Formally, we often model causation as the action of one thing implying another, and we might formalize this with mathematical notation like A⟹B to mean some event or thing A causes some other event or thing B to happen.
Causation is not so easy to model. I have a job that requires a degree. This implies that I have a degree. But my having this job did not cause me to have a degree (to clarify, perhaps the expectation of gaining such a job caused me to get the degree, but not the job itself). From ET Jaynes, after a similar example:
This example shows also that the major premise, ‘if A then B’ expresses B only as a logical consequence of A; and not necessarily a causal physical consequence, which could be effective only at a later time. The rain at 10 am is not the physical cause of the clouds at 9:45 am. Nevertheless, the proper logical connection is not in the uncertain causal direction (clouds ⇒ rain), but rather (rain ⇒ clouds), which is certain, although noncausal. We emphasize at the outset that we are concerned here with logical connections, because some discussions and applications of inference have fallen into serious error through failure to see the distinction between logical implication and physical causation. The distinction is analyzed in some depth by Simon and Rescher (1966), who note that all attempts to interpret implication as expressing physical causation founder on the lack of contraposition expressed by the second syllogism (1.2). That is, if we tried to interpret the major premise as ‘A is the physical cause of B’, then we would hardly be able to accept that ‘not-B is the physical cause of not-A’. In Chapter 3 we shall see that attempts to interpret plausible inferences in terms of physical causation fare no better.
Judea Pearl is supposedly working on defining causation, though I know little of it. I think he talks abut “backwards causation” and the examples of it that I’ve heard (if I recall correctly) sound like they confuse the job with the expectation of the job. Maybe causation is an incoherent idea.
This means that there’s no aspect of the territory that is causality. There’s no A, there’s no B, there’s no ⟹, there’s just “is”.
Here’s how I think of it: I have sensory data coming in (what I see and hear and so on), and every word I associate with that data is an abstraction that seems to match with a useful pattern within the data (e.g. “I’m looking at a table”). So I think we kind of agree with the “There’s no A or B” (the table is not fundamentally part of the universe, it’s my model of some collection of actual universe “stuff”[1]), though I would phrase it in a way in which people might think we disagree. I think it still makes sense to talk about A or B (tables are real), it’s just that statements like “A is true” become a lot more slippery (but not in a “Everybody has their own truth, man” way). And this is the case, as you say, even at the level of atoms, though our sensory data is intermediated with other high-tech tools (e.g. electron microscopes or whatever).
Where I think we disagree is “there’s no ⟹”. Maybe there isn’t. But the universe apparently follows some rules. The laws that physicists found may be implications of these rules, but they might be the rules themselves. For the sake of analogy, the “code” that the universe runs on might contain “matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed”, and I think it’s fair to consider this to be part of the universe (though whether we can establish that a rule is actually in the code is another matter). The rules might also contain something about causation.
You miss the mark here. You’ve confused the map for the territory, though to be fair it’s easy to do because how do you think about how the world works without modeling it?
You’d have to point me to one of my sentences that you disagree with, since I don’t think I’ve made that mistake.
Perhaps you think the only true fact about the universe is the whole universe itself, so in that case, talking about the “rules in the source code of the universe” wouldn’t make sense. I’m having to guess here, since you haven’t stated your disagreement. But if that is the case, you’d be assuming something about the nature of the universe. I only said that the universe might innately contain rules.
Where I think we disagree is “there’s no ⟹”. Maybe there isn’t. But the universe apparently follows some rules. The laws that physicists found may be implications of these rules, but they might be the rules themselves. For the sake of analogy, the “code” that the universe runs on might contain “matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed”, and I think it’s fair to consider this to be part of the universe (though whether we can establish that a rule is actually in the code is another matter). The rules might also contain something about causation.
To posit that there are some rules or not is to have jumped from talking about the epistemological issue of not being able to address the territory except through the lens of the map to already supposing a map that carves up the world into thing that are rules (or not rules). You then go on to suppose these rules might contain something about causation, but now you’ve traveled miles down the road of accepting the framing of the map and jump towards a metaphysical framing of the territory as one that contains rules.
This is confusing map and territory, because beyond confusion it’s both true that causation doesn’t inherently exist in the territory (because nothing does) and that you can pick and choose useful structure out of the territory to say something about what you think it is, but only from within the framing of the map you’ve created.
Causation is not so easy to model. I have a job that requires a degree. This implies that I have a degree. But my having this job did not cause me to have a degree (to clarify, perhaps the expectation of gaining such a job caused me to get the degree, but not the job itself). From ET Jaynes, after a similar example:
Judea Pearl is supposedly working on defining causation, though I know little of it. I think he talks abut “backwards causation” and the examples of it that I’ve heard (if I recall correctly) sound like they confuse the job with the expectation of the job. Maybe causation is an incoherent idea.
Here’s how I think of it: I have sensory data coming in (what I see and hear and so on), and every word I associate with that data is an abstraction that seems to match with a useful pattern within the data (e.g. “I’m looking at a table”). So I think we kind of agree with the “There’s no A or B” (the table is not fundamentally part of the universe, it’s my model of some collection of actual universe “stuff”[1]), though I would phrase it in a way in which people might think we disagree. I think it still makes sense to talk about A or B (tables are real), it’s just that statements like “A is true” become a lot more slippery (but not in a “Everybody has their own truth, man” way). And this is the case, as you say, even at the level of atoms, though our sensory data is intermediated with other high-tech tools (e.g. electron microscopes or whatever).
Where I think we disagree is “there’s no ⟹”. Maybe there isn’t. But the universe apparently follows some rules. The laws that physicists found may be implications of these rules, but they might be the rules themselves. For the sake of analogy, the “code” that the universe runs on might contain “matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed”, and I think it’s fair to consider this to be part of the universe (though whether we can establish that a rule is actually in the code is another matter). The rules might also contain something about causation.
Anyway, great post.
Strictly speaking, it’s not even that, it’s a model of my experiences, which is a filtered and somewhat distorted version of the actual universe.
You miss the mark here. You’ve confused the map for the territory, though to be fair it’s easy to do because how do you think about how the world works without modeling it?
You’d have to point me to one of my sentences that you disagree with, since I don’t think I’ve made that mistake.
Perhaps you think the only true fact about the universe is the whole universe itself, so in that case, talking about the “rules in the source code of the universe” wouldn’t make sense. I’m having to guess here, since you haven’t stated your disagreement. But if that is the case, you’d be assuming something about the nature of the universe. I only said that the universe might innately contain rules.
To posit that there are some rules or not is to have jumped from talking about the epistemological issue of not being able to address the territory except through the lens of the map to already supposing a map that carves up the world into thing that are rules (or not rules). You then go on to suppose these rules might contain something about causation, but now you’ve traveled miles down the road of accepting the framing of the map and jump towards a metaphysical framing of the territory as one that contains rules.
This is confusing map and territory, because beyond confusion it’s both true that causation doesn’t inherently exist in the territory (because nothing does) and that you can pick and choose useful structure out of the territory to say something about what you think it is, but only from within the framing of the map you’ve created.