Unfortunately, what you are talking about may be clear in your own mind, but it's not clear to my simple mind. — Gnomon

Did you read all my posts? I'm guessing you didn't.

This is a great summary of the "blooming, buzzing confusion." Better than the one I've presented in the OP and my subsequent posts in this thread.

You feel the notion of causality is too simple to deal with the complexities of reality. Applying its simple rules quickly becomes defeated by the fact that reality is just too much to be boiled down into chains of cause and effect. Everything is too networked, too interdependent, too full of feedback and strange loops. Stuff emerges. Things are transformed. Growth and development leave linear tales of cause and effect fast behind. — apokrisis

Yes.

Which is all true. But that is only to say that Nature is not a machine. A machine is designed to have a mechanical logic, a cause and effect linearity. It can be described in terms of a blueprint and a system of differential equations. But Nature is irreducibly complex. Or at least that is the conclusion of the systems science tradition that has sought a better model of natural causality - the causality of a cosmos - since philosophy first started cranking up. — apokrisis

Maybe this is where our differences start. From what I've observed, most people don't recognize the irreducibly complex reality you describe. For them, causality means simple systems--billiard balls. That's the curse of reductionism. That's what I'm talking about. Your complex and nuanced understanding of causality is not how most people understand it. We civil engineers don't work with machinery, we go out into nature and treat it as machinery. We're not the only ones.

Massively large calculations could hope to do a reasonable approximation of the intricate patterns of connection that make up any natural system. One could simulate the weather, the internals of a proton, the boom and bust of fishing stocks or stock markets. Networks of feedback arranged into hierarchies of such networks over logarithmic scale. Throw in phase transition behaviour too. It’s all become standard causal modelling. — apokrisis

I was going to mention numerical monitoring in my OP, but I didn't think I could do it justice. I'm not a modeler, but I have worked with them. We used groundwater and river flow models often in my work. I was going to use modeling as an example of the kinds of efforts required to overcome a knee-jerk dependence on causal processes. In a model you break up reality into little cells and apply simple causal processes within and between those cells. That just brings us back to my original question. When you're dealing with such a complex system, why do you need the idea of causality? Of course reality can be described using the language of cause, but why do it?

Well the history of humanity seems to suggest no. The problem is more the lag between the partial reductionst models and the later arrival of the more holistic models. We are already running at one level of inquiry before having learnt to walk at the next. — apokrisis

This makes sense to me.

Nope, not how it works. — Darkneos

Yup, that’s how it works. From the web.

Freud recognized two different types of processes, the preconscious, which contains thoughts that can easily become conscious, and the unconscious proper, which holds repressed material that cannot be directly accessed.

In Hume, legitimate beliefs exist. They occur in a process of recurrent association. A belief is legitimate when it is associated with a vivid impression. For example, the belief that one object will move after another is based on past experience of their constant conjunction. Hume concluded that fundamental beliefs, such as the existence of an external world or the existence of the self, are not rationally justifiable but are legitimate because they are the result of experience and custom. — JuanZu

So, you can’t trust induction, so just act as if you can. After all, what else are you going to do? Seems kind of a cheat. It’s not rational, but it’s legitimate. What other use is there for rationality other than to help us figure out what to do?

How can you, or anyone else, uphold responsibility sans “the whole idea of causality”? — javra

I posted this earlier in this thread.

there are everyday, common sense situations where the chain of causality is simple--as you called them "brute force causes." I would have no problem with saying I hit the ball in the pocket. I caused the ball to go in the pocket. At human scale that kind of judgment is necessarily so I can be held accountable for my actions. — T Clark

That’s why I don’t claim the idea of causality is useless in all situations.

As with many, if not most, disagreements on this forum, the controversy hinges on the definition of key terms. — Gnomon

In the OP and subsequent posts, I think I’ve made it reasonably clear what I’m talking about when I say “causality.”

But scientists & philosophers tend to assume Universal Causation as an axiom, despite the rare exceptions. — Gnomon

This is not true. Many do not.

