Some Random Thoughts on Cause and Effect

I step out in front of a bus and am struck and killed. What caused my death, being struck by a bus, or stepping out in front of one? What really “happened” was that the universe simply passed from one state to another. Is the description of “causes” ever really anything other than a kind of nominalism, wherein the event itself is named, categorized in a particular way – invented as such – and then when events of the same conceived sort are desired - as is the case in science -, the universe is set up by us to reproduce another event of that genus. What marks the similarity of the causes is really perhaps more the similarity in nomenclature of the events themselves. And like other such species, events of a genus have genealogies in common, those things appear to be the instantiation of “laws”. I say “nominalism” to mark the creative and flexible vector upon which events can be classified, and that under new classification, new causes being found. Is not the mystery of cause and effect found in the idea that an event which we conceive of quite narrowly to be of a particular genus, in this case that of physical death, whose causes must be discovered, may alternately be seen as an infinity of other genera, for instance how to frighten off a mosquito that was about to land upon my arm, or how to make several heads on the street turn all at once. Beneath cause and effect - and the living body of knowledge of causes that science provides, a knowledge I do not question, but only relativitized to a matrix of possibilities, far more intricate of a weave than our quiet linear perspective of time and definition will allow – lies the truth that no two events are the same, that the difference between a cause and effect is not just a single moment in time for those two perspectively conceived as connected events, but for the whole of the universe, a kind of immense shiver. So when we say that event “x” caused event “y”, we are really saying that event “y” is very much like “y1” and “y2”, that it is meaningful for us to see event “y” in that way, and nothing more.

Dunamis

All the squares on a chess board seem similar.

It’s when the antithetical screws the synthetical that we get the pathetical. That’s all ye know and all ye need to know - especially on philosophy forums.

by means of a faculty

-Imp

Dunamis

I distinguish between cause and effect in that cause, for me is an aspect of consciousness and its associative will while an effect is just the reoccurrence of the overlapping of universal laws creating the oppositions of elemental forces allowing things to “happen” within a larger context.

It is natural to try and isolate a cause and many even like to blame God or some deity for allowing lawful happenings to occur. Even Jesus tried to talk some out of this perspective in Luke 13 but for little gain.

You can consider yourself the salt of the earth but towers will hit you on the head as surely as the next guy since life on earth is a series of effects. Naturally few listened and many still believe that God punishes those who do evil by having towers hit them on the head or the occurrence of similar such incidents. Jesus is referring to a level of existence where consciousness and will become a reality.

Look at this wave:

abcgallery.com/A/aivazovsky/ … sky32.html

The storm producing great waves is threatening the Mary. But the wave really consists of elemental forces that are in continual opposition both on a large and small scale within the wave. Is it fair to isolate the cause of a particular peak on a particular segment of this great wave? It simply cannot be taken out of the context of the wave itself which in turn is the result of the interplay of the higher context of wind and gravity.

Agreed but if this were ever universally agreed upon, it would take all the joy of blaming another through a limited context by saying it is “your fault” and one wonders if any benefit of freedom through realism could compensate ever for the loss of this psychological delight.

This, it would seem to make causal contexts referentially opaque, i.e. “the truth value of the sentence resulting from completing the context does depend on which particular term is used to refer to that object”

Michael Della Rocca gives this illustrative example of referential opacity.

Referential transparency:

  1. The spy is a spy.
  2. The spy is John’s brother.
  3. John’s brother is a spy.

Referential opacity: John knows that there is a spy in the neighborhood, he is completely unaware that his brother is that spy.

  1. John believes that the spy is a spy.
  2. The spy is John’s brother.
  3. John believes that John’s brother is a spy.

Arguments similar to these are used to show that intentional states are referentially opaque, i.e. the substitution of terms cannot be done without a change in meaning. If though the cause of an effect is determined by the classification of that effect within a holism of beliefs, then would not causal contexts also be referentially opaque?

