The universe isn’t governed by a mechanism. In other words, the events that happen and that we observe are not a product of some underlying, hidden, mechanism. Rather, they simply happen. The universe is more like a mass of particulars rather than a mechanism that generates, determines, causes, compels or forces these particulars to happen. If we knew everything about the universe none of us would describe it in terms of a theory. Rather, we would describe it in terms of a mass of particulars i.e. events happening one after another. Theories and mechanisms only emerge thanks to our ignorance. Their purpose is to allow us to make an assumption regarding the unknown. That’s all they are. So, it is not that colors arise out of some particles interacting with each other. Rather, it is us observing that the manner in which particles interact is correlated with colors.
So what you’re saying is: red didn’t come out of anything, it just happened, that we shouldn’t look for a cause of red, just accept that the universe so happen to turn out that way.
That question is asking: why is there one individual item of effect in the first place? I’m not asking why don’t water molecules stop attracting other water molecules after a certain critical mass; I’m asking, why does a single water molecule attract another single water molecule in the first place. And I think I remember an answer to this in high school chemistry, but it isn’t the same for other kinds of molecules and elements. But it’s true, isn’t it? Don’t molecules and atoms, not matter what kind, seem to always come together with other molecules and atoms of the same kind–even at the level seen with the naked eye?
Don’t confabulate an answer just because you think you can.
I already answered your second question (the actual one that you asked). But as I said, “too succinct”.
Whatever causes one water molecule is almost never going to be such a specific situation that it causes only one. And because many are created in the same location, whatever bonding or concentrating characteristics they have, there will be relatively nothing interfering with it, thus it will be. Entropy of the gathering takes time and circumstance. Time is still occurring, circumstances are on their way.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t look for that which causes the experience of redness. That’s a very useful thing. It is what allows us to predict the experience of redness. It is a very useful thing to know, for example, that whenever we close our eyes we have no experience of colors. This allows us to predict that every time we close our eyes we will experience no colors.
What I am saying is that the universe isn’t governed by a mechanism. Rather, we invent these mechanisms, based on the evidence that we have, with the aim to generate predictions. For example, we have observed in the past that each time we close our eyes we see no colors and that each time we open our eyes we see colors in, say, 70 out of 100 cases. Based on this experience alone, we can build a very simple mechanism that goes something like this: eyes closed → no experience of colors, eyes open → 70 out of 100 times an experience of colors. Very simple stuff.
Yes, learning about the correlations that exist in our world is very useful. But you don’t think we can go further and say that some of these correlations are causal, and that we can even know the direction of the cause? For example, eyes closed → no color. We know it doesn’t always work the other way around: no color → eyes closed. So we can say eyes closed causes no color.
Are you arguing something similar to Hume? Hume showed that we can’t really prove or “discover” cause out in the real world, so it must be an invention in our heads (doesn’t mean causation doesn’t exist, just that we can’t prove it). It’s a very useful invention. Like you said, it helps us to predict correlations and even the direction of the correlation.
What is a cause?
A cause is an event that forces a subsequent event to occur. Hume thought this could never be demonstrated. Is that what you’re saying?
I cannot agree or disagree with a statement the meaning of which I do not fully understand. This is why I ask you to define what a cause is. It is a very tricky concept to understand thoroughly, isn’t it? Let\s focus on how you define the concept of cause instead. This should be an easier task. What does it mean for an event to force a subsequent event to occur? What does it mean for a light switch to force a light bulb to shine? What does it mean for an event X to force an event Y to occur? Does it mean anything other than that the history of the two category of events is such that whenever event X occured event Y followed? I think that’s what Hume is saying. But I am not a Hume scholar. And I agree with that. That’s all the word “force” means. If you want to describe an aspect of reality in the best possible way you have no choice but to do so in terms of a mass of particulars (i.e. facts, events, etc.) The concept of causality does not even enter the picture at this point. It is only when you decide to make a guess regarding some unknown particular, which requires that you extrapolate from what you know, that a need arises to think in terms of causality.
I’ll try to break this down further. By “force” I mean to “necessitate”. I mean that when event X happens, that makes event Y necessary. Event Y can’t not happen if X has just happened. Beyond this, I’m not sure how else to break it down.
