Barry Loewer - What is Causation?
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- Опубликовано: 28 май 2024
- In a ‘billiard-ball world’ of Newtonian science, causation was obvious-things had to touch each other in space and a cause always had to precede an effect. But quantum mechanics destroys such notions. What then is causation? Moreover, must causes always be physical? Is ‘mental causation’ a coherent concept? What about ‘top-down causation’?
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Barry Loewer is a philosopher and Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Dr Loewer ran with the first question for seven minutes non stop, one brilliant insight seguing into the next, like a fountain in the desert overflowing with crystal clear water. The Mentaculus? What a fabulous, deep theory "of everything." Hard to believe a human could have dreamed that up. This man is a mega-genius.
Um. He adopted Mentaculus from Coen brothers
He only adopted the _name_ from the Coen brothers.
One part of causality is locality, so that all causes are local. Einstein was unhappy with quantum entanglement since it implies non-local causation. So what the spectrum of interactions at the quantum level includes, we must admit we don’t know. This IS NOT theology. We are not asking “why the laws ?“ but “what and how the laws “. Quantum physics includes indeterminacy and at this level determinism breaks down. But the general idea that effects have causes still holds at the classical level.
Barry Loewer’s account makes sense, and his match striking example is likely as good as any.
As he points out, what about the instances in which the match is struck but doesn’t light? Then of course there’s many possible reasons why the match didn’t light, and then what about the causes of those causes?
My idea is that causation is real, but the causal chain is infinite, including infinite branches, therefore causation may only be inferred.
Thank you again for such a wonderful video. I found the last lines most poignant. "... many people will find that statistical explanations are merely predictive and not explanatory. But I feel that this notion of a theory being really explanatory (as opposed to descriptive) has a theological origin which can not be made sense of."
Just as Mr. Kuhn explains in his videos that his basic drive is to understand the universe (in an explanatory sense), Mr. Loewer's views are directly antithetical to that.
To the best of my understanding, Mr. Loewer is saying that an explanatory narrative is non-sensical.
I bought one of your tshirts. Cant express how deeply I appreciate your content. You make me cry with most of these.
I would have to feel that some sort of "human motivation" fundamentally "underlies" the existence of the Universe to believe in any "human constructed" theory of a "God". I don't.
Yep physics has zero to do with being explanatory and is pure 3rd person descriptive thus limited to one fixed perception, reductive mechanicalism. it's not about reality but mathmatical models of reality and that is all. That's actually good science good physics. I would suggest poetry if you need explanatory 1st person although poetry makes for crappy physics like physics is pretty crappy poetry. reality is always a bit bigger than our brains and that is good science.
@@davidthurman3963 Cheers!
You are applying a value to that which is "non-sensical". Must everything "make sense" to be true?
@@markpmar0356 *"Must everything "make sense" to be true?"*
... No. Particles behave like waves, and this doesn't make sense to us ... _but it's also true!_ However, this is because we don't know how or why this happens. The day may come when we DO understand particle-wave duality ... and then it will make sense to us.
love the David Gelb Netflix zooms lol
Causality is a reality on different scales. Nothing is the smallest scale thing, it is the causality of something reality, not nothing.
Fundamental law phich keep out sustain propababilitis causation in phich reality. In quantum causation are phich ilusion when underteminate particles . Predict phich causation are big phich mistake though it come from unpredicted conscieness. How predict phich reality when conscieness unpredicted picture phich reality?
Causation is surely the whole essence of physics, not some philosophical debate. Striking a match knocks sand molecules against match molecules supplying enough energy to overcome the bonds and cause a domino effect as it flares. If it didn't light then you didn't supply enough energy - simple physics and chemistry. In defence of philosophers, philosophy isn't a disconnected dream world, it's role is to initiate ideas and make "intelligent guesses", of course they don't have all the answers straightaway, we know it can take decades of work to come up with the final physical explanations.
As for quantum mechanics I don't think it destroys the general idea of things pushing against each other, it just blurs the way it happens. We can't predict the exact behaviour of any individual particle but we do know the exact behaviour of huge numbers of them. Some things don't even make sense but give the right answers in actual situations so we regard them as "physical but unknown" or even "unknowable" but never "non-physical". Perhaps that's where physics and philosophy humbly merge.
