causal perspectives. Do you think we experience a deterministic causality ? A probabilistic causality ? A manipulative one ? Other ?....

We experience deterministic causality: somewhere in space, a 'stray' asteroid is currently aimed at earth.

We also experience probabilistic causality when we examine events at the atomic level.

If "manipulative causality" is the actions of free-willed agents, then we experience that too, I think. The complexity of mind permits actions that are at least party functionally unhinged from prior circumstance.

 

[essentialsaltes]

If "manipulative causality" is the actions of free-willed agents, then we experience that too, I think. The complexity of mind permits actions that are at least party functionally unhinged from prior circumstance.

How does complexity permit actions that are partly unhinged from prior circumstance?

 

[durangodawood]

How does complexity permit actions that are partly unhinged from prior circumstance?

I think the stew of influences that goes into some human decision making gets so stirred up that there's no way to trace it backwards. And I dont mean no practical way.... but no theoretical way. I've heard that this can be explained or modelled mathematically, but I'm the wrong person to ask how thats done.

 

[TillICollapse]

Hey thanks everyone for the replies thus far ... I'm not really responding to anyone obviously, just sitting back and seeing what responses people give to get an idea of the consensus. Thanks

 

[essentialsaltes]

I think the stew of influences that goes into some human decision making gets so stirred up that there's no way to trace it backwards. And I dont mean no practical way.... but no theoretical way. I've heard that this can be explained or modelled mathematically, but I'm the wrong person to ask how thats done.

Philosophers haven't sorted out the freewill/determinism debate, so we're not likely to solve it here. But I fall on the determinism side. (I can't help it!)

The stew of influences that goes into the weather gets so stirred up there's no way to trace it backwards...

But this I think is a practical matter, and I don't see how the activity of the brain is any different in kind or complexity than the weather.

The weather (as it is modeled) is provably a chaotic system. The mathematics is absolutely deterministic. But at the same time, even tiny uncertainties (a butterfly flapping its wings) can utterly ruin predictions (creating or dismissing a hurricane). I expect the brain is chaotic in the same mathematical sense. And for the same reason, the activity of the brain/mind will defy perfect prediction, and the practical unpredictability of our actions is what we mistake for free will.

 

[durangodawood]

Hey thanks everyone for the replies thus far ... I'm not really responding to anyone obviously, just sitting back and seeing what responses people give to get an idea of the consensus. Thanks

What do you mean by manipulative causality?

 

[Chesterton]

What do you mean by manipulative causality?

Yeah, I kind of wondered the same thing. I assumed it meant something caused by a free will agent, i.e., God, gods, or human wills.

 

[TillICollapse]

What do you mean by manipulative causality?

Yeah, I kind of wondered the same thing. I assumed it meant something caused by a free will agent, i.e., God, gods, or human wills.

I'm more familiar with the deterministic/probabilistic concepts, however I threw "manipulative" in there simply because I found it on the wiki and wanted to toss out there choices I wasn't necessarily familiar with, but someone else might be, just so I could get the point across I wasn't limiting the options

Copy/paste:

"Manipulation theories
Some theorists have equated causality with manipulability.[26][27][28][29] Under these theories, x causes y only in the case that one can change x in order to change y. This coincides with commonsense notions of causations, since often we ask causal questions in order to change some feature of the world. For instance, we are interested in knowing the causes of crime so that we might find ways of reducing it.
These theories have been criticized on two primary grounds. First, theorists complain that these accounts are circular. Attempting to reduce causal claims to manipulation requires that manipulation is more basic than causal interaction. But describing manipulations in non-causal terms has provided a substantial difficulty.
The second criticism centers around concerns of anthropocentrism. It seems to many people that causality is some existing relationship in the world that we can harness for our desires. If causality is identified with our manipulation, then this intuition is lost. In this sense, it makes humans overly central to interactions in the world.
Some attempts to defend manipulability theories are recent accounts that don't claim to reduce causality to manipulation. These accounts use manipulation as a sign or feature in causation without claiming that manipulation is more fundamental than causation.[19][30]"

 

[durangodawood]

Philosophers haven't sorted out the freewill/determinism debate, so we're not likely to solve it here. But I fall on the determinism side. (I can't help it!)