Central to the consequence of this is implied in Spinoza’s claim:

[i]“The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause.” /i

And Nicholas de Cusa’s:

“A part is not known unless the whole is known, for the whole measures the
part.”
De Mente, Chapter 10

Can even the statement, “The cue ball caused the four ball to fall into the pocket” be referentially opaque, that is, an example of a mental state and more akin to “I believe the cue ball caused the four ball…”, dependent upon a holism of beliefs that condition even our perception of events? Does this not make all discussion of causes, including those of Freewill, dependent upon the language game in which we participate?

Dunamis

“Cause and effect.— “Explanation” is what we call it: but it is “description” that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better—we do not explain any more than our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold one-after-another where the naive man and inquirer of older cultures saw only two separate things, “cause” and “effect” as the saying goes; but we have merely perfected the image of becoming without reaching beyond the image or behind it. In every case the series of “causes” confronts us much more completely, and we infer: first, this and that has to precede in order that this or that may then follow—but this does not involve any comprehension. In every chemical process, for example, quality appears as a “miracle,” as ever; also, every locomotion; nobody has “explained” a push. But how could we possibly explain anything! We operate only with things that do not exist: lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisible spaces—, how should explanations be at all possible when we first turn everything into an image, our image! It will do to consider science as an attempt to humanize things as faithfully as possible; as we describe things and their one-after-another, we learn how to describe ourselves more and more precisely. Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists,—in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there is an infinite number of processes that elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment—would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality.” - 112, The Gay Science, Nietzsche

Is there anything in that anyone want to refute or simply to comment on? As so far, that’s good enough for me. The following two precedding aphorisms lay the ground for the one above.

“Origin of knowledge.— Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were continually inherited, until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species, include the following: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted—it was only very late that truth emerged, as the weakest form of knowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it, our organism was prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions, sense perception and every kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated since time immemorial. Indeed, even in the realm of knowledge these propositions became the norms according to which “true” and “untrue” were determined—down to the most remote regions of logic. Thus: the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to be at odds there was never any real fight; but denial and doubt were simply considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, like the Eleatics, who nevertheless posited and clung to the opposites of the natural errors, believed that it was possible to live in accordance with these opposites: they invented the sage as the man who was unchangeable and impersonal, the man of the universality of intuition who was One and All at the same time, with a special capacity for his inverted knowledge; they had the faith that their knowledge was also the principle of life. But in order to claim all of this, they had to deceive themselves about their own state: they had to attribute to themselves, fictitiously, impersonality and changeless duration; they had to misapprehend the nature of the knower; they had to deny the role of the impulses in knowledge; and quite generally they had to conceive of reason as a completely free and spontaneous activity; they shut their eyes to the fact that they, too, had arrived at their propositions through opposition to common sense, or owing to a desire for tranquility, for sole possession, or for dominion. The subtler development of honesty and skepticism eventually made these people, too, impossible; their ways of living and judging were seen to be also dependent upon the primeval impulses and basic errors of all sentient existence.— This subtler honesty and skepticism came into being wherever two contradictory sentences appeared to be applicable to life because both were compatible with the basic errors, and it was therefore possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of utility for life; also wherever new propositions, though not useful for life, were also evidently not harmful to life: in such cases there was room for the expression of an intellectual play impulse, and honesty and skepticism were innocent and happy like all play. Gradually, the human brain became full of such judgements and convictions, and a ferment, struggle, and lust for power [Machtgelüst] developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took sides in this fight about “truths”; the intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified—: and eventually knowledge and the striving for the true found their place as a need among other needs. Henceforth not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power, all “evil” instincts were subordinated to knowledge, employed in her service, and acquired the splendor of what is permitted, honored, and useful—and eventually even the eye and innocence of the good. Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power: until eventually knowledge collided with these primeval basic errors, two lives, two powers, both in the same human being. The thinker: that is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for the first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation?—that is the question, that is the experiment.” - 110