But I’ve come to prefer a version of the so-called Transference theory of causation, where causation ought to be reduced to the transference of physical conserved quantities, like “momentum” or “energy”, from one object to another. Though I’m not sure I believe in “physical conserved quantities”, it is at least intuitive and empirical to say that one object hitting another caused the other to move. — NOS4A2

I’ve come to the same sort of conclusion you have— looking at cause, efficient cause, is a question of the transfer of energy. That doesn’t change the primary question in this thread, i.e. is the whole idea of causality useful in most situations? My answer is “no” or at least “maybe not”

That the reed hitting the black on the billiard table, causing it to move, is a different sort of explanation to that you went to the fridge because you wanted a beer, and different again to vaccinations causing the number of measles cases to decline. — Banno

I intentionally left out instances where a human motivation was involved because I wanted to avoid the complications associated with that. I think the difference between the billiard balls and the inoculations is the difference between a very simple instance where efficient cause probably does make sense and a more complicated one where it might not.

it's more a way of offering an explanation than some underlying universal mechanism. — Banno

I understand this, but I think it’s not a useful way of looking at things.

Don't be insulted. — apokrisis

I’m not insulted at all. I was just making an observation. I think this post confirms my observation is correct.

Well we can't really be aware of our internal mental processes since much of it happens unconsciously. — Darkneos

Sure we can. You’re right that you don’t have access to everything. But then again, the kinds of subjects that philosophy covers tend to be associated with conscious attention and intention. It’s also true that the more aware you become, the more of your unconscious mental activity becomes conscious.

Not sure if we even live on the same planet. — apokrisis

Even I'm not sure the US is on the same planet as everyone else these days.

There is indeed a reason for confusion. You have glimpses of fragments and they all seem to come from different puzzles. — apokrisis

It's clear from this thread I'm working on pulling my thoughts on this subject together. I don't think that's the same thing as glimpsing fragments from different puzzles.

This could take a while.... — apokrisis

Yes, I knew I was in trouble when you brought Peircian triads into the discussion.

And there will be those who just love such an answer.

But there is a reason why pragmatism describes it as the natural state of the newborn helpless babe when thrust kicking and screaming into the strange new world.

We start with the simple things so as to move on to the complicated things. Or in your case, its a shrug of the shoulders? Once you seem to be getting by, why should other folk still be working hard to get ahead? — apokrisis

A bit condescending.

I'm saying the reason the 8 ball moved is the physical impact of the cue ball, and the reason the cue moved is your decision to move it. Those seem very different to me. — Patterner

I see what you mean, but I tried to keep human intention out of the question. I can see I kind of slipped some in.

Wouldn't one response be, T Clark, that identifying a dichotomy also depends on were you look? That what constitutes a dichotomy is also a matter of convention, at least as much as a matter of fact? — Banno

To tell the truth, I'm not really sure what @apokrisis means by "dichotomy" in this context.

Nice OP! — hypericin

Thank you.

I feel you have demonstrated less that cause is not a useful concept, but that the concept needs a lot of refinement to generalize beyond toy cases. The problem is that people want to take the toy concept and apply it to everything. — hypericin

Do you consider the description of the salt marsh I discussed as a "toy case?" If so, I disagree.

In a family tree there is a orderly relationship between causes and effects, where every effect has two immediate causes, four nearest proximate causes, 8 second nearest, and so on. In reality there is no such order. any event may have any number of causes, arising from anywhere on the graph. Effects of a cause may even simultaneously serve as a cause of the cause, in the case of feedback loops. — hypericin

The question I've been asking is--if it is such a complex system of events, why bring the idea of causality into it at all. Why not just describe the system? To be clear, I acknowledge it is possible to express just about any situation in the language of causality, it's just that in many, most, cases it doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Peirce had his model of tychism or the probability of propensities. Popper recapitulated it. So the idea has been taken seriously. — apokrisis

I looked up "propensity probability" on Wikipedia and it said this:

Propensities are not relative frequencies, but purported causes of the observed stable relative frequencies. Propensities are invoked to explain why repeating a certain kind of experiment will generate a given outcome type at a persistent rate. Stable long-run frequencies are a manifestation of invariant single-case probabilities. — Wikipedia

That seems like a patch to me. A patch to cover the hole in the idea of causality related to what I called as probabilistic causality.

