How is causality self-evident?

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, RupeeRoundhouse said:

My understanding is that a consequence of being axiomatic is that it’s implied in all thought, including those that deny the axiom. This is clear with the principles of existence, identity, and consciousness; it’s not so with causality.

Take for example, the thought that “Jane is blue”: It implies the existence principle (Jane and blueness exist), identity principle (Jane has blueness), consciousness principle (I’m aware that Jane has blueness), but nothing of the causality principle. Not all thoughts—only some, as exemplified in your reply—invoke the causality principle.

Rupee, when Rand introduced her principle of identity, she took for illustration three categories in which there are exclusionary kinds: entity (leaf/stone), action (freeze/burn), and attribute (all-yelow/all-red). In addition to those occasions of identity, she added later, in ITOE (p. 39), that anything standing in no relations to things not itself is nothing. Let existence in its entirety, including all its parts, be an exception, but the only one. Aside from that case, for all existents, their identity includes some relations to things not themselves. An illustration would be the relation of a lightning discharge and thunder in the atmosphere. There is a temporal relation between the two and a causal relation between the two (and really more than the two, discharge and sound, in the total reality). An argument for the necessary-identity principle can be given for existents that are entities, for existents that are actions, and for existents that are attributes (attempts for entity and action). In my last post, I attempted showing that denial of causal relations for all existents cannot be put forth without self-contradiction. That is a necessary condition for showing that a truth of existence generalizes to any and all cases. (The source of the truth as distinct from the necessity of the truth is simply the manifest in perception and all such manifests-in-perception considered in concert.) So I’ve come round to thinking that “Existence of an existent necessarily entails that it stands in causal relationships” is a strand in the axiom “Existence is identity.” We might say it is part of the meaning of the axiom.

[Boydstun]

On 2/21/2023 at 10:40 AM, Boydstun said:

. . .

Let me attempt to show that causality as a corollary axiom is indeed an axiom by having the character of ensnaring one in a contradiction upon denial of the law of causality. To show the law is not a truth having completely general scope is to adduce a counterexample to the law. To defend the completely general scope of the law’s truth is to show that no such counter-example can be adduced. To wit: “An occasion of adducing is a caused production or not. If not, then utterance of the assertion that is the putative counter-example is uncaused. If uncaused (specifically by an interlocutor), then it is incapable of having any controlled, intended referent. Then no counter-example as counter-example has been adduced. On the other fork, if the occasion of adducing is a caused production (which in truth it is), then the adducing of a counter-example to the law of causality requires one to implicitly affirm causality. No entirely self-consistent counter-example to the law of causality can be adduced.” So, corollary axioms can have the axiomatic character of the axiom they depend from.

. . .

I think my argument there was unsound because I think I have a counterexample whose import is not phased by that argument. The spin-axis of the earth would seem to be an existent that is not caused. Of the infinite number of lines passing through the center of mass of the earth, we could say that the one that is the spin-axis of the earth’s rotation is determined by the rotation of the earth. That determination is not equivalent to the causation in play between the rotation of the earth and the Coriolis effect on fluids of the earth. I suggest the argument should be rerun with causality replaced by the more general “determined by” relation. And Rand’s paragraph at the top of page 39 in ITOE should be read, for perfect truth and greatest generality, with “affected [causally] by” replaced with “determined by.” And Rand’s statement of her Law of Causality in “The Metaphysical versus the Man-Made” (p. 25) should be altered: “All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe . . . are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved” with “caused and determined” replaced by “caused or otherwise determined.” The Law might be better called the Law of Determination.

 

[Bill_Hobba]

It’s just so well-verified that it looks self-evident.    Of course, more detail than that is required to explain why it is true.  The only thing I take as self-evident is mankind is rational by its nature; doubting it would lead to prehuman barbarism without any of the great benefits of modern society, such as the internet we are using to discuss this.   It is exactly why I think postmodern philosophy, which does doubt it, is going down the path of irrational nonsense. The practical consequences of which you can read about in many sources these days.   My favourite is a book by Sokal:

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Culture-ebook/dp/B006TC2EIO

Also, Feynman had some wise words.   When talking about flying saucers, he said - ‘Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.’

