Or am I missing the point? — Gnomon

By a country mile, as one would expect.

Is there another external agency, that counters the Linear momentum of the initial Cause? — Gnomon

Non-linearity is generic in nature. Newtonian physics is the special case. Every trajectory in nature is subject to a context of accident and fluctuation, starting with the quantum mechanical and progressing to the emergent constraints that organise turbulent flow and other dissipative structures.

Newtonian physics just hides the irreducible holism of nature. You can see this in the way space and time are the “acausal void” added by hand. We know of course that they are intimately part of the dynamics.

It also hides in the reaction force of the third law. The impact of the rolling ball on its world is seen as the “agential” action - the action force. But to make sense of that, to bring in the world that can give such a thing its proper holistic measure, we balance the book-keeping by saying the little momentum vector is matched by another little momentum vector representing the fact that the world “pushed back” and so closed the system for momentum as the conservation of energy would require.

So if you understand the metaphysics of physics, you can see the games being played with “causality” so as to model the world in the way that humans find the most practical and convenient.

And you would thus also understand what is being left out or papered over as the larger metaphysical content of our understandings.

The subtlest notion in fundamental physics is gauge theory. It speaks to causal holism in ways you haven’t even begun to consider.

And what do you know, the Bayesian Brain crowd are now looking to ground their biosemiotic theory of mind on gauge theory. It is all coming together nicely.

On Bayesian mechanics: a physics of and by beliefs
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0029

Time to get hip to the latest trip? Information theory is so 1990s. These guys are the names you want to start dropping and quote-mining to make it sound like you are up with the game.

So what is the cause that retards your progress as you try to push through the rush hour traffic constrained by the weight of other cars and all the stop lights? What do you say made you late for work? — apokrisis

This is an indication of your faulty way of looking at things. The activity involved is described as pushing through rush hour traffic. The cause of this is the intent to get to work. The end state is described as "late for work". The cause of being late for work is that the person did not find the most efficient way to get there, or did not leave early enough, or something like that. The things which retard your progress are obstacles. Assigning "cause" to the obstacles is simply an attempt to lay the blame for your own mistakes on something else.

How is it that science can measure entropic and viscous forces?

Why is agency just half the story of the world when the other is the frustration of agency that follows from the interaction of agents?

Even if we accept your idiosyncratic framing of causality as agency - an ontology of animism - the logic of systems still applies. — apokrisis

I fully agree with these remarks. Agency is only one part of the story. And, the logic of systems still applies, but it only applies to a different part. Since it takes agency for granted, it cannot be applied toward understanding that other part, agency. So it produces an incomplete understanding. The issue being as I explained already, there is no distinction between the internal boundary and the external boundary. Systems logic doesn't have that accommodation. The problem occurs if someone believes that the logic of systems can produce a complete understanding. This would be a misunderstanding of what systems logic can do.

Take Newton's first law for example. It takes the motion of bodies for granted. This law is extremely useful, and has very wide ranging applicability. However, since it takes motion for granted it cannot be applied toward understanding motion itself, or the cause of motion. Some people might argue that we can apply it toward understanding the cause of motion, because it stipulates that a force is required to alter a body's motion. But that's just a change to motion, and there is no indication as to what a "force" even is, other than just another motion.

Time to get hip to the latest trip? Information theory is so 1990s. These guys are the names you want to start dropping and quote-mining to make it sound like you are up with the game. — apokrisis

Sounds like you've got it all figured-out, while I'm still working-out the bugs in my own little homely theory of causal information. Therefore, I bow to your air of superiority --- as I did obeisance to 180's arrogance before*1. I can't even come close to such a sense of absolute certainty. So I'm not in a position to be condescending. And I'm not engaged in whatever mano e mano game you are playing.

For the record, I'm not really trying to play catch-up with your "hip" expertise. I'm content to just plod along, developing my personal & amateur Information-centric philosophical worldview. It keeps me amused. But I don't take it so seriously that I get offended by alternative perspectives on the world. I can even fit Biosemiotics --- as I superficially understand it --- neatly into the Enformationism thesis. Yet I make no claim to scientific rigor in my non-professional, non-academic retirement hobby. I leave that up to the pros. Hence, on this forum, I'll try to avoid a stare-down with those who are so far above my pay grade, and to limit my dialoging to other un-hip amateur philosophers closer to my own level. :smile:

PS___I see that you are viewing my thesis from the perspective of 1990s Information theory. But I'm incorporating 21st century Information theory into my world model, that you seem to be unaware of, and even disdainful of. That's OK though, I keep myself entertained with feckless Philosophy as a means, not to know-it-all, but to "know thyself".