Something that interests me greatly is the singularity of the effect that cannot be reduced. — JuanZu

I'm not sure what you mean in this context. Previously I suggested just describing the conditions rather than attributing causality. Is that the same thing you are talking about.

But that is the metaphysical architecture that sets up the dynamic interplay over time. It is boiling causality down into the logical account rather than describing it in terms of the blooming, buzzing confusion one might appear to experience. — apokrisis

This is the point I'm trying to make. What does it add to the discussion to talk about causality instead of just describing the "blooming, buzzing confusion?" My answer--not much, and it misleads people into thinking there is a simple chain of events when, in reality, there is a complex system of interactions. That misunderstanding has significant consequences when you try to go about figuring out what buttons to push and levers to pull.

OK, how would you describe "changes in energy", while avoiding the notion of Causation? — Gnomon

In the OP I've given specific examples of situations where changes take place but it is not useful to use the term "causality." Many people here have disagreed with my characterization.

I’m curious as to how it resonates with your reading of Collingwood. — Joshs

I was using Collingwood's definition of metaphysics, not specifically causality. My claim is that causality is a metaphysical principle. It can't be verified or falsified empirically. He does talk about causality in "An Essay on Metaphysics" and I interpret his understanding of cause as being similar to what I call efficient cause. Here is what he has to say:

(a) ’In Newtonian physics it is presupposed that some events (in the physical world; a qualification which hereinafter the reader will please understand when required) have causes and others not. "Events not due to the operation of causes are supposed to be due to the operation of laws. Thus if a body moves freely along a straight line pi, p^, pz, A • • • its passing the point at a certain time, calculable in advance from previous observation of its velocity, is an event which is not according to Newton the effect of any cause whatever. It is an event which takes place not owing to a cause, but according to a law. But if it had changed its direction at p^, having collided there with another body, that change of direction would have been an event taking place owing to the action of a cause (see Note on p. 57).

{b) -In the nineteenth century we find a different presupposition being made by the general body of scientists: namely that all events have causes. About the history and interpretation of this I shall have more to say in the concluding chapters. Here I will anticipate only so far as to say that I do not know any explicit statement of it earlier than Kant ; and accordingly I shall refer to the physics based upon it as the Kantian physics. * The peculiarity of Kantian physics is that it uses the notion of cause and the notion of law, one might almost say, interchangeably : it regards all laws of nature as laws according to which causes in nature operate, and all causes in nature as operating according to law.

(c) In modem physics the notion of cause has disappeared. * Nothing happens owing to causes; everything happens according to laws. Cases of impact, for example, are no longer regarded as cases in which the Laws of Motion are rendered inoperative by interference with one body on the part of another; they are regarded as cases of ‘free’ motion (that is, motion not interfered with) under peculiar geometrical conditions, a line of some other kind being substituted for the straight line of Newton’s First Law. — R.W. Collingwood

I find Collingwood difficult sometimes, so I'm not really sure if what he calls action without cause--type (c) in his classification, is the same thing I am talking about.

It isn’t a fixed logical schema but a dynamic interplay that unfolds over time. Organisms live causality as an ongoing, enactive process, not as a formal reciprocal equation. — Joshs

Aren't you talking about what I've called "probabilistic causality" or "complex systems?" As I noted in the OP, I see those as evidence that the idea of cause is not a useful one.

I was just saying that the links in the chain of events you listed represent two very different types of cause. — Patterner

What are the two types of causes? I was trying to limit my discussion to efficient cause. Did I fail?

Mechanical forces are quite a particular subset of physics. They depend on the simplistic ontology of atoms in a void. Particles that have mass, shape and motion. They can stick together or recoil at the instant they happen to come into physical contact. They can compound or scatter as a second order topological fact.