I don’t recall the exact structure of Hume’s argument–whether that ‘cause’ means experiences constantly conjoined or just that the idea of ‘cause’ is the result of experiences constantly conjoined–the first says this is what we mean by cause, the second only that we can only arrive at the idea of ‘cause’ if we go through this psychological process of experiencing events being constantly conjoined first. I agree with the latter interpretation. The brain has to have some algorithm for figuring out whether it is dealing with a cause or not. But I don’t think that this is just what ‘cause’ means–otherwise we’d be saying cause=correlation and we’d have no use, or ability, to distinguish them.
I would agree, with the caveat that by ‘guess’ we’re talking about an unconscious or automatic process. When I kick a ball and I see it fly through the air, I don’t feel like I’m ‘guessing’ that my foot striking the ball is the cause of the balling flying through the air, I feel like I know. But because no cause can ever be proven, it is on an unconscious level ‘guessing’ (inferring, projecting, intuiting, etc.).
Note that such a guess isn’t necessarily wrong. There may be causation in the universe after all; it’s just that we can’t prove it.
Also note that if there is only ever correlation, then if that correlation is perfection (i.e. it never breaks), then that means there is some forcing going on, some necessitating; if event Y occurs every time event X occurs, then event Y is forced to occur whenever X occurs. ← That starts to sound like my definition of ‘cause’. On the other hand, the key thing to note about correlations is that we are never sure which is the cause and which is the effect. For example, it might be that God is the one who ensures that event Y occurs every time he makes event X occur, which means that event X is not the cause of event Y, God is cause of both. But perfect correlations do imply causation somewhere. The only way out of this is to say the correlation isn’t perfect (in which case you’d still have to explain the high probability of the correlation) or to say that the correlation holds by sheer coincidence (which would be amazing).
Isn’t that what I am saying? that “event X forces event Y to happen” means “whenever event X happens event Y follows”?
I am not sure I understand the difference between the two types of argument. Care to elaborate?
Given the following sequence of symbols, can we say, based on that sequence alone, that A forces B to happen?
_ _ A B _ _ _ A B _ _ _ A B A B _ A B _ A B _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A B _ _ _ _ A B A B A B A B _ _ A B _ _ AB _ _ A B
My understanding is that “A forces B to happen” is a class of sequences of symbols where every occurence of A is immediately followed by B. The above sequence is one instance of that class.
Causal forces are deduced to exist through the process of elimination.
My solution to this problem is the rejection of the premise that “reality” causes or is primary to appearance, and instead proposing that the opposite is in fact more true.
It’s absurd that inert particles and waves can cause the way that the colour “red” appears to us, or the way “pleasure” feels. But looking at the history of things, particles and waves were “discovered” relatively not that long ago, and these “qualia” and conscious experience in general have been around since the start - whether this is a presumption about the start of conscious beings, or not a presumption about your own personal conscious life.
You learn about “qualitative monotony” in terms of “qualitative diversity” and you witness how they were arrived at, tested and explored through this same medium. Scientific findings around qualitative monotony are all simplified, reduced elements of qualitative diversity: monotony is a subset of diversity and secondary to it.
However, this is then curiously inverted. You come to be taught that the monotony was primary, and diversity is just types of monotony in different arrangements… why? That’s the question I ask.
I would say it’s a social thing. Other people come along and give different accounts of this conscious experience, and it’s possible to sufficiently reconcile these differences to yours in the form of some abstract “reality” that exists beneath us all, founding and causing all these different perspectives. Whether or not it actually exists, and despite the fact that we have zero direct access to it, we created science out of it which is insanely useful - so who cares? The fact that science is insanely useful must mean something, right? So why not just use this as a sufficient explanation even if not a necessary one, and leave it at that? That seems to be the rationale that every practical person uses anyway.
??? Why is that “absurd”?
It might not seem absurd if waves and particles were just reduced elements of consciousness, but they are intended to be without consciousness - independent of it and without any consciousness intrinsic within them. Therefore it is required that a complete lack of something might result in that something, if only these non-somethings were arranged in certain ways.
I think something emerging from its opposite, or at least from a complete lack of that something is the epitome of what absurdity is supposed to mean.
Whether or not absurdity can happen is a different matter, of course. You can just leave it at “well it just does”, and practically speaking that’s true. Photons having certain wavelengths “just do” cause red to look like it does rather than any other way, despite having no redness or consciousness within them. No properties of any sensation are contained within the object causing it, but that’s how they appear when observed.
