I approve of this general approach. It illustrates how physicists are often more broad minded than physicalists.
People often say that classical physics is causal and quantum mechanics undermines causality. I have never understood that: it has always seemed that classical physics cannot be causal and only some interpretations of quantum mechanics allow for causality.
A lot of people use “causal” to mean “deterministic”. Given that the initial state of the universe did happen, everything that subsequently happens is inevitable. You seem to be using “causal” to mean that you can wiggle the initial conditions to get the outcome you want.
You might not be able to wiggle it enough to get what you want (depending on what you want), but you need to be able to wiggle it, yes.
Given the way “A causes B” is used in everyday speech and among philosophers, it seems that it needs to have some notion of “if A, then B” (with a possible addition of “is more likely”). To use “casual” to mean “deterministic” would be confusing—different enough, anyway, that this usage needs to be called out as unrelated, to avoid confusion. “Smoking causes cancer” is not deterministic (some smokers are lucky) and includes the idea that not smoking is a possibility.
I know there’s the wildly different usage of “to cause” in relativity to mean “is before, with time-like separation,” and that is also terribly confusing. It should be called out more.
I approve of this general approach. It illustrates how physicists are often more broad minded than physicalists.
A lot of people use “causal” to mean “deterministic”. Given that the initial state of the universe did happen, everything that subsequently happens is inevitable. You seem to be using “causal” to mean that you can wiggle the initial conditions to get the outcome you want.
You might not be able to wiggle it enough to get what you want (depending on what you want), but you need to be able to wiggle it, yes.
Given the way “A causes B” is used in everyday speech and among philosophers, it seems that it needs to have some notion of “if A, then B” (with a possible addition of “is more likely”). To use “casual” to mean “deterministic” would be confusing—different enough, anyway, that this usage needs to be called out as unrelated, to avoid confusion. “Smoking causes cancer” is not deterministic (some smokers are lucky) and includes the idea that not smoking is a possibility.
I know there’s the wildly different usage of “to cause” in relativity to mean “is before, with time-like separation,” and that is also terribly confusing. It should be called out more.