Does causality only work forwards in time?

[Hocus Eye.]

Max

I am not saying that causality has no role per se. I argue that if you accept a determinist point of view then causality has no role. I do not accept determinism but do accept causality.

I respect Hume enormously. He was the one who put forward the idea that because previous experience led you to believe that something happened in certain circumstances then that would always be the case.

The example I remember was that if you hold a ball in your hand and let it go then it will drop to the ground. Hume's argument was that just because it had always done so before does not mean that it will always happen. It was a kind of philosophical freedom of ideas.

Hume was supported by the idea that all swans were white. They were at one time. However at a later time black swans were discovered in the antipodes somewhere thus supporting the notion that previous experience doesn't predict future experience.

Of course once gravity was discoverd then a causal relationship between letting go of a ball and it descending to the ground rather undermined Hume's argument.

Causality and Hume's ideas are contradictory. Reverse causality and Hume's ideas are similarly contradictory.

 

[ymu]

no it is about the direction of time and causality

but you could easily relate this to determinism/freewill if you wanted to, but that is not specifically what i am asking about

I think you can easily relate them, but I can't. Determinism is nonsense.

Smoking causes death, but not in the same way that jumping off a tall building without a parachute or safety net causes death. It's more like walking along the edge of a tall building with no railing - the fact that you're taking an increased risk of death doesn't mean you will die as a result.

When causation is interesting, it's nearly always complex and it's rarely deterministic. Einstein was wrong - G-d does play dice.

 

[max_freakout]

I am not saying that causality has no role per se. I argue that if you accept a determinist point of view then causality has no role. I do not accept determinism but do accept causality.

yes i know what you were saying, and i disagree along the lines that causality needn't involve time at all, for example if a causal power originating from a transcendental realm altogether outside of the spacetime continnum, was able to exert causal influence into spacetime (this is my understanding of how a God might influence the world)

I respect Hume enormously

me too he had balls to say what he said when he said it, particularly his views on God and religion, and his views on causality are very insightful

Hume was supported by the idea that all swans were white. They were at one time. However at a later time black swans were discovered in the antipodes somewhere thus supporting the notion that previous experience doesn't predict future experience.

mrs freakout shared this insight when we were at a zoo together, and there was an insect which looks identical to a leaf

Of course once gravity was discoverd then a causal relationship between letting go of a ball and it descending to the ground rather undermined Hume's argument.

was gravity discovered?

surely 'gravity' is jut another word for the constant conjunction of letting go of objects, and their falling towards Earth, which supports Hume perfectly

 

[max_freakout]

Smoking causes death, but not in the same way that jumping off a tall building without a parachute or safety net causes death. It's more like walking along the edge of a tall building with no railing - the fact that you're taking an increased risk of death doesn't mean you will die as a result.

there is apparently a gene which has 2 roles


firstly, it makes the person in possession of said gene, more likely to become addicted to tobacco (a kind of 'addictive personality' gene)

secondly, it makes the person in possession of said gene, more likely to develop lung cancer

this is an example of genetic determinism

 

[laptop]

It's all OK.


I have, through the wonders of backward causation, arranged that, as of tomorrow noon, going back to noon on 9 June 2001, max_freakout will make only sane postings.





Of course, at that instant this thread will be always-already disappeared, so you'll never know I dunnit.

 

[ymu]

surely 'gravity' is jut another word for the constant conjunction of letting go of objects, and their falling towards Earth, which supports Hume perfectly

I think Newton managed a bit more than that.

Causation is not the same thing as association. Science could be described as the business of working out the difference between the two. With reference to the gravity example, Newton came up with a theory that successfully predicted how objects moved under the influence of gravity (and other forces). He wasn't merely noting a constant association - he was describing a predictable relationship, and that's the difference.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

was gravity discovered?

surely 'gravity' is jut another word for the constant conjunction of letting go of objects, and their falling towards Earth, which supports Hume perfectly

Max you may not be quite up with the latest scientific research finding, but yes Gravity has been discovered. A young upstart called Newton has written a paper on it. Possibly it has not yet found its way to your district but it has been causing quite a stir in scientific circles. If as Newton suggests it is a force then Hume will have been proved wrong. All objects held aloft and released will be subject to this force and plummet to the ground with no possibility of exceptions.