So yes. This is a very restricted, if very useful, model of causality. — apokrisis

I'm lost. Confused. Is what we are calling mechanistic cause the same as efficient cause. That was what I intended. It's Newtonian cause. f = ma; F = G(m₁m₂)/r²; and then updated by general relativity and quantum mechanics. Me pushing a shopping cart, throwing a ball. Also included are all the things that happen with no people around--a billion light years from here.

I think you and I speak a different language.

It is exactly what you want if you are in the business of turning nature into a system of machinery. — apokrisis

As you wrote--pushing buttons and pulling levers.

So the natural world has a rich causality. — apokrisis

By this do you mean rich efficient causality? Please describe to me how that works. How it's different from f = ma.

I have come to see that philosophy is a practice like meditation, exercise, learning musical instruments, tai chi, martial arts, and similar enterprises. As with all such practices, the goal is self-awareness. Philosophy is a practice that focuses on becoming more aware of our internal mental processes. This is certainly how it is for me.

@apokrisis @Count Timothy von Icarus @Patterner @Janus @JuanZu @bert1

I often complain that people don't put enough effort into providing definitions of the words they're using in arguments. Now I'm wondering if I've fallen into that same trap. I'm not sure I mean the same thing when I say "causality" as the rest of you do. I thought it was something simple and clear, but maybe I was wrong. As I wrote back in the OP, I'm looking at causality as it is expressed in the principle of sufficient reason--everything must have a reason or a cause. I have always understood that to mean efficient cause and perhaps, as apokrisis noted, material cause. Patterner called it brute force cause. Thinking of it mechanistically, I'm talking about causality that includes the transfer of energy from one system, the cause, to another, the effect.

That's the argument I have been trying to make--the idea of cause, efficient cause, is not useful in many cases and can be misleading. Perhaps you all and I have been arguing from different starting points. Certainly that's true of me and apokrisis, but as I was working to respond to all the responses, it started to seem like it may be true of others also.

I was trying to distinguish between different types of causes. Cue hitting cue ball, cue ball hitting 8 ball, and 8 ball falling in the pocket are all one type. I don't know what anybody else might call them, but I would probably just call them brute force causes? Thing 1 bangs into Thing 2, and Thing 2 moves. — Patterner

I do understand the point you were trying to make. As I said previously, there are everyday, common sense situations where the chain of causality is simple--as you called them "brute force causes." I would have no problem with saying I hit the ball in the pocket. I caused the ball to go in the pocket. At human scale that kind of judgment is necessarily so I can be held accountable for my actions. The point I was trying to make is that particular choice is arbitrary. It's a matter of convention. As I noted in the OP, there are lots of other places along the chain of causality I could have identified as the cause. Which raises the question--why did you pick those particular places to make the breaks?

But all you keep doing is collapsing causality to the notion of efficient cause and then talking about the other thing of "context". — apokrisis

I've been going back and forth trying to figure out how to respond to this for awhile. I haven't given up. I'll be back later.

I don't think the asteroid and Hitler were constraints. The asteroid prevented the continued evolution of dinosaurs by wiping them out. Or, iirc, it wiped out land animals above a certain size. — Patterner

I guess that’s my understanding of what a constraint is— something that prevents something else from happening. It reduces the number of possible futures.

Mutations perhaps? — Janus

But there have been tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of mutations that led to the multiplicity of life here on earth. Just saying “mutations” doesn’t really have much meaning.

The final cause was traditionally considered to be the telos or purpose of a thing. That would involve how it fits into the overall web. We can think of the global conditions, which include both constraints and opportunities, as providing for the possibility or impossibility of the existence of particulate things and kinds of things. Think of environmental niches, for example. — Janus

I don’t see it. How does the the full context of existence here on earth constitute its purpose?

the primary Cause for physical science is Energy. — Gnomon

That doesn’t make sense to me. All there is is energy. Matter is energy. It’s changes in energy that need a causal description.

The 8 ball went into the pocket because the cue ball hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue ball hit the 8 ball because the cue hit it. It couldn't have done anything else.
The cue hit the cue ball because your muscles and bones moved in specific ways. It couldn't have done anything else. — Patterner

Sure. I have no problem with that as long as you recognize that that particular way of breaking things up is not the only way of looking at it. It’s a matter of convention. You decided which particular aspects to focus on based on your own judgment, and not on any kind of universal principle. That focus was a matter of human value, not scientific principle.

