Fascinating discussion of the nature of space, time, and causality (~10 min video)

[androidbleepboop]

[LovePrevails]

enjoyed, thanks for sharing

[willysuperfly]

very good, is there a part 2?

[androidbleepboop]

I don't believe so, though I hope it's out soon- this sets up some interesting ideas but I feel like the meat of the argument hasn't been reached yet.

[Kevin Beal]

Searching online and my own memory banks, the only definition provided for "law of causation" is that states of objects change into other states. I don't find this particularly helpful in understanding what the actual nature of time itself is. And I don't think it should satisfy you either. Demand more!

 

 

Two types of "causation"

 

A level of description could be that kinetic energy in combination with oxygen and some form of fuel comprises the emergent property called "fire", or a an accumulation of H2O molecules results in the property "wetness". The state of these objects is considered to be caused by those smaller objects that compose it. This doesn't require time at all. In fact, if time stood still, the facts would remain the same. It doesn't describe a change, but rather a state of an object via a reduction.

 

There is another description of causation as a concept that could be easily equivocated which is those features of an object that cause changes in the state of objects. Me having the feature of my leg with it's capacity for kicking being actualized against a ball, causes that ball to change from a stationary state to a moving state.

 

 

The fear of the irreducible

 

I wanted to make this distinction in order to highlight a logical issue that seems to arise concerning areas of philosophy which are not a priori and are not as established as the atomic theory of matter or the evolutionary theory of biology. People tend to assume that any causal account of a phenomena must be reducible or else it throws all of science on it's head. I think that this is a huge mistake and one that really irks me.

 

Think of all the physicists who dislike the "soft" sciences like psychology or the praxeological account of economics.

 

Keynes tried to turn economics into a strictly empirical kind of physics and it didn't turn out well. The socialists of the early 20th century tried to come up with an objective value scale of goods and that was a huge fail. The behaviorists tried to account for psychology completely in terms of observable behavior and that is laughably false.

 

And yet there are causal descriptions in all of these things, even if the reduction isn't to a molecular state.

 

The illogic of trying to completely operate entirely on outward observable behavior and disregard the subjective experience inspired one of my favorite jokes:

 

Q: What does one behaviorist say to another after sex?A: That was great for you. How was it for me?

 

 

The "magic" of consciousness

 

Consciousness is relatively mysterious in that we don't have a great account of it's mechanics, and when looking at subjective conscious experiences like pains, desires or even the experiences of color and sound, the immediate knee-jerk reaction of most academic philosophers (and as a result laymen) is to jump to a level of description which is reduced. Instead of defining the color red by the features we subjectively experience, they define red as a light wave's length of oscillation at 600 nanometers (or whatever it is). This is bullshit though.

 

Imagine someone who is color blind and has always been. They researched everything there possibly is to know about color. The understand how the spiralling light waves hit the cones in our eyes. They get how the eyes transmit this information to the brain. They watch that information get integrated into the unified field of subjective experience of the world around us. And yet they will never know what the experience of seeing red is like. That color experience is entirely irreducible.

 

 

The madness of materialism

 

In trying to find a solution to this supposed dilemma, many philosophers (such as Daniel Dennett) conclude that consciousness must be an illusion. If it can't be reduced, it is unscientific and does not exist, is the rationale. And many people consider this the "scientific" approach to this "problem". But this is exactly equivalent to scientists opening a guy up to try and understand how digestion works, and when it's not immediately apparent to them how digestion works, they declare that digestion is an illusion! But that is insanely unscientific.

 

In science, observations are made and accepted as self evident all the time. No one ever was asked to justify the existence of digestion, or vision, or that hair grows. But somehow people are told that they must justify the reality of consciousness. And that anybody who denies that consciousness is simply a flesh-based computer program must be a mystic.

 

Do not accept reductionism as a necessary qualification for science.

 

 

Why is this important?

 

I think this important because for as long as there has been science (natural philosophy) people have branded their sophistry science! And this is very often not true. They say that if you deny their theory then you deny science! It's just like those extreme feminists who say that if you criticize one woman, you criticize all women! And you are a sexist pig heathen blasphemer, and a complete moron to boot!

 

Don't take shit from people who call you unscientific and don't provide any argument. Ask them "unscientific as compared to what?"

 

Be wary of those who talk about causation as something separate from the features of objects like there is this aether of causation sprinkling it's dust on all the objects within our realm. Causation is just change. It's not physics or mathematics. If it were, there would be no need for any other fields of science. Everything could just have this ostensibly superior description in terms of atomic interactions and everything will be hunky dory.

 

 

Giving a vague account of causation (or equivocating between both senses of the term) as the basis of a theory can lead to very irrational beliefs *cough* determinism *cough*

 

So when the narrator talks about causation as if it's this amazing thing, it shot up some red flags for me. I'm just saying that you may want to procede with caution.

 

[Xeeg]

This topic ties into the age old question "Why anything?".

 

I have searched for the answer myself and the best explanation I have seen goes something like this:

 

In the mathematical sense of infinite possibilities for states of a universe, there exists a certain subset of stable conditions. Meaning, a universe that did not contain cause and effect would not contain interactions. Something cannot affect something else if there is no cause and effect. In such a universe there could be no time or space or any indistinguishable "effect" of the universe. This "universe" may very well exist, but it will never affect us and we will never affect it.

 

Imagine now that every state of every possible universe exists. Even a universe with nothing. All of these other universes that contain certain conditions that nessesarily remove the ability for us to interact with it are essentially unimportant. That is not to say that they don't exist, it is just that we cannot live in or interact with such a universe.

 

Now imagine a universe where cause and effect exists, but there is no method of growth. There is no method of which new information is somehow provided by the universe. Conceptually this is like looking at a closed-box universe with a ball inside that bounces between the walls in the same path for all eternity. This is the universe postulated by determinism, as a very complicated ball that takes a very long time to go along it's set path.

 

It is possible that we live in such a universe, however it is also possible that we live in a universe that cause and effect exist, but also an element of seemingly random creation. This would definitely suit a universe that seems to be expanding as "new" things appear without cause, while still allowing for the cause and effect of existing things to take place.

 

Once we consider that all possibilities of all states of every universe exist, the question changes from "why?" to "what?". Meaning, what is the configuration of our universe? This is the scientific pursuit, the question "Why?" is purely in the interest of "What caused this effect?" Unfortunately for science, there will always be information lost from the past, in such a way as to make it impossible to see forever into the past. It is very difficult to determine, experimentally, whether or not "things" can come into existance without a cause, as the whole pursuit of science is to find the cause in the first place. Some scientists claim that they have witnessed "things" popping in and out of existance without cause, but can they really be sure? Just because they cannot determine the cause does not mean that there is not a cause.

 

At any rate, if you imagine that all universes and configurations exist, and that only a few of these configurations could lead to a universe that we have today, the question changes. "Cause and effect" become merely part of the stable configurations for a universe that looks the way ours does.