 

[ymu]

there is apparently a gene which has 2 roles


firstly, it makes the person in possession of said gene, more likely to become addicted to tobacco (a kind of 'addictive personality' gene)

secondly, it makes the person in possession of said gene, more likely to develop lung cancer

this is an example of genetic determinism

Bollocks is there - that's a tobacco company myth.

Gene's don't work like that. There's no such thing as genetic determinism - simply genetic predisposition. One implies certainty - probability is either zero or one (a very Newtonian view of the world); the other accepts that chance plays a part and these things simply cannot be predicted (the inescapable conclusion of quantum physics).

 

[max_freakout]

Bollocks is there - that's a tobacco company myth.

i should have said 'allegedly' rather than 'apparently'


i learned that nugget in a course on free-will

 

[max_freakout]

If as Newton suggests it is a force then Hume will have been proved wrong. All objects held aloft and released will be subject to this force and plummet to the ground with no possibility of exceptions.

what is the difference between this, and the Humean constant conjunction of letting go of objects/objects falling to the ground?

 

[Dillinger4]

Bollocks is there - that's a tobacco company myth.

Gene's don't work like that. There's no such thing as genetic determinism - simply genetic predisposition. One implies certainty - probability is either zero or one (a very Newtonian view of the world); the other accepts that chance plays a part and these things simply cannot be predicted (the inescapable conclusion of quantum physics).

I have been trying to point this out to max for quite a while.

 

[Dillinger4]

i should have said 'allegedly' rather than 'apparently'


i learned that nugget in a course on free-will

Yeh, you learned it whilst getting the degree you keep claiming you have.

 

[cesare]

i dont know about 'right or wrong' but i have quite a strong conviction personally that causation actually works backwards, perhaps not entirely, or straightforwardly though

fatedness

You aren't really asking a question in your thread then, are you? It's just another thread designed to confirm (or at least give you a greater degree of certainty of) your particular world view.

 

[danny la rouge]

2nd law of thermodynamics is one of the most iron-clad theories in science. There hasn't been a single observation of anything that disobeys it. Therefore, to the best of humanity's knowledge, time moves forward and that's the only direction causality can happen in.

If we observe causality acting in the other direction, we'll have to readjust our ideas a lot.

This is more or less what I was going to say.

It is also the end of the discussion.

 

[Aldebaran]

If the future is already determined then causality has no role. There is no cause in any sequence of time, whether it be forward or backward.

Not quite. It holds the cause within itself.

Aldebaran I respect your intelligence enough to point out the pink troll symbol at the beginning of my post. In other words I was trying to wind up Max Freakout.

I'm not familiar with such symbols
You didn't reply to my comment though.

That does not mean that I subscribe to your Islamic religious point of view, but you do put up a good argument within the constraints of a mystical belief system.

If I answer a question or comment referring to God, I shall frame my answer within my conclusions about God's existence but not necessarily within or in line with what people witness as "mainstream" thought, idea, belief or conviction, whatever that means.

I look forward to the day when you are persuaded to the atheist point of view, you will be a good advocate.

Never going to happen.

salaam.

 

[max_freakout]

Never going to happen.

salaam.

did you used to be an atheist/agnostic and undergo a religious conversion at some point Aldebaran? or were you always religious?

 

[max_freakout]

2nd law of thermodynamics is one of the most iron-clad theories in science. There hasn't been a single observation of anything that disobeys it. Therefore, to the best of humanity's knowledge, time moves forward and that's the only direction causality can happen in.

If we observe causality acting in the other direction, we'll have to readjust our ideas a lot.

i just looked this up and it doesnt say anything about causality

it just says that entropy increases as time moves forward

 

[Crispy]

i just looked this up and it doesnt say anything about causality

it just says that entropy increases as time moves forward

As others have posted, causality is time-neutral for all the physical processes we know of, except increase in entropy. For example, a box divided in two, with two different gases in each half, will mix evenly when the divider is removed.