If mental causation actually happened then we'd say it was due to some physical energy we don't know about yet so we can still say that a cause is always physical, effectively replacing the term "non-physical" by "unknown physical mechanism". We might even extend the definition of "physical" to include 100% repeatable experiments even if we've no idea of the physical mechanism involved. Ultimately spiritual events could be included in dusty old physics books if they are sufficiently repeatable (heresy!).
Many arguments ultimately come down to semantics and definitions: real energy and real packets of energy cause real events but they 're only regarded as real precisely because they _do_ cause real events.
Since there needs to be coordinates to where we are orienting from then we could begin with emotions ... This means prime numbering them as static inventory. Then, invert that [137] prime [731]
How we make sense of 'causality' depends a lot on our conceptions of spacetime. If you believe in 4-dimensional spacetime (Einstein, Minkowski) where past, present and future all co-exist alongside each other and where nothing ever changes (i.e. the 'block universe'), then it makes no sense to say that one event 'caused' another. Everything is correlation (and not causation).
But if you believe that the flow of time is real (i.e. that there is such a thing as 'now' and that one event actually precedes another) then it probably does make sense to talk about one event causing another, whether directly (through embuing it with energy) or indirectly (through intermediate forces which we can't see).
probabilities or possibilities of what can be are different than the causation of what happens? something is added to possibility or probability for causation?
6:51 it shows a specific deterministic outcome, despite the degree of uncertainty...
That was good. I agree causation is not fundamental. For causes to appear we need to think about what will/ would have happened if... in a given situation. And here I think the trick is we're not thinking about the actual situations. We're thinking about what will happen if, or would have happened if, in this type of situation. I think by understanding that, we can make sense of our concept of causation and it's link to fundamental laws.
Causation is at a higher level. Factual and Counterfactual are one step beyond Causation.
@ahirbhairavorai7793
If the effect depends upon the cause, then without counterfactual dependency there is no cause
what happens when equation of causation having change in space less change in time is used with equations of space-time?
Calling Dr. Wittgenstein! There are flies in bottles needing your immediate assistance!
6:52 Kuhn “It sounds like probabilities, though, are a predictive way - as opposed to an explanatory way - of [explaining] what causation is.” Robert Lawrence Kuhn, have there ever been two identical spacetime events in the universe? No? Why, then, do we say they are the same? Because, _probabilistically,_ we define sets of tests - predicates - that tell us, “These two are close enough.” So it is also for causation since no two _causes_ of events in the universe’s history are identical.
Digging deeper, such almost-universal probabilistic rules of causation emerge through restriction, not diversity - a universe that, at its roots, is hamstrung by a lack of energy, a lack of options, and the omnipresent limits of its forms of computation. We touch those limits when the quantum version of the restrictions we call spacetime ceases to give us enough detail to place the spinning bundle of quantum numbers we call an electron anywhere more precisely than in a fuzzy (to us, not to the electron) orbital.
[2023-01-24.10.07 EST Tue]
Causation relationship with free will, free to act but not free with the consequence, the interesting fact about causation is, it is not just effect mentality or personal or metaphysic, but can has relation with physical matter (not just dna, but surrounding event or surrounding physics), it only happen if, just if, everything on same field of matrix, so can interact. That when supernatural phenomenon become possible. Quantum field can make something from nothing but involve physic law, but supernatural somehow can make something from nothing without involve physic law, that only possible with matrix theory. Can we using physics to detect metaphysics , maybe metaphysics not electromagnetic field, maybe hidden field that we still need figure out using right instrument to detect it.
General relativity and quantum mechanics will never be combined because they take place at different moments in time. Because causality has a speed limit (c) every point in space sees itself as the closest to the present moment. When we look out into the universe, we see the past which is made of particles (GR). When we try to look at smaller and smaller sizes and distances, we are actually looking closer and closer to the present moment (QM). The wave property of particles appears when we start looking into the future of that particle. It is a probability wave because the future is probabilistic. Wave function collapse happens when we bring a particle into the present/past. GR is making measurements in the predictable past. QM is trying to make measurements of the probabilistic future.
The arrow of time points forward due to the third law of thermodynamics.