You can’t even see sight or any kind of sensory perception when observing a brain, the sensation has to be a result of the brain only unto itself, without ever even any having any specific spatio-temporal position. Where is the red? Where is the pleasure? You can explain what they’re made of and what things interact to cause them, but none of this explanation and any understanding of it will actually cause the specific experience of them in the particular way that your brain seems to conjure them. Quite aside from how matter vibrations move your eardrums, the kinetic energy is converted to electric signals, interacting with chemicals blah blah blah - the sensation is all the work of the brain. The brain doesn’t even need any outside stimulus from “reality” to make consciousness happen.
Somewhere along the way between explanations, a divide is crossed to actual experience. It’s necessarily absurd in fact, because all these explanations will all be in terms of experiences, and you just have to accept it when you’re told they are independent of experiences.
What does it mean for B to emerge or arise from A? That’s the most important question in this thread, isn’t it?
Does it not simply mean that B can be predicted based on A? If that’s the case, then it is far from absurd to claim that consciousness arises or emerges from particles and waves. It simply means that you can predict consciousness based on particles and waves. Nothing else.
Not quite. In the first statement, it’s made clear that it’s event X that’s doing the forcing. In the second statement, it could be X that does the forcing, or a third variable (like God) that forces both.
Certainly! The first argument is about what ‘cause’ means, whereas the second is only about what creates the concept of ‘cause’ in our minds. The first one says: I draw the conclusion that X causes Y because I’ve consistently seen X and Y conjoined in experience. The second one says: I intuit that X causes Y, though I’m not sure why. My neurologist tells me it’s because of all my past experiences seeing X constantly conjoined with Y. The first is making a logical argument. The second is merely a causal result of experiences. I maintain that the first is invalid because if all you’ve experienced is X constantly conjoined with Y, then you can only draw the conclusion that a correlation exists. If you conclude a cause exists, you are adding something extra. ← That extra bit (which raises the concept to a ‘cause’ proper) may be a result of the brain having undergone certain experiences (i.e. seeing X constantly conjoined with Y), which is what the second argument is saying, but it can’t just be a reference to what you’ve experienced since we never experience a ‘cause’ per se. Thus, ‘cause’ must mean something more than just X and Y being constantly conjoined.
Technically no. Even if we were to infer that all instance of ‘AB’ above are all the instance of ‘AB’ that exist, we don’t know whether A is causing B or a third variable (say God) is causing both.
The issue is not whether A can lead to B… for all we are able to observe “they just do” - as I covered.
It’s whether or not it seems absurd for certain kinds of A to lead to certain kinds of B - as I covered.
Just because A can empirically lead to B, and B can empirically be predicted by A, that doesn’t mean it makes any logical sense. It’s essentially the problem of Dualism from philosophy 101. A ball bouncing back off a solid wall? That’s fine: they’re both solid objects, electromagnetic attraction and repulsion + conservation of momentum, no problem. You even get less and less bounce from less and less difference in momentum until you reach none and there’s no bounce anymore. Cool. Same type of thing → causal interaction.
Inert particles and waves do stuff in our brain that someone much more qualified than me can probably explain pretty well and… the experience of redness emerges? You what?! How is the outcome remotely related to the input? At what point did unconscious waves and particles become conscious experience? What is the threshold or link between “entirely without experience” waves and particles… and red? Or pleasure? Why do we even need to feel pleasure to feel attraction or pain to feel repulsion (simplistically speaking)? Why not just behave in the exact same way through natural forces without the conscious experience? Doesn’t there need to be some kind of intermediate medium or sliding scale for something to turn into an entirely different opposite? What and where even is the subject of this experience? Why can it only be the result of these causes that experiences itself, and an outside observer has absolutely zero access to it?
This is what forced me to monism, but not materialist monism because the outcome is entirely devoid of waves and particles - those things happen side by side in direct correlation but AREN’T the experience itself. Of only one thing can I be entirely sure: that the experience exists whether or not the direct correlation with waves and particles is just some weirdly consistent co-incidence. So at base, the monism must therefore consist of the experience part alone, which is consistent with the fact that all talk, witnessing and understanding of waves and particles is in terms of consciousness… all makes sense that way.
The consciousness is primary and the foundation, the “underlying reality” is a result of it - not the other way around - as I covered.
Afraid not.
Apparently you haven’t an understanding of exactly what consciousness is. Once understanding WHAT it is, it isn’t all that difficult to realize of what it is made. Consciousness arises from the one reality. The one reality does not arise from consciousness. Before there can be a conscious physical being, there must first be a physical being.