Cause - removal of divider
Effect - mixing of gases

It is impossible for there to be a cause that has the effect of getting the two gases back into their halves without otherwise increasing entropy somewhere else.

 

[max_freakout]

As others have posted, causality is time-neutral for all the physical processes we know of, except increase in entropy. For example, a box divided in two, with two different gases in each half, will mix evenly when the divider is removed.

Cause - removal of divider
Effect - mixing of gases

It is impossible for there to be a cause that has the effect of getting the two gases back into their halves without otherwise increasing entropy somewhere else.

but how is this any different from the idea of constant conjunction?

this does not contradict backwards causality/fatedness/determinism, because you could argue that the inevitability of the 2 gases becoming mixed, caused the divider to be removed

the second law of thermodynamics doesnt even mention causality

 

[Crispy]

sorry max, I can't put it in any simpler terms

 

[max_freakout]

sorry max, I can't put it in any simpler terms

the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesnt even mention causality, i dont understand why it is relevant to the argument

i understand that entropy never decreases, but what has that got to do with causality?

EDIT:

to use the example you gave, when you remove the divider, you always observe that the gases mix, but this does not say anything about the reason why the gases always mix

so if you say that removing the divider causes the gases to mix, you could equally say that if you play the process backwards, then putting the divider in, causes the gases to separate, there is no difference

 

[laptop]

So we're back to Humean scepticism. Again

The payoff of Humean scepticism for the OP is that if we accept it we can't even make the induction that because max_freakout has always been daft until now, all future threads will be ignorable.

 

[Knotted]

but how is this any different from the idea of constant conjunction?

this does not contradict backwards causality/fatedness/determinism, because you could argue that the inevitability of the 2 gases becoming mixed, caused the divider to be removed

the second law of thermodynamics doesnt even mention causality

The past over-determines the future and the future under-determines the past. To get to the state of the two gases becoming more mixed, it would not be necessary to open the shutter completely, it could be half opened - we cannot determine this from the fact that the gases are mixed.

 

[Knotted]

Russell:
"The concept “cause”, as it occurs in the works of most philosophers, is one which is apparently not used in any advanced science. But the concepts that are used have been developed from the primitive concept (which is that prevalent among philosophers), and the primitive concept, as I shall try to show, still has importance as the source of approximate generalisations and pre-scientific inductions, and as a concept which is valid when suitably limited. (1948, p. 471)."

Quoted from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-process/
People trained in philosophy and people trained in physics are going to talk past each other horribly here.

 

[Knotted]

The past over-determines the future and the future under-determines the past. To get to the state of the two gases becoming more mixed, it would not be necessary to open the shutter completely, it could be half opened - we cannot determine this from the fact that the gases are mixed.

Sorry, that was rubbishy.

A better example is that we cannot tell how mixed the gases are in the first place.

 

[max_freakout]

Russell:
"The concept “cause”, as it occurs in the works of most philosophers, is one which is apparently not used in any advanced science. .

which is why laws of thermodynamics have no relevance whatsoever to this debate

 

[max_freakout]

we cannot tell how mixed the gases are in the first place.

if we start with 2 gases, which are 2 different colours, you can tell how mixed they are just by looking at the colours

but we neednt use this example anyway, the kettle/tea example is perfectly adequate to demonstrate this point

 

[max_freakout]

The past over-determines the future and the future under-determines the past. To get to the state of the two gases becoming more mixed, it would not be necessary to open the shutter completely, it could be half opened - we cannot determine this from the fact that the gases are mixed.

even if the shutter was only opened a tiny bit, physics dictates that the 2 gases would end up mixed homogenously

 

[bluestreak]

which is why laws of thermodynamics have no relevance whatsoever to this debate

This might help a little.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7440217.stm

Interesting stuff.

 

[hipipol]

Time going backwards???

Oh shit, its Deja Vu all over again




and again




and again