“Origin of the logical.— How did logic come into existence in man’s head? Certainly out of illogic, whose realm originally must have been immense. Innumerable beings who made inferences in a way different from ours perished: for all that, their ways might have been truer! Those, for example, who did not know how to find often enough what is “equal” as regards both nourishment and hostile animals, who subsumed things too slowly and cautiously, were favored with a lesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediately upon encountering similar instances that they must be equal. The dominant tendency, however, to treat as equal what is merely similar, an illogical tendency—for nothing is really equal—is what first created any basis for logic. In order that the concept of substance could originate—which is indispensable for logic although in the strictest sense nothing real corresponds to it—it was likewise necessary that for a long time one did not see nor perceive the changes in things; the beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those that saw everything “in flux.” At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency, to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just—had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong.— The course of logical ideas and inferences in our brain today corresponds to a process and a struggle among impulses that are, taken singly, very illogical and unjust; we generally experience only the result of this struggle: this primeval mechanism now runs its course so quickly and is so well concealed.” - 111

Hi Dunamis, et al,

Perhaps you were killed because you tied your shoe-laces too tight that morning, and one did not come loose during your walk. Perhaps you died because the girl in the red dress ahead of you had an ass just too delicious to take your eyes off at the critical moment. Perhaps you died because recent sun-spot activity made the local reception so poor your wife’s mobile couldn’t get through to yours 10 minutes before. Perhaps you died because the busdriver had decided to leave off getting his glasses repaired till next week… etc. etc.

Yes - but it’s also governed by all the effects that could of happened, but didn’t…

I mean shortly - is there no room for just good old plain stupid ‘bad-luck’ in the greater scheme of things…?

Tab Ro.,

“Perhaps you were killed because you tied your shoe-laces too tight that morning, and one did not come loose during your walk.”, etc.

This was essentially my point.

Dunamis

What we have here is basically an attempt at what Sartre called the synthesis of the For-itself with the In-itself.

By arguing away the proof of causality by equating the effect with the cause, Dunamis has obscured the fact that consciousness is always a negation of Being, and never an interactive substance, causally, granting it neither an active or passive extension (which I thoroughly explained in my Passive and Active thread a few pages back). Through a series of confounding, though clever, word-plays, he is trying to convince an internet forum full of young, desperate philosophy majors that they are immortal. Perhaps they are. I don’t know. That’s irrelevent.

However, today there is no place for these exotic rationalisms in philosophy. You can dream when you are dead, but for now, drop the Spinoza and pick up your Feuerbach.

Put your feet on the ground and get your head out of the clouds. Accept that you are going to die. Want to die.

The rest will work itself out, I promise.

I still love you, Dunamis, my feathered shaman of light. Now drop your fortune-cookies and reach for the sky.

detrop,

What we have here is basically an attempt at what Sartre called the synthesis of the For-itself with the In-itself.

I am unsure if any synthesis has been attempted at all. I think you are stuck in a vocabulary

By arguing away the proof of causality by equating the effect with the cause,

Where have I equated the effect with the cause? In fact for Spinoza this is the source of inadequate knowledge.

Dunamis has obscured the fact that consciousness is always a negation of Being, and never an interactive substance

In a vocabulary I do not share. Being is simply that which as effect. Anything in relation has Being.

Through a series of confounding, though clever, word-plays, he is trying to convince an internet forum full of young, desperate philosophy majors that they are immortal.

I have no such project, unless of course you might include the idea that they also are an endless series of immortal essences, of which their identity is only a fragmentary part.

Perhaps they are. I don’t know. That’s irrelevent.

However, today there is no place for these exotic rationalisms in philosophy.

What is “exotic rationalism”? Do you mean something that makes perfect sense, but you can’t quite form an argument against.

You can dream when you are dead, but for now, drop the Spinoza and pick up your Feuerbach.

Spinoza does not dream but the dream of sobriety. Take another hit. :wink:

Put your feet on the ground and get your head out of the clouds. Accept that you are going to die. Want to die.

Spinoza: “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death”, I thought you said you understood ethics, the science of liberation? :slight_smile:

Dunamis

IMO, essential point is that you don’t get killed, what is behind our choices is something we need to feel, not believe. Here’s another (true) story ;
On 9.11.01 actor Mark Wahlberg had ticket (and intention to go to LA from
Boston), for one of the planes that hit WTC.Last minute, he decided to jump in his car and drive to NYC. It is so “satiricaly cruel” that his destiny was to “Get to NYC” that day.What do you dear Dunamis, believe to be
behind Mark’s choice of transportation ?
because my entire life is like that Wahlberg “episode”, I’ve escaped certain death, numeros times.

      much choices !