I'm not sure the explanation for the origin of the arrow of time can be that simple. Because for example, after you take an observation which collapses a wave function for a particle, you now have a great deal of information about the particle you observed. As much information as you can about it, even. Perhaps you got a reading on its position and momentum and you read its momentum very precisely at a cost of uncertainty about its position, or perhaps you read its position very precisely at a cost of uncertainty about its momentum. But either way, after you take this observation, both its momentum and position start to blur more as more time passes since the observation took place. So a new wave function has not collapsed but yet there is this artifact of the passage of time as the blur becomes broader and broader as time t passes even without a new wave function collapse. If wave function collapse is necessary for an arrow of time, how can that blur change over time before a new collapse happens?
Wow, thx for sharing some brilliant insights! Never occurred to me that looking small gets us closer to the present moment. I wonder, is there a "smallest moment," or does the division of time go on forever, at least in theory? You wrote: "GR is making measurements in the predictable past." That's a mind-blower! But you are right. We live in the past. Maybe you should start your own channel? I think you would do real well!
@@medexamtoolsdotcom They say that QM works forward and backwards in time. But that is not true. Wave function collapse is not reversible therefore gives a distinction between the future and the past.
@binbots We literally do not know if there is an underlying system which is reversible or not. You're claiming to know something which literally nobody knows yet.
"Yes, philosophers do talk about questions like that, but philosophers don't come up with answers very often." Absolutely true. I graduated with a master's in philosophy, originally intending to go on to a PhD. But after having to listen to about the 100th hour-long conversation about whether or not things exist, I took the MA, ran screaming from the building, and became a carpenter.
causation maybe is the measurements the speeds of the transmissions of information
"all sorts of processes at the macroscopic level involve causation"
i wonder if "causation" is in effect, something emergment ?
Different types of energy transforming into other forms is the basis of causation. Empiricists wanted to know what relates cause and effect. Not finding any way they are related, philosophers settled that there is no relation, cause and effect are independent, until complex variable identified the complex number i relates cause and effect. Beautifully explained by Tristan Needham in VISUAL COMPLEX ANALYSIS, page 217, where i is defined as the ratio of change in effect y due to change in cause of x in the complex number z=x+iy when mapped on to the w-plane. Thus when a paper burns chemical energy into heat energy, cause and effect is related by i.
Causation is due to somethings power making events to occur.
Here is a simple analogy of the absurdity of randomness, probability, chance, unknowables, and other things that are the bugaboo of modern quantum mechanics. Lets say you have a pinball machine and you launch all of the balls one after another after another until all of them are launched. Each one of them has its own trajectory, its own path, its own beginning in time and space, its own "life" and its own end. They fact that they all look the same to you means nothing. They do what they do because they must do it. There is no choice, not uncertainty, no doubt. That you don't understand them, can't follow them, can't predict them, can't tell one from another, can't track them individually is meaningless. Watching them changes nothing. They will do whatever they will do whether you watch them or walk away and don't watch them. It changes nothing. So in the pinball machine that is the universe, those who believe it is rational and deterministic but disagree with these facts have a lot to learn and should go back to their blackboards or white boards and try to correct their errors. Their math has a lot of wrong assumptions and mistakes.
Choices are causation.
Composite counterpart. One static, the other analog . Check ✅ out Clockwork 137 ... A prime numbered universe.
Leonardo da Vinci said " The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions " Plato shared with us wisdom he learnt from Egypt, wisdom that was a death sentence in Greece, Rome (Christianity) ..Pythagoras, Socrates and later Hypatia of Alexandria. Plato in his dialogue "The Republic " tells the parable of " The Cave " Plato starts by telling us of prisoners being held in a underground den, let us examine this den via the geometry of Bernhard Riemann and Felix Klein..Klein bottle..3rd and 4th dimensions. Plato tells us that the prisoners are bound up unable to move their heads, let us examine this bondage via the psychology of Erich Fromm..socialisation of consciousness.. aware-unaware. Plato tells us that the prisoners mistake shadows for substance, let us examine this mistake via the philosophy of Thales, Hume and Kant..synthetic a priori judgement..not thing in itself. Plato tells us that one of the prisoners is released, let us examine this release via the wisdom of T Lobsang Rampa..stilling the mind and conscious astral travel..leaving the cave/body. Plato tells us that the prisoners will reject this release, let us examine this rejection via the psychology of Stockholm Syndrome..Plato quotes Homer..forgive them for they know not what they say. Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. Mathew 23 13 31.
