Backwards Causation-Michael Dummett Bringing About the Past

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Hi

I was wondering if someone has read Michel Dummett’s “Bringing About the Past” and actually understood his arguments. I am not a newbie to philosophy, but I thought this article was quite hard to grasp. I understand the beginning of the article - what he means by our predjudice when it comes to the future and the past, that we might as well treat them alike, that it is only that we are used to thinking that there is an asymmetry between the future and the past, that prayer about the future is on a par with prayer about the past, that there essentially is no difference. But from here and on I get COMPLETELY lost - I cannot reproduce his arguments. Don’t know if my lack of understanding hinges on my interpretation of the phrase “bring about”, which I take to mean “cause/change” - I can see no other good interpretation of the phrase “bring about.”

At the same time, taking “bring about” to mean “cause/change” implies quite strange results. We could generalize (as we are always inclined to do in philosophy and elsewhere) - for instance, I could kill Michel Dummet when he was alive before he produced this article, which in turn would remove the CAUSE for me sitting here and wandering what the hell Michael was saying. In general, we could change anything in the past just like “Back to the Future” and watch the results live - e.g. my hand is dissappearing right now because I just caused myself to never be born in the past. Etc etc …

So I am inclined to think that I am mistaken in my interpretation of Michael’s article and the phrase “bring about” as well - if it really is the phrase “bring about” that is creating the problem, the phrase just might be unimportant.

Stein.

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Backward causation is fairly simple, really. Any organism will tend to anticipate in goal oriented ways.Human beings operate with built in programs of action most of which are wired into the nervous system. The major goal of any living system is survival and it will operate as within a blueprint of goal-options.

Any occurrence, will change the chain of choices within the system and as a consequence, all options exercised will result in deviations from the pre set plan. In a general situation human beings will exercise constant recalibration from deviation from pre set programs, and make constant adjustments in accordance toward conforming to necessary survival values. I haven’t read Dummett, but it seems like readjustment to deviation sequences is what you are describing

Action is accorded to constant anticipation of changing circumstances, with different windows of anticipatory insight, and within the scope of different horizons of term. The farthest term deviations from built in programs, having the least insight into “:what may happen” will become a sort of auto pilot, steering our course unconsciously, but changing it , as reaction to future probable events in our life’s expanding horizon. The near term most probable occurrence, will retro deviate required actions with increasing revelations of conscious choices of the most probable course of action.