*1. But I'm an independent-minded vassal, who sometimes mutters under his breath : "E pur si muove"

Even if we accept your idiosyncratic framing of causality as agency - an ontology of animism - the logic of systems still applies. — apokrisis
I fully agree with these remarks. Agency is only one part of the story. — Metaphysician Undercover

I get the impression that is not a fan of Agency in any case, especially top-down agency. So, just for you, here's some ideas from a new biological model of Self-Organization that doesn't mention outside Agency specifically, but does repeatedly mention the role of Information. Is "top-down" information a form of agency? If these information-biased excerpts from the article interest you, I'd like to hear your comments. :smile:

Designing Life :
"Synthetic Morphology" (due to intervention of human agents)
"spontaneously organize" (for no apparent reason ???)
"biological forms seem to have inevitable, unique target structures" (pre-programming??)
"they are able to make use of top-down information" (whence ???)
"Where does form come from? What rules has evolution developed for controlling it?" (Form = pre-coded information?)
"How does a featureless blob that is the early embryo know what to make and where to make it?" (formless potential transformed/enformed into cognizable objects)
"Morphogenesis is a subtle process involving the interplay of information at the scales of the whole organism." (some early theories of morphogenesis were rejected as mystical, because the "rules" were unknown, and the key feature was Holism . Yet Alan Turing postulated a mathematical Theory of Pattern Formation, that is now called a theory of Morphogenesis)
"Einstein . . . . what the real determinant of form and organization is seems quite obscure."
"global rules governing form" ( universal Generic Information ???)
"bioelectric signaling" (Biosemiotics??)
"morphological engineering . . . . desired structure" (natural morphology = design ??)

Scientific American magazine, may 2023, by Phillip Ball
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/synthetic-morphology-lets-scientists-create-new-life-forms/

I'm interested in bottom-up agency.

↪Gnomon
I'm interested in bottom-up agency. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. Who or What is the bottom-line Agent/Agency? : Matter, Energy, Evolution, God, First Cause, "Idiosyncratic Causality", John Barrymore, Other?

Agency (philosophy) :
Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment . . . . Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)

The concept of nodes described by Wolfgang remains interesting but causes controversy when it comes to the linkage of such nodes.

A question that I believe remains unanswered due to the unexplainable effects of biogenesis, although apparently this has primitively emulated in a lab where conditions for life already exist such as humidity, atmospheric prressure etc

OK. Who or What is the bottom-line Agent/Agency? : Matter, Energy, Evolution, God, First Cause, "Idiosyncratic Causality", John Barrymore, Other? — Gnomon

That's the issue, we do not properly know the source of this form of agency. But evidence indicates that we ought to accept it as real. So to portray it as nonexistent just because systems theory doesn't provide the means for modeling it, is a mistake.

the unexplainable effects of biogenesis — simplyG

Unexplained ≠ unexplainable.

OK. Who or What is the bottom-line Agent/Agency? : Matter, Energy, Evolution, God, First Cause, "Idiosyncratic Causality", John Barrymore, Other? — Gnomon
That's the issue, we do not properly know the source of this form of agency. But evidence indicates that we ought to accept it as real. So to portray it as nonexistent just because systems theory doesn't provide the means for modeling it, is a mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

A coy response. But not having empirical knowledge of the cosmic Agent hasn't stopped philosophers from describing its necessary properties, based on rational inference alone. Plato identified his abstract agency in terms of Causation, and Aristotle defined his Prime Actor in terms of Motion, both of which are forms of Change. And yet, such non-human pre-existing Agents are usually imagined as inherently uncaused, unmoved, and changeless ; all negative attributes. But nothing in the known (contingent ; space-time) Real World fits those speculative descriptions. So, anything we might say about the Agent/Agency --- including "real" --- is just an uneducated guess. Care to take a shot in the dark? :smile:

PS___I tend to define my conjectured "form of Agency" in terms of Organization (i.e Information), among other positive attributes : e.g. Enformer. However, since I "do not properly know", no personal characteristics or attributes are presumed.


What the First Cause Is :
Rather, the First Cause is uncaused, beginningless, initially changeless, has libertarian freedom, and is enormously powerful, that is, a transcendent immaterial Creator.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-94403-2_6
Note --- the Kalam argument is based on monotheist presumptions. Which inadvertently makes the First Person responsible for all the good and bad things in the world. Which may be why most monotheists prefer to offload the Evil stuff onto a personal Bad Guy. Ironically, that dualistic gambit seems to deny the mono of Monotheism.