There are no causations. There is just one event the whole world.
We are allowed to experience a slim slice of it all at one time.
Have him back on again.
This universe is a Success Story, not because of some underlying determinism, but because of microscopic probabilistic behavior.
does causation need something in order to cause something? such as an idea, or some energy, or other?
*"does causation need something in order to cause something? such as an idea, or some energy, or other?"*
... Causation is the word we've assigned to everything that produces a result. Something would need to happen in order to achieve an end result. Asking if causation needs a cause is like asking _"What is the best word to use for the word, "word?"_
*Motivation,* *Desire,* and *Necessity* are catalysts for initiating a first cause. If you were an atheist and suddenly decided to become a theist (or vice versa), then there is reason why you chose to do so. Something _motivated_ you to make the change. The reason pencil sharpeners exist is due to the _necessity_ for a sharp point. The reason a Bugatti exist is because rich people _desire_ to own the best.
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC needs create causation. Some are logical needs and some are not.
@@ManiBalajiC *"needs create causation. Some are logical needs and some are not."*
... I categorize "need" under the heading of necessity: ( *Motivation,* *Desire,* and *Necessity* ). Most needs arise out of a logical necessity. *Example 1:* A necessity (or "need") to communicate gives way to the emergence of language, but isn't this also a _logical move_ to make if one wishes to communicate?
*Example 2:* If we all lived on the surface of Mars, would any product engineer invent a lawn mower? ... NO! There is no necessity or need for a lawnmower in the absence of grass.
BTW: Good to hear from you again! Merry Christmas!
James Ruscheinski. I would say causation needs relationships to exist, for dualities to exist, and for differences to exist. I define reality as the totality of all existences so variety must exist in reality for it to be that which is the totality of all existences. If everything is absolutely one and nondifferent from everything else in reality we would have no understanding of that which is absolute and that which is relative.
Every lifeform in the universe depends on the sun for it's sustenance so the sun is the cause is of the maintenance of life in the universe but a sun going supernova can be the cause of death in the universe so somethings power and influence is the cause of events happening. A very beautiful women can control and influence a man simply by her ability to attract him. A powerful warrior can be the deciding factor of a battle, a very rich person also becomes attractive to others and can exert influence over others. etc. etc. So somethings power can be the cause of causation.
@@williamburts5495 *"I would say causation needs relationships to exist, for dualities to exist, and for differences to exist."*
.. Relationships, dualities, and differences are integral to existence. That's also why every particle has its corresponding antiparticle.
*"So somethings power can be the cause of causation"*
... Where did this "something's" power come from?
Causation expresses sequentiality and relies on logical identity, but logical identity appears to need neither of them.
i like theoretical physics being understood as 3rd person descriptive and absolutely not explanatory. its our kind of our weird natural tendency to assume one leads to the other that certainly is false. An example is we can describe this, and thus we can assume, infer, believe it means that. Hell that's normal and is kind of like the current Crypto market!.
We forget that causality or the law of sufficient reason in (from) classical logic, works if and only if there is time-space. Beyond time space, there is no causality
Why? Because Cause C at time T0 give the Effect E at time T1, and T1-T0>0, so it is strictly positive and greater the 0. If there is no time T1=T0=0, so beyond time any cause it also an effect. Beyond time (and space) cause and effect are the same. So causality (and classical logic!) it is no use anymore.
How do we see things beyond time space continuum? Simple, time measure changes, so anything that don't suffer changes, it not changeable, nor it can't be deleted, it's beyond time and space.
Math for e.g. exist anywhere, anytime, it can't changed/modified, nor deleted. And for the sake of the argument, if the math was undiscovered, it would be the same, everywhere at once, even it would be also unnamed. Math relationships are beyond time and space, it there is no cause for math existing.
Isn't causation the cause of an equal and opposite reaction?
"causation" can't be to find as "a cause". That's circular, weird English.
@@bobbabai Newton's Third Law:
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
@@chyfields Matt woodling's law: for every science law quoted, there's an eyeroll coming.