The stew of influences that goes into the weather gets so stirred up there's no way to trace it backwards...

But this I think is a practical matter, and I don't see how the activity of the brain is any different in kind or complexity than the weather.

The weather (as it is modeled) is provably a chaotic system. The mathematics is absolutely deterministic. But at the same time, even tiny uncertainties (a butterfly flapping its wings) can utterly ruin predictions (creating or dismissing a hurricane). I expect the brain is chaotic in the same mathematical sense. And for the same reason, the activity of the brain/mind will defy perfect prediction, and the practical unpredictability of our actions is what we mistake for free will.

1.
A. It feels like we have free will.
B. I like the idea of free will
C. Science has not decided either way.
D. The song "Freewill" completely rocks.
E. Therefore, I will choose freewill.

2. Thanks for the chaos theory article. But I'm talking about real non-determinism, not practical. Chaos does not require a complex system. Just look at the double hinged pendulum. But the decision making mind and its operation seem to be very complex, with some mediator refereeing various types of influences from within the brain, not to mention the input from other minds. Inuitively it seems theres the opportunity for physical cause-effect chain to get broken. I could be wrong, tho.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Inuitively it seems theres the opportunity for physical cause-effect chain to get broken.

My intuition disagrees. If each link in the chain is a small finite process that runs by cause and effect, how long a chain do you need before one link is no longer run by cause and effect? How many of those chains do you need pulling on each other before links are no longer run by cause and effect?

 

[durangodawood]

My intuition disagrees. If each link in the chain is a small finite process that runs by cause and effect, how long a chain do you need before one link is no longer run by cause and effect? How many of those chains do you need pulling on each other before links are no longer run by cause and effect?

Its not the length of the chains that matter. Its what happens when enough of them interact within the environment of the human mind. It SEEMS like there's some sort of taking the last links of various chains, and re-ordering them slightly (or more rarely, a lot) into something novel and, strictly speaking, unpredictable.

I realize that this is an intuition. I also wonder if truly random effects at the atomic level might leave some small opening for us to crack cause-effect chains in the working of the brain.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I also wonder if truly random effects at the atomic level might leave some small opening for us to crack cause-effect chains in the working of the brain.

This is the path that Roger Penrose seems to be following. His idea has not convinced many people. It doesn't seem to me that this type of 'free will' is worth having: "I'm not blindly following deterministic laws, my brain makes decisions based on random quantum coin-flips!"

 

[durangodawood]

This is the path that Roger Penrose seems to be following. His idea has not convinced many people. It doesn't seem to me that this type of 'free will' is worth having: "I'm not blindly following deterministic laws, my brain makes decisions based on random quantum coin-flips!"

Not "based on" randomness. Its just that the randomness could permit strict cause-effect to be broken, allowing for some other process to wiegh in.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I don't see that any room is left for some other process to squeeze in.

This neuron fired because that neuron fired.
This neuron fired because a Carbon-14 atom randomly decayed without a material cause.

 

[Chesterton]

This neuron fired because a Carbon-14 atom randomly decayed without a material cause.

Without a material cause? Sounds like magic.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Without a material cause? Sounds like magic.

There's a reason for nuclear decay, but there is no material cause in the sense of a tiny match lighting a tiny fuse on the nucleus.

 

[Chesterton]

There's a reason for nuclear decay, but there is no material cause in the sense of a tiny match lighting a tiny fuse on the nucleus.

A cause would be a reason. A reason would be a cause.

I think the reason Arthur became King of England was because he was the only one who could pull the sword Excalibur from a stone. Makes as much sense.