The fact that The Agent (that's what I'll call it for you) cannot be known empirical, does not prevent us from knowing it. That's what's described by Aquinas, as knowing the cause by its effect. This type of knowledge is much more difficult than direct empirical knowledge and subject to a higher degree of fallibility because it relies on empirical knowledge for premises, then goes further through deductive logic. So whereas empirical knowledge may be simple, this knowledge, of the non-empirical,
(what is prior to the empirical as cause of it), requires complex empirical knowledge to proceed logically. Therefore there is more opportunity for error. The common occurrence of this type of knowledge, is the knowledge we get of a person's thoughts, from the person's words, and knowledge of one's intentions, from the person's actions. You can see how this type of knowledge is much more complex than direct empirical knowledge, and has a higher degree of uncertainty.

However, such knowledge need not be "uneducated". We need to proceed only from very strong premises. Here is a starting point. All change, activity in the empirical world requires the passing of time. If no time passed there would be no change. Further analysis of the nature of time, passing from future to past, at the present, and the empirical fact that activity, or change only occurs at the present, reveals that the passing of time is the cause of change, or activity. So we can associate The Agent with the passing of time. To understand the passing of time as non-empirical, yet having an empirical effect (change and activity), is a first step toward understanding how non-empirical causes may have empirical effects.

The fact that The Agent (that's what I'll call it for you) cannot be known empirical, does not prevent us from knowing it. That's what's described by Aquinas, as knowing the cause by its effect. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. That's why, although I lost faith in the bible stories about a father-like Creator, I couldn't deny the reverse logic --- from effect to cause --- that points back to an ultimate Causal Agent of some kind. Until 1931, most scientists apparently assumed that the universe "just-is", with no need for an origin explanation.

Yet, in the early 20th century, pragmatic Astronomers followed the trail of circumstantial red-shift evidence back to a sudden beginning in a mathematical Singularity --- at which the evidence vanishes. When a hunter-tracker, looking for the nest/lair (origin) of his prey, discovers that the trail of tracks suddenly vanishes, he may look up for signs of an eagle to explain the lack of tracks. Or, he can keep searching in the same direction, to see if he can pick-up the trail again.

The Multiverse theory (eternal physical causation) is of the latter kind. Based on the presumption of physical continuity, it assumes that there must be more of the same tracks out there somewhere. Yet, metaphysical Causal Agency theories tend to look-up for some kind of non-empirical Agent to explain the origin of a contingent Reality. Both approaches begin their philosophical search at the transition from empirical evidence to an abyss of Uncertainty. Then, Physicalists fill-in the blanks with hypothetical (presumably real) physical stuff. And Metaphysicalists project (necessarily Ideal) non-physical non-empirical non-stuff into the unknowable void. Or, at least the Potential for real stuff.

Which method is more likely to discover the true origin of Reality? Depends on whether you prefer Real (empirical) Truth or Ideal (logical) Truth. Either way, the search for ultimate truth is, as you say, complicated by the absence of evidence. :smile:

To understand the passing of time as non-empirical, yet having an empirical effect (change and activity), is a first step toward understanding how non-empirical causes may have empirical effects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting notion : time (change) without a material substrate to evolve. How would you describe "non-empirical passage of time"? "Eternity" is usually defined as changeless by philosophers. But for religious purposes, Heavenly Eternity has been described as changeable, but never-ending. How would you define "non-empirical" (non-experiential)Time? :cool:

PS___I recently imagined a new way to think of Time in terms of Causal Energy*1. Not exactly "non-empirical" but knowable only by observing its Effects. Could that be a "step" toward "understanding how non-empirical causes may have empirical effects"?

*1. Time is Energy :
Time is merely how we measure the expenditure of Energy in the form of Entropy (negative trends). Since Energy itself is not a sensable phenomenon, we like to think of it, metaphorically, as a river flowing from a mountaintop into the valley. And yet along the way down, we get some value for the expenditure of Time. The cosmic payback is what we call Evolution, in the positive sense of living creatures descending from inert material.
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page63.html

Interesting notion : time (change) without a material substrate to evolve. How would you describe "non-empirical passage of time"? "Eternity" is usually defined as changeless by philosophers. But for religious purposes, Heavenly Eternity has been described as changeable, but never-ending. How would you define "non-empirical" (non-experiential)Time? — Gnomon

Time is other than change, for a number of reasons. First, change is more specific, particular, it is something becoming different than it was. Time on the other hand is more universal. The very same period of time applies to a vast multitude of different changes. In this way time has become a means for comparing changes. This makes time completely different from change, as something which all changes have in common.

