Ha! Well, anyone can say anything they want. What matters is how coherent you
can make what you say. I don't think there's any coherent way of (universally)
distinguishing a thing from an event. An event is a thing and a thing can be an
event. Perhaps some things are collections of events. Or, perhaps some events
are composites. But either way, to be coherent in such talk, you'd have to
describe how events and things compose. Without saying how they compose, all
you're doing is relying on the vernacular and its attendant ambiguity.
In any case, I believe my *minimal* description of downward causation as
quantification over the collective *constraining* the options for individual
composition is (or can be made) coherent. But we may not get to that point with
your talk of sticks and ladders because there's too much excess meaning there.
You'd be better off talking about letters (like how many ways can we arrange 10
zeros and 5 ones) or square tiles in Euclidean space.
Or, how about this setup: Your components (micro) are an egg crate and 12 eggs.
How many ways can you compose 12 eggs with an egg crate? You have to include
*not* putting any of the eggs in the crate as a valid arrangement. But if you
do put 1 egg in the crate, then how many ways can you arrange 1egg+crate with
11 eggs? I argue that the number of ways you can arrange 1egg+crate with 11
eggs is *lower* than the number of ways you can arrange crate with 12 eggs.
I.e. an attribute of the collective ({crate,12 eggs}) limits the possible
arrangements.
On 7/20/20 1:05 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> I am sitting here, on this hot day, looking at the tree across the street,
> and saying to myself (The Behaviorist) am I REALLY going to get away with
> telling Glen he cannot say, “That tree is causing the yard to be shaded.”
> Something not right about that. Modulo obsessive thinking.
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