Here's where the break comes. Your muscles and bones moved in those specific ways because you chose to move them in those specific ways, because you intended the cue to hit the cue ball, because you intended the cue ball to hit the 8 ball, because you intended the 8 ball to go into the pocket. (i'm assuming you intended to hit the 8 ball into the pocket.) But that didn't have to happen. — Patterner

Are you saying that the appropriate place to make a break is based on human intention? So that causality only is significant when there’s people around. I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, so I think I must be misunderstanding.

The section on 'Complex Systems' doesn't actually mention causation. — bert1

I think you’re right, I should have been clearer about what was caused and what wasn’t. On the other hand, that’s sort of the point. Here is the salt marsh sitting out there by the ocean just existing and changing based on the behavior of a very complex biological and physical system. What’s actually causing what out there? Can you point to something causing something else?

But isn't my argument here that holism means all four of Aristotle's four causes. And reductionism just means material and efficient cause. Or even in very reduced renderings, just efficient cause. Closed patterns of logical entailment. The stuff of logical atomism. — apokrisis

From what I've read in your posts, Aristotle's four causes are a major organizing principle of your metaphysics. I must admit I don't get it. I think I understand the four types of cause, but I don't see them as a particularly useful or interesting. I think there are other, better ways of seeing things. I've tried to lay that out in this thread.

So that is why I don't understand why you would seem to say you would rather let go completely of causality – and in return for what exactly – while I instead make causality my preoccupation. — apokrisis

My claim is that in many cases, focusing on cause makes it harder to account for context. Even worse, it makes it much harder to even be aware of it. When you then start pushing buttons and pulling levers, you get results that don't achieve the goals you intend. Most things are not caused in any simple easy to trace way. The salt marsh I described is out there in the world doing the kinds of things salt marshes do. What's causing that? It's dozens of different factors interacting with each in a complex pattern. What does the idea of cause provide in that kind of situation.

Causality is the primary metaphysical fact. It is the basis of any explanation or narrative we might have. — apokrisis

You are preoccupied with causality, I am preoccupied with metaphysics. I have a lecture I give ad nauseum about my understanding. Here's what I wrote in the OP:

"causality" is a metaphysical concept, by which I mean it represents a point of view, a perspective, not a fact. As R.G. Collingwood might say, the Principle of Sufficient Reason - everything must have a reason or a cause - is an absolute presupposition, not a proposition. Absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, they have what Collingwood calls "logical efficacy" - they are useful. — T Clark

Collingwood wrote "Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking."

I wonder how much of our disagreement comes from a difference of understanding of what metaphysics is and how it applies. As Collingwood indicates, a metaphysics applies to a particular kind of thinking at a particular time, it’s not universal. I don’t reject the idea of causality completely, I just believe it’s not always the right way of looking at things.

So – with my ecology hat on – the causal explanation for climate change is as plain as the nose on your face. Nothing would even have gone wrong if the damn planet had the atmospheric physics which would have released the heat all this industrial burning was producing rather than trapping it with the greenhouse gases the burning also created. — apokrisis

And I guess I look at it from the other side. We have climate change because people made decisions based on simplistic causes, ignoring the full context of the actions they implemented.

Those are what I facetiously call "Faith communities" because their worldviews are based on non-empirical Axioms. As Hume noted, specific Evidence & formal Logic may support the general (universal) conclusions, but do not prove them. The degree of Faith may be measured in terms of Bayesian Belief*2. — Gnomon

What you call “faith communities” I call “metaphysical positions.” They are unavoidable and, as I’ve noted many times, cannot be proven or falsified.

But seriously, I think you're using the term "beautiful" here in a pretty broad way, so maybe a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset. This issue isn't a small one because the definition of "beauty" is obviously central to aesthetics and this whole conversation.

