Hi Chris, The reductionism question. Theoretically yes, in principle yes, but only in principle; The scientific reduction of the psychological (minds) to the physiological (brains & communications) works, but a scientist who pursues that avenue as the "explanation" of the psychological to get more and more precise and granular defintion of all the individual objects and processes runs into different problems of scale (in numbers and time) and interacting complexity and gets no useful decision-making predictability from the inherent uncertainty. This is (mostly) nothing to do with Heisenberg, just (a) the chaos of zillions of near repetitions - many brains, many neurons, many communications events, many logical events and causes; and (b) the fact that many physical events will have psychological (game theory, and engineered "good trick") inputs too. Many things that can be fully explained only in hindsight (20/20 hindsight as Pirsig would say).
OK (necessary) for explaining mechanisms and understanding strategies that might affect those effects, but useless for explaining the whole in any useful way to make individual future decisions. A "greedy reductionism" to quote Dennett. We may posit that the reduced atomistic reality is "out there" (and I often do, with a semantic process physicalist stance, defending good science) but it's madness to apply it when operating in the evolving experienced world. The very opposite of being pragmatic. There are two-way causal processes between the lower and higher levels, and it is not helpful to think of these effects as "causation" in the traditional sense and then fall into the logical traps too. (David Chalmers - a dualist - suggests "supervenience". Paul Turner suggests "dependent arisings" ... I'll dig out specific references.) Notwithstanding all these cross-level loopy effects, even common sense everyday level causation is positively suspect IMHO, seriously weird ... ie it even where it works well, it really is something psychological and metaphorical for something we don't really understand IMHO ... an evolved mental strategy for dealing with the world rather than a physical effect. This simply becomes more apparent as we diverge away from everyday human scales. But this is more contentious speculation. I'm rambling. Gotta go. Ian On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Christoffer Ivarsson <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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" > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