I’m fresh out. Smoked my last one with some dude in downtown Wilmington.

Why? You got any?

detrop,

“Why? You got any?”

At least you took my allusion correctly. Let me pass you some Spinoza…

E3:De.VI:175—

“Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.”

Smoke that.

Dunamis

I’ve gotten higher off of pocket-lint.

detrop,

I’ve gotten higher off of pocket-lint.

Of that I have no doubt. Comprehension is the light that lights the pipe. Perhaps its time to change your flint. :wink:

Dunamis

Dunamis suggests the idea that events are actually disconnected, and it is thought which connects them by means of the concept of causality. (Spooky.) There is no way of knowing whether there are causal relationships in nature, and Hume went to great lengths to say this at a minimum of seventeen times per page of writing. There seems to be a good deal of confusion between Einsteinian time, which is just a physical dimension like length, width, or mass, and psychological time, the human sense of “becoming” rather than simply “being.” The former simply is, the latter ends when thought ceases creating it. Likewise, there are different kinds of causalities. There is, perhaps, a kind that ends when you cease to believe in it. To Détrop this seems hypocritical, but his reaction is idiosyncratic. We (of the future) have gone to great lengths to make you take physical causality as a given. The movie is long…the more you see it as props, actors and painted backgrounds, the less you will want to be in the theater. And yet there is no other place for you (us). The path leads to seeing yourself, your world, as inert, empty, alone…and quite immortal, Dunamis. It was not our Danté who glimpsed hell. It was our Darwin. The broom closet of the movie theater. We think you (we) deserve vita-more (less) than that. If one examines the presemioticist paradigm of reality, one is faced with a choice: either reject Dunamis`powerful communication or conclude that concensus must come from the masses. Therefore, I submit the term ‘the presemioticist paradigm of reality’ to denote the difference between his path and the one we present. The subject is interpolated into a subtextual capitalist theory that includes consciousness as a whole. In a sense, Dunamis resembles Marx when he uses the term ‘presemantic constructivist theory’ to denote the rubicon, and some would say the meaninglessness, of cultural jargon. Many discourses concerning not desituationism, as the presemioticist paradigm of reality suggests, but predesituationisms exist. This is no small thing. Read his posts with caution. The platform is ubiquitous. The memes have mutated and have never been this infectious. He is Fulcrum…be warned.

Glad to be of help… :smiley:
In that case - what was my point…?

G _ _ _ _ - which I do think should be your new screen name -,

Your post is rich and full of interest, but as you don’t love going into levels so much as simply signifying them, I’ll resist the pleasure it would bring to discuss them in depth. That being only this short portion I’ll address:

In a sense, Dunamis resembles Marx when he uses the term ‘presemantic constructivist theory’ to denote the rubicon,

You are right on in your instincts. In fact Althusser has been a great, if uncredited, influence.

and some would say the meaninglessness, of cultural jargon.

The Marxist question of “false consciousness” is a palpable one, and only within an immanent structure can I seem to give it meaning.

Many discourses concerning not desituationism, as the presemioticist paradigm of reality suggests, but predesituationisms exist.

For me all of them are grounded within philosophies of the body. Knowing it seems must be diasomatic.

This is no small thing. Read his posts with caution. The platform is ubiquitous. The memes have mutated and have never been this infectious.

“The memes have mutated” is so brilliant and true. Now only the auto-immunity of the language body can gauge the result.

Dunamis

Dunamis, tell me what you REALLY think. On second thought, don’t. Please note I had signed G _ _ _ _ _ to name the man who generated the German quote via Faust, for it was relevant to the debate James had cited. I have been instructed by higher-ups not to write his name in full because it is disrespectful.

As for my signifying of levels…the primary theme of Gamer is not, in fact, discourse, but prediscourse. Thus, the subject is contextualised into a subpatriarchialist material theory that includes ILP post as paradox. An abundance of constructions concerning Derridaist reading may be found, especially if you don’t look for them.