So, define "beauty" so that the term makes sense in claiming a legal brief is beautiful in some way as is a sunset beautiful so that the term can be applied to both. — Hanover

It’s a feeling I get when I read poetry or fiction. My primary aesthetic medium is the written word. I like music and visual arts, but my relationship to them is not as close. The feeling I’m talking about is the same one I get when I read anything well written—poetry, fiction, technical documents, legal documents, construction documents, philosophy, history, letters, emails, posts here on the forum. It’s the same feeling. Competence is beautiful.

What saith Collingswood on it? — Hanover

I’m not sure what Collingwood would say about beauty and I’m too lazy to go check. What he says about art is that it is a way for the artist to express their experience and share it with an audience.

Now think about it the other way : I take a walk in the woods. Does that affect, say, the orbit of Jupiter? Let's think about one of the countless human actions. Since there are so many, shouldn't they alter the orbit of Jupiter? — JuanZu

The situation you describe is no different in principle from the one I described about the LIGO system. You can claim that everything in the universe affects everything else, but at some point you have to limit the scope of the cause and effect in order to be able to say anything intelligible.

For convenience, perhaps, we impose boundaries on causes for effects; however, causes go all the way back… — PoeticUniverse

The point of my OP is that thinking about things that way is not necessarily useful and can be misleading.

I have no problem with this, but I think sometimes, often, it doesn't make sense to consider causality at all.
— T Clark

That is an idea completely baffling to me. How can you even think if not causally? What would that even look like? — apokrisis

This surprises me. I think of you as intellectually committed to a holistic approach. As I see it, reductionism and causality go hand-in-hand.

Well there is nothing wrong with efficient cause in itself. It is part of the Aristotelean package. And clearly it is the notion of cause that we humans have in front of mind. We are always looking for the switches to switch and the levers to pull. Where we fit into nature, into the flow of the world, is where we can insert a choice - a difference that makes a difference. — apokrisis

As a civil engineer, I’m one of those guys always looking for switches and levers. Over my career I’ve seen how disruptive that kind of approach can be—applying rational methods that ignore environmental and social context.

Context would be the facts about what constrains the possibilities as the other kind of facts. — apokrisis

Again, looking at my engineering experience, ignoring context is what leads to unintended consequences. It makes it impossible to pull those levers, push those buttons, and get the kind of results you expect and desire.

Then life and mind come along and note that this is the causality of physics. You are allowed to exist under the scope of becoming an informationally-complex dissipative structure. If you can add efficient cause – some system of levers and switches that unblock pent-up entropy flows – then physics will pay for you for that small service. Become the blades of vegetation intercepting the sun, become the little critters with legs, mouths and arses. Get focused on imposing a causal mechanics on the world and you can have a job for life, even if you accelerate the entropification of nature just a tiny bit. — apokrisis

I don’t get this. It seems wildly simplistic and optimistic. This is the kind of thinking that leads to climate change. Not only do you focus in unrealistically closely on the causes, but also focus in unrealistically closely on the results.

There are efficient causes and then there are overall conditions. Perhaps the overall conditions for the evolution of humans would not have obtained if the asteroid had not hit. — Janus

What are the efficient causes of evolution?

Some seem to consider overall conditions to be equivalent to final causation not efficient causation. — Janus

I don’t get that. It’s certainly different than my understanding of final cause.

No. I mean, is the discontinuity in the chain of causality something that we simply draw subjectively so that we do not have to go to infinity, or is it something objective in the world, that there is actually a type of discontinuity in the causality of the world that explains why we explain some things better with a specific causality and not with just any causality? — JuanZu

Do distant galaxies influence everyday activities here on earth? Sure, recent studies of gravity waves show they can have an influence from billions of light years away, but very, very minimally. Very very, very minimally. So minimally that it makes no sense to consider it in any evaluation of causality here. The LIGO detectors can reportedly measure disturbances of less than the diameter of an atom. Please don’t ask me how.

The question is: when we separate the events in question from their surrounding environment, is it simply an epistemic construct or is there really an objective kind of disconnect? — JuanZu

I call causality a metaphysical principle. Is that what you mean by "epistemic construct?"