Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2016 17:21:13 GMT -5
Causality
Causality is a very complicated subject with no simple answers. Particularly when you discuss the question of causality in physics.
For all practical purposes, when people speak of cause and effect they educe a relation between two things that they imagine is an invariant one.
Unfortunately the whole idea of establishing the truth of any concept on the basis of induction by simple enumeration is not sustainable. For instance, Europeans believed that all swans were white until they discovered black swans in Australia.
As Hume (one of the greatest of all philosophers) demonstrated (IMO conclusively) in his 'A Treatise of Human Nature' the whole notion of cause and effect does not correspond to a true reality but is simply 'a habit of thinking.'
Ever since his time many philosophers have attempted to refute his claim but none have been successful. Kant believed that the notion of causality was an 'a priori' category which was imprinted in our minds and was a necessity for our brains to be able to understand the world.
Noam Chomsky's theories of language are somewhat similar to Kant's speculations but they remain equally unprovable.
In essence, one of the difficulties with the notion of causality is that it is far more complex than people imagine. For instance, I pick up a gun and shoot someone dead. A number of things are necessary for that event to occur. The gun must be loaded; the victim must be within range; and a whole host of other conditions need to be met before that can happen. So to simply say that my firing the gun led to the death of another person is not actually correct. It is an insufficient and inadequate account of the events that took place.
The most fundamental problems with the notion are when it is regarded as a universal rule rather than as a helpful model in many situations.
Since induction by simple enumeration cannot establish its validity and since to make causality a universal rule requires the axiom 'every event has a cause' in which case the theory of causality falls foul of the infinite regress fallacy.
This in essence states 'every event has a cause' but at some point that involves the assumption that at the beginning of the series of causal events, no matter how far back we trace the sequence, we can never find the first term in the series, the first cause, the uncaused causative principle. And since that is so that means that an uncaused event must have existed prior to the causal sequence and therefore the suggestion that 'every event has a cause' is logically false.
The facts are even worse in the field of quantum physics where randomness rules and where events frequently precede their 'causes.' It is also fair to point out that the notion of causality also rests on a Newtonian concept of mechanistic linear time that has long since been abandoned by scientists.
All in all, no serious physicist and few serious philosophers any longer consider the notion of cause and effect anything more than an occasionally useful working principle but certainly NOT either a law of logir nor a scientific principle.
It is simply a belief that rests on highly insecure foundations.
(I apologise for the brevity of this post and will write at greater length but I simply wanted to initiate the process of enquiry.)
Causality is a very complicated subject with no simple answers. Particularly when you discuss the question of causality in physics.
For all practical purposes, when people speak of cause and effect they educe a relation between two things that they imagine is an invariant one.
Unfortunately the whole idea of establishing the truth of any concept on the basis of induction by simple enumeration is not sustainable. For instance, Europeans believed that all swans were white until they discovered black swans in Australia.
As Hume (one of the greatest of all philosophers) demonstrated (IMO conclusively) in his 'A Treatise of Human Nature' the whole notion of cause and effect does not correspond to a true reality but is simply 'a habit of thinking.'
Ever since his time many philosophers have attempted to refute his claim but none have been successful. Kant believed that the notion of causality was an 'a priori' category which was imprinted in our minds and was a necessity for our brains to be able to understand the world.
Noam Chomsky's theories of language are somewhat similar to Kant's speculations but they remain equally unprovable.
In essence, one of the difficulties with the notion of causality is that it is far more complex than people imagine. For instance, I pick up a gun and shoot someone dead. A number of things are necessary for that event to occur. The gun must be loaded; the victim must be within range; and a whole host of other conditions need to be met before that can happen. So to simply say that my firing the gun led to the death of another person is not actually correct. It is an insufficient and inadequate account of the events that took place.
The most fundamental problems with the notion are when it is regarded as a universal rule rather than as a helpful model in many situations.
Since induction by simple enumeration cannot establish its validity and since to make causality a universal rule requires the axiom 'every event has a cause' in which case the theory of causality falls foul of the infinite regress fallacy.
This in essence states 'every event has a cause' but at some point that involves the assumption that at the beginning of the series of causal events, no matter how far back we trace the sequence, we can never find the first term in the series, the first cause, the uncaused causative principle. And since that is so that means that an uncaused event must have existed prior to the causal sequence and therefore the suggestion that 'every event has a cause' is logically false.
The facts are even worse in the field of quantum physics where randomness rules and where events frequently precede their 'causes.' It is also fair to point out that the notion of causality also rests on a Newtonian concept of mechanistic linear time that has long since been abandoned by scientists.
All in all, no serious physicist and few serious philosophers any longer consider the notion of cause and effect anything more than an occasionally useful working principle but certainly NOT either a law of logir nor a scientific principle.
It is simply a belief that rests on highly insecure foundations.
(I apologise for the brevity of this post and will write at greater length but I simply wanted to initiate the process of enquiry.)