Thank you for your answers everybody.
Firstly, my reason for performing the action of asking this question:
I wanted to get your views on causation and the problems therein since I am
currently studying mental causation and the metaphysical and epistemological
aspects of explanations in general. It's a lot of SOM I tell you.
Now, Bo said.
Just quickly the MOQ regards causation (A causes B) as
paradoxical (a platypus)
And I wonder why. ( I don't have the time to read through Lila again right
now, and what I really want is your interpretations of it anyway).
Ham wrote:
One can of course explain any act or event in purely physical (e.g.,
mechanical) terms.
However, if said act is intentional on the part of the individual, which
the
word "performed" implies, such an explanation is incomplete and
misleading.
If I perform action 'A' with the intent of causing event 'B', then I am
the
deliberate cause of 'B', regardless of what physical causes may be
involved.
For example, if I place a pot of water on the stove and apply enough heat,
the water will boil. While this may be explained as an event caused by
the
transfer of thermal energy, thus bringing the water to the boiling point,
the action occurred as a result of my intention to boil some water.
Similarly, if I raise my arm and wave to a friend, neuro-muscular kinetics
are involved, but only because I intended to perform this gesture.
Unless you deny "free will" on the ground that all behavior is
genetically-programmed or socially-induced, the primary cause of
voluntarily
actions is the intended purpose of the individual who performs them.
And this hit's closely to what the philosophers I'm studying right now are
talking about (Jaegwon Kim and a few others). For Kim, there seems to be no
problem in reducing psychological explanations to physiological causal
reactions - and the only reason we don't do, for him, seems to be that it
wouldn't be practically possible to identify all the physical causal agents
and events that would explain a behaviour or an action. So how would you
respond to this? Is an explanation where I state the intentions or attitude
with which an action was performed fundamentally different from an
explanation where only the physiological causal events are presented?
[Ian]
Because saying "A causes B" as some explanation of a process of
physical causation between objects A and B only makes sense when
thinking of A, B and the process "C" as discrete objects. Good common
sense SOMist short-hand, but full of traps if A, B and C have more
complex inter-relations.
(I'd recommend Paul Turner on "as if" / "dependent arising" causation.)
Regards
Ian
Traps there is, that much is clear, but, the same question to you then, if
one takes a reductionist, objectivist/realist approach to things - is the
traps still there?
I will take a look at Paul Turners writings - but I can't seem to find what
you are refering to in the index of essays; can you point me to it?
Regards
Chris- "Mudding through"
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