Basically, change is the physical difference that we notice. We do not notice the passing of time, only the physical difference, then we conclude logically that time must have passed. This is because we posit the passing of time as what is required for change. We do this, because we see that all changes have this in common, the passing of time. So whenever we notice that change has occurred, we know that it is necessary that time has passed. But this cannot be reversed. Time can pass with no noticeable physical change. This is evident at time periods shorter than Planck time. A short length of time must pass before change can be noticed. Therefore time is logically prior to physical change. For comparison, "animal" is logically prior to "human being", as something which all human beings have in common, just like all physical change has "time" in common. But we cannot reverse this to say that all time has physical change, just like we cannot say that all animals are human.

Time is other than change, for a number of reasons. — Metaphysician Undercover

Granted. The word "Time" has many shaded meanings, depending on context. But they all seem to refer to discernible Change of some kind. So I was talking about Time as we know it conventionally & empirically (by sensory experience of differences*1 between one observation and another : i.e. Change/Causation*2).

Obviously, only a fraction of the physical changes in the universe are observed or observable (by humans). And philosophers have examined the Epistemology & Ontology of Time from various perspectives : (1) fatalism; (2) reductionism and Platonism with respect to time; (3) the topology of time; (4) McTaggart’s argument; (5) the A-theory and the B-theory; (6) presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory; (7) the 3D/4D debate about persistence; (8) the dynamic and the static theory; (9) the moving spotlight theory; (10) time travel; (11) time and physics and (12) time and rationality*3.

However, only the "Block Time" models involve something "other than change". And Block Time is simply a scientific term for traditional philosophical timeless/changeless Eternity. Are you referring to Events --- if that notion even makes sense in a timeless state of being -- in which nothing changes? In a physical Event, any difference/change is observable in the material form. But, what would constitute a metaphysical temporal Event? I suppose that Fatalism could be construed as a metaphysical concept of Time, in that the predetermined world of the gods, could be interpreted scientifically as a type of expanding Block Time*4.

In Block Time and Eternity theories, a traditional conventional term is used metaphorical & negatively, in order to indicate what Eternity (timelessness) is not. Can you give a positive example of Time that does not involve Change? If so, I may have to modify my essay on Time as Energy/Change, to add : "among other things". :smile:


*1. In my information-based thesis, Time is "the difference that makes a difference" (Bateson on Meaning). If time is "other than Change", does it make any Difference/Meaning to a sentient mind?

"What we mean by information - the elementary unit of information - is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continuously transformed are themselves provided with energy." https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/information-difference.html

*2. I suppose our sensory inputs at different points-in-time, would only be static snapshots, without rational (metaphysical) inference to link those instantaneous frames into a continuous movie. So, from that perspective, Time is not physical Change, but a mental construct that we interpret as Change.

*3. Time :
Those like Aristotle and Leibniz, who think that time is not independent of the events that occur in time, deny the existence of absolute time,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/

*4. What is the growing block theory of time? :
The growing block theory of time holds that the past and present are real, and the future is unreal. The passage of time comprises new things coming into existence: as the present moves forward, and what was once present becomes past, the 'block' of reality grows.
https://academic.oup.com/mind/article-abstract/128/510/527/4317403?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Note --- The Christian concept of Eternity is not static, but more like a "growing block time", which is a process separated from the laws of Nature in a heavenly realm : outside of Time.

What I meant is causation stops at some point. After that the question becomes metaphysical such as first cause etc.

For if you are to have ten nodes you’d need nine and if you wanted a 9 node network you’d need 8 etc… where is the first node in such a network made metaphysically speaking… ?

What I meant is causation stops at some point. After that the question becomes metaphysical such as first cause etc. — simplyG

Yes. In spoken or written language, Ellipsis is the intentional omission of information. But the intention is indicated by a series of dots, or perhaps a smile/smirk after the last word in an incompleted thought : as a clue, meaning "you fill-in the blanks".

In Cosmology, the history of the Self-Organization of the physical universe suddenly stopped at a point in time, where time itself vanished into eternity, defined mathematically as a Singularity. Hence, some cosmologists apparently inferred an ellipsis in the history of our world --- even though there were no physical dots to indicate an intentional omission of information about the provenance of Reality. Not even a "once upon a time". So, they imagined a Metaphysical or Metaphorical gap-filler to allow the story to continue indefinitely into the past.

The inquiring mind seems to know somehow, that logically there should be more to the story. So, Materialists fill-in the pre-history blank with an infinite regression of Multiverses, while Spiritualists infer the logical necessity for an intentional Original Organizer. Which raises the question of what were the "contextual clues" pointing beyond the empirical beginning toward a hypothetical Cause of the known events?

Perhaps, our experience with physical Impetus & Momentum has primed us to look beyond the initial Action for an Actor, responsible for the subsequent patterns of Self-Organization. How else could Time/Change/Evolution just -- suddenly & without warning -- start Ticking/Changing/Organizing for no apparent reason? :smile:


Ellipsis : the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.