The fundamental laws don’t occur in fundamental equations
I think this needed more explanation for the lay
This and many other similar questions will be answered in 2023 with a new understanding about the nature of our reality. Stay tuned.
Reflection is key in a world which contains nearly none. Unfortunately, most of humanity cannot see beyond the physical version of it. Yet the other three mirrors (mental, psychological, spiritual) are of far greater importance to confront.
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In Time, all points converge: hope's strength, resteeled. But to earn final peace at the Universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
--Diamond Dragons (series)
Does true randomness negate the need for causality at some level?
What is "true" randomness?
@@markpmar0356 Events that cannot be pre-determined by any currently known measure. For example, given proton decay of radioactive isotopes we can calculate half-lives quite precisely, however we cannot know when any given proton will decay. Their individual decay is random.
theres no such thing as randomness
@@jackkrauser1763 That is making the assumption that locality is false. All things are not necessarily connected. What happens in another galaxy cannot be seen as causative to this one.
@@jackkrauser1763 Probability distributions would disagree.
Also, do not confuse the macro world with that of the micro world, especially on the quantum level. Look up John Bell's experiments disproving the 'Hidden Variable' theory where it was believed that hidden information that determined outcomes existed but was as yet undiscovered.
To disprove Bell's Theorem one would have to accept 'Superdeterminism', something which by its own definition is unprovable.
It's just one thing after another.
A philosopher who "rarely gives answers" cannot be considered scholastic. From my understanding, for students to graduate from school, they must usually give correct answers. When a student in school "rarely gives answers", he or she does not graduate from school. The failing student is not a philosopher. We cannot even consider a failing student a "class". I know philosophers care about answers. But, if they do not appreciate other subjects, I would not consider them "class" whatsoever. Graduation from school requires variety of subjects for discipline, not favoritism for causes. Favoritism for causes goes in line with the movie industry and fun entertainment.
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
There are two realms and three planes of existence interlocked with one another functioning simultaneously.
Consciousness is causation.
😴🥱😳
Trying to calculate "causes" that we have created as our narrative of the past is non-sensical. The question of "why" anything is a creation of our narrative and is only useful for our psychology...it doesn't exist in some real material way. The only real models are mathematical representation, everything else attached is subjective narrative. The most honest and accurate representation of the Universe from past to present is mathematical...that's as close to the truth as we will get...everything else is narrated conjecture. Is that conjecture important...of course it is...but it can't be absolutely known. Any time you go from raw statistics to inference you invite the subjective narrative.
At the beginning of this video, I was all set to expect lots of "woo woo leading us to conclude God", maybe approaching the point where people in these comments would start to again assert "they know consciousness creates reality and there is no such thing as material reality and blah blah ultimate consciousness therefore God", and then they always feel they can stop right there in their theory of everything and don't have to bother to explain •how• God does anything.
But this guy being interviewed ends up with "this notion of 'really' explanatory has a theological origin, and actually at the end of the day cannot really be made good sense of". That made me calm down.
Causation is just the back end of the previous effect .
Into infinity?
@@jellojiggle1 I don’t think there could be any first cause without there being a proceeding effect. It’s like they say a straight line is the shortest distance between two points- but who establishes the two points ? If two points are never established then there are no straight lines in this world. So it is with cause-and-effect. Everything is most likely on an equal plane because for there to be a cause and effect, there has to be some kind of vacuum in nature to compare values, and we all know nature abhors a vacuum. An instantaneous happening bars any cause and effect. So most likely there was an eternal before and after.
I loved Barry in "The Whale".
I prefer to address physics question tp physicists. I'll save the philosophy and religion questions for philosophers.
If you think causation is real? you are not examining it completely. Based on causes, which comes first? The spark or the volatile substance that causes an explosion. Everyone says the spark. But if the spark comes first, nothin happens. In order for the spark to be the spark that caused the explosion, the explosion must come first. Which comes first, the father or the son? Everyone says the father. But for any father to be a father, there must first be a son. A cause coming first doesn't cause anything. In order for a cause to be a cause, it first has to cause something. This based on the ancient philosophy of Oncology (The Science of Being) from the Greeks. Based on this logic, causation can't be real. Science is finally catching up. Based on Quantum Mechanics the world is not real. This years Nobel Prize went to 3 scientists who debunked on of Einstein's theories concerning Quantum Mechanics.