The reason I believe it is my own - I don’t think it is a common explanation.   I don’t know the reason objectivists give. There is a very powerful theorem called Noethers theorem - explained by Brian Greene in the attached video.   It says that when we have symmetries, things are conserved.   For example, suppose we do something at a certain place and do the same thing at another place; we expect the same thing to happen.   If not, something must be different about that other place affecting the result.  But suppose that the results are always the same.   Then Noethers Theorem says momentum is conserved.   This means if a particle accelerates and gains momentum, some other particle must have lost momentum - in other words, whatever lost momentum caused it.   So the situation is this.   To make sense of the world, if something, otherwise the same, is different in different places (times, directions etc.), being rational means we do not accept when something is different; it is just the whim of the gods etc.   There is a reason - and here, the only thing different is place it so must be the cause - it can’t be anything else.    Reason forces us to ask why - the only answer being the difference in place (time, direction etc.).     If it is the same, then that implies something is conserved.   If that changes, something else must have changed to cause it since it is conserved.

Some may bring up Quantum Mechanics (QM).   I have started a separate thread about what QM is that the reader may wish to peruse.   You get different results for quantum objects simply because we can only know anything about them by interaction.   We cannot know if we are dealing with the same situation, so cause and effect cannot be checked.   We do have a powerful theorem called Gleason’s theorem that allows the prediction of probabilities. Still, we cannot tell if things are the same because we do not know the details of subatomic objects until we interact with them.    The law of large numbers applies to everyday systems composed of many quantum objects, and there is no issue.  It does not say they are not real, created by human consciousness and other rubbish that some have written about QM.   They are perfectly real - we can’t know their properties until we interact with them.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7Q5mQA\_74o

 

[Boydstun]

Bill,

We need to be very cautious in claiming, as in your example, that, nothing else having changed points us to the reason for a change (with all due respect to the profitability of Mill’s Methods). As I recall, Lorenz’s explanation for length contraction was that it must be due to some unknown character in the molecular bonds making up the material apparatus. Einstein formulated the alternative that if we revised our kinematics—a systematic revision motivated by various E-M findings—length contraction falls out of the new kinematics, obviating need for an explanation in terms of molecular character in solid materials. In other words, we need to be cautious when concluding that some explanation is the only possible one. (And it does not redeem our error that it was the only or best possible explanation within our present context of knowledge. We do not fully know what is our context of knowledge, and even if we did, we should constantly strive to enlarge what that context is.)

I’m wary of the idea that quantum indeterminism is is due to our need to physically interact with things to observe them. That seems at odds with the circumstance that the indeterminacy relations are only between dynamically conjugate variables; simultaneous determination of values of quantities not conjugate to each other in the Hamiltonian mechanics (and correspondingly in QM) are available in the quantum regime for endlessly more accurate precision. I know that Heisenberg gave the interaction account in his lectures at University of Chicago in 1929, but on this general explanatory point, I think he got it wrong at that stage of his thought. Unfortunately, those lectures were gathered into a book which became read very widely by the educated lay public. 

[Bill_Hobba]

2 hours ago, Boydstun said:

I know that Heisenberg gave the interaction account in his lectures at University of Chicago in 1929, but on this general explanatory point, I think he got it wrong at that stage of his thought. Unfortunately, those lectures were gathered into a book which became read very widely by the educated lay public. 

 

Nice response.   BTW he did get it wrong as pointed out by his mentor Bohr.   Its reason is the commutation relations as advanced books on QM explain (eg page 225 of Ballentine)

BTW my account of QM, still leaves some things open e.g. the implications of Bell’s theorem, but I think pursuing that needs a new thread.

Thanks

Bill