dmb says: Well, if you just call it "preference" but think of it in terms of causality then yea, only the names have changed. But obviously the point is to change the way we think about these relations. The traditional idea of physical laws is that they govern the actions from without. We can't actually locate these laws anywhere in physical reality, of course.
[Krimel] Perhaps you can point me to Pirsig's elucidation of volition. Here is where he "justifies" the term swap: "The only difference between causation and value is that the word 'cause' implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of 'value' is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that 'cause' is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles 'prefer' to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences. Therefore when you strike 'cause' from the language and substitute 'value' you are not only replacing an empirically meaningless term with a meaningful one; you are using a term that is more appropriate to actual observation." He isn't inviting us to psychoanalyze leptons here. He is, as I said earlier pointing at a moon he does not see clearly. He is recognizing the probabilistic nature of scientific laws. This is another case of Pirsig's unfortunate selection of terms. Of course he does not use the term "volition" but it is no great leap from "preference" to "volition" but it is a foolish one. Pirsig is claiming that "cause" implies "absolute certainty" which it does not. He is correct in pointing out the probabilistic, chance, factors that disrupt "absolute certainty". But his unfortunate use of terms allows you and David M. and Platt to claim that atoms and rocks have wants and needs and desires. This phantom "volition" that you describe becomes a "cause" but it is a "cause' that conveniently can not be observed or studied or have any effect on outcomes. [dmb] So guys like Spinoza would say these laws are the mind of God. Einstein liked that idea quite a bit too. Or sometimes they say these laws just always existed, invisibly, eternally. The switch to preferences doesn't ask us to believe anything that fantastic. It says these same actions are "decided" from within rather than dictated from without. You might even say its a more democratic physics. Its volitional all the way down. [Krimel] Dawkins gives a very nice account of Einstein's god in the first chapter of the God Delusion. It is a pantheistic kind of God arising from the evolution of nature. James also gives a tip of the hat to this conception of God as does Spinoza I believe. It is a very Native American notion too and one I am personally very sympathetic towards. It allows an purely naturalistic universe in which things evolve slowly from the bottom up. Krimel said: I see causality in Jungian terms. Jung called it synchronicity or "meaningful coincidence." He did not associate synchronicity with causality. In fact I believe he thought of synchronicity as acausal. dmb replies: Jung? Really? Okay, I'll give you points for trying to keep it interesting. But I also detect the distinct scent of bullshit here. Is "synchronicity" Jung's name for causality or did he think of it as acausal? [Krimel] If you smell bullshit, might I suggest wiping your upper lip? Jung invented the term synchronicity to describe meaningful conscience". He explicitly described this as acausal. It occurs when we find meaning in incidents that occur together in a meaningful pattern. Here is an example from Wiki: "Jung claims that in 1805, the French writer Émile Deschamps was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Forgebeau. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant, and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Forgebeau. Many years later, in 1832, Émile Deschamps was at a diner, and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Forgebeau was missing to make the setting complete and in the same instant, the now senile de Forgebeau entered the room." What we have here is meaning being derived from the chance juxtaposition of events. It is not that meaning brings about the coincidence or that there is any kind of causality involved. What is involved is the construction of meaning from patterns. A very similar concept is "apophenia" which is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness. My point is that we ascribe causality through much the same process. When we detect patterns of co-incidence often enough we start to call it "cause." In the examples Jung gives, meaning comes about purely from the unlikelihood of the events. Still the common element is our ability to detect patterns and attribute meaning to them. So as I said 'cause' is inferred when we are able to find meaning in a consistent set of relationships. 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