Your rant in the video is all about cause and effect. Now you tell me there's no such thing as the labels of father and son. I agree they are concepts found in the dictionary, It's not that they don't exist, they do exist. Only they are not real according to Ontology. When you talk about cause and affect as though it were real, then tell me labels don't exist. What are you even talking about? Which comes first, the spark or the explosion of the volatile substance? The explosion must come first because a cause can't be a cause unless it causes something. If these labels don't exist as you claim, then cause and effect doesn't exist either. Is this something you just made up? Or perhaps you are trying to say that nothing exists except cause and effect. Sorry I don't get it. Do you know anything at all about quantum mechanics? neither do I but so what?
Don't we all know what caused WWI? Do we need to dispose of causation to make the Big Bang theory more plausible?
X-Files
Good (god) creates joy, beauty and harmony (heaven).
Vampires (greed) create misery, ugliness and conflict (hell).
I recently watched "The Hard Men" with Guy Madison and Lorne Greene. There's a scene in the movie where two gunslingers face off. One of them says to the other that it "doesn't matter who's faster" it only matters "who's got the nerve". If you're not prepared to kill another man it doesn't matter how fast you are.
Without intention there is no causation. It takes a lot of nerve to infer a thing like gravity from a matter of fact observation that apples always fall "down".
Inference is the "nerve" of consciousness.
This guy has an uncanny resemblance to Hannah Arendt
The zooming in and out was distracting and nauseating when played at 2x speed.
God as Creator, initiating activities, and patterns, exists on a different level than resultant beings. Therefore we are forced to study attributes in the pursuit of causal reality.
The relationship between God and Creation originates in the desire of God. Pure desire is the essence of what we loosely call ‘Spirit’. It is hard for us to fathom the main character of God superseding His intellect in order, but God is not a mind, He is a Spirit, though intellect is a function of God.
God’s desire determines the purpose of a resultant being, purpose decides meaning, and in turn meaning - the value of an object, which is not latent unto itself as absolute, but is realized when beheld by its beloved, for whom it was created.
As we know, if God is eternally self existent there cannot really be a timeline, on which to demarcate the beginning of the universe. Therefore, the answer may lie in our spiritual growth.
Developing the relationship of our mind and body, and pursuing the sincere God with an appropriate measure of sincerity may unlock the key to understanding things which cannot simply be traversed, like eternity.
Knowing God through direct relationship is far more satisfying than knowing his attributes through the logic, rationale, and analysis of the intellectual function we possess.
The essential character of God may be defined as the irrepressible impulse flowing from the core of His being ❤to the object He created and ability to love this person illimitably for eternity; even if the objective being made in His outward appearance and internal likeness must suffer a period of justice for unprincipled behavior.
It’s either enough time resulting in seeds (which are a compressed design) or a designer creating the compressed design in seeds and the mathematical perfection of the physical universe. Both cannot be simultaneously the case. I think the question as to why it seems so difficult for us to communicate with the designer influences us to assume God doesn’t exist. But you have to make a sincere effort if you want to meet the sincere Creator.
Revelation is original form of communication between God and His Sons and daughters (God reveals knowledge of Himself constantly) . When we threw knowledge away (the separation), we lost the ability to communicate directly, but He gave us the Holy Spirit to mediate between our illusions and God’s truth. The Holy Spirit, which was placed in our minds, leads us back to revelation by teaching us how to release our illusions (forgiveness).
“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” - Buddha
So free will is kicking his azz lol
An apologetic or polemic word salad won't work. You gotta do better than just allege the assumption begin one way so that's how we came to think this way. .
They may be the cause but it doesn't explain how that arose and his idea if causation didn't.
Human fights the apes for the sake of future generations (their descendants) while the apes are busy with stealing and polluting and protecting their faked imaginary irrational realm!
what an irony!
the planet of the irrational apes!
Am I the first?
Rambling gibberish
At first glance, I thought the title was What is Caucasian? 🤣
So blah blah blah, causation is probabilistic, blah blah, but really at the end of the day causation is non-sense and theological aka faith based. Lol whut? Causation are tightly correlated events. They happen together, with regularity, so much so that they form the basis of our reality. The types of causation humans notice are those that operate within localised physical environments and on time-scales that are imagineable. It is difficult to imagine if not possible to comprehend. We automatically simplify and organise information in a way that represents reality to us. Maybe causation is just how our minds organise reality, but maybe it's fundamental to the universe, who knows? I don't, you don't, no one knows. Ask what does anything actually mean and you will eventually hit non-sense. Asking the quesiton "what is causation" is fundamentally a description of how we experience reality. Causation is just our way of describing strongly related events that we can perceive. Also the idea that all events must have causes requires by definition an infinitely old universe. Either all events have prior causes or they don't. Final comment, how we organise reality is a fundamental part about how we assign causes. How we group objects together determines what units get labelled causes and what get lablled effects. How we experience time and how we chop it up defines the boundaries of events. Calling causation a probability map of all possible states doesn't explain what our commen sense notion of causation is, it just hides causation is the soup of indefinite states.
Short answer. He doesn't know.
Sounds like a discussion about free will. Were all possible events established at the beginning of time or not. From a philosophical point of view, it seems to me that we should just assume we each have free will. Otherwise, we are not morally responsible for any harm which we cause. The physical laws set in motion an evolution of material. The human mind has control of human actions which act on the physical world to exert the influence of intelligence - the reason for reality to exist.
Wills are for individuals and their collectives. This is not about them. This is about the unfolding of the universe even if creatures without will were present.
Is causation a basic entity in the progressive development of the universe and the change in physical states that constitute this development.
Mind not Control reality in the phich . Mind NEVER picture randon reality because unpredicted conscieness . Life is ilusion in mind unpredicted.
@@ApurvaSukant, what is causation? It seems is could either be random or predetermined. What test could be devised to test this hypothesis? Given that I am not aware of such a test, I prefer to go with an assumption based philosophy until such a test can be devised.
@@maxwellsimoes238, interesting theory. But, how to test?
@@ApurvaSukant But sentient life is part of the Universe; therefore, any speculation about a Universe without sentient life is a total waste of time.
Causation is physically impossible. Energy cannot cause itself or direct itself.
Really? How else does energy interact? If energy cannot cause or direct itself and causation is impossible explain what caused your body to contain and direct all that energy giving rise to your mass? Electromagnetism shows us quite perfectly well how energy directs itself. If it's not energy directing all these interactions what else could it be? You say energy cannot cause itself or direct itself.
I say energy always existed and has always directed itself. Infact that is exactly what energy does, it's the only thing it does. Energy is the causation of physical interactions. Which means it directs itself.
The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only converted from one form of energy to another. This means that a system always has the same amount of energy, unless it's added from the outside. This means contained energy cannot do anything but interact! I don't know how interacting isn't directing. I mean the laws governing energy interactions dictate the rules of how energy directs itself.
If it was pure chaos there would be no order! Lastly it's not the material that is conscious and it's consciousness that allows us to control energy interactions and direct it. So by means of our consciousness being energy and that consciousness being able to direct energy kinda defeats the logic.
@@jayb5596 Where do you live?
It is absurd joke. Law of still explains Universe proceedings .
@@maxwellsimoes238 Your post is incoherent. Try charging your phone with an equal or lesser amount of charge.
Causation is physically impossible….then how do you explain what happens?
_energy cannot cause itself or direct itself_
Then what caused energy?
What directs energy?
I'm sorry but you cant be an expert in a field and ramble for 5 minutes without making a point.
I'm sorry for you, Barry, but you don't get it correctly at all.👎☹️
Barry's explanation has two sections: one is philosophical and the other is probabilistic.
Both of them are huge BS when used to explain real causality.
Philosophy is in general useless mental speculation, and mathematical probabilities represent the impotence of the human mind in seeing and understanding clearly and correctly the real fundamental causal process taking place at any level micro and macro of the real dynamic of the Universe.
Robert, like usual, feels correctly where the truth is.😏😉 ( for example, at min 6:52 😉 ).
However, what can you predict in this case if you don't even understand correctly the real and fundamental causal process?🥴
Why throw a dice when the stories are already told.