Is there really Cause and Effect?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Why not? Have you actually worked out how the global concept maps into small-scale changes?

I've done as much as we can do, and in may ways we aren't that much better than we were in the 40s. Reductionism works pretty well for most physics and chemistry (right up until you get to particle physics, in many ways). It sucks for computational neuroscience and biophysics. In order to model functions we have to map the functions as global or non-local top-down controls. Otherwise we just get chaos. This is true even of single neuron models. That's why reductionism is abandoned in the systems sciences (like systems biology) as in inadequate method and a flawed paradigm. QM isn't the only nonlocal mechanics. Classical electrodynamics and other classical mechanical physics are as well (in some ways more so, as quantum mechanics has, at least mathematically, fairly specific and constrained nonlocality).

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

I've done as much as we can do, and in may ways we aren't that much better than we were in the 40s. Reductionism works pretty well for most physics and chemistry (right up until you get to particle physics, in many ways). It sucks for computational neuroscience and biophysics. In order to model functions we have to map the functions as global or non-local top-down controls. Otherwise we just get chaos. This is true even of single neuron models. That's why reductionism is abandoned in the systems sciences (like systems biology) as in inadequate method and a flawed paradigm. QM isn't the only nonlocal mechanics. Classical electrodynamics and other classical mechanical physics are as well (in some ways more so, as quantum mechanics has, at least mathematically, fairly specific and constrained nonlocality).

...This went way over my head. Can you try to dumb it down just a little? Reductionism is how things are the sum of their parts right? Like anything complex can be broken down into its simple parts? Why does this fall apart in Particle Physics (or was it just particles?) is it because those "simple" parts are more complex than what they make?

Also...I'm asking you to reduce the complexity of your statement regarding to how reductionism fails at reducing when it comes to particles...

 

[Ouroboros]

I hit my finger with a hammer, and it hurt. So, yes, there is cause and effect.

What exactly caused you to feel pain?

1. Hammer?
2. Particles in the hammer?
3. The actual contact between hammer and finger (which doesn't happen physically--I think it's an effect of repelling forces maybe?)?
4. Nerve endings?
5. Biochemoelectrical signals sent to your brain?
6. The pain center in your brain?
... (oh, I saw you already covered non-pain-causing hammers... I'll end my list now)

But... maybe it was just the hammer manufacturer's fault and you should sue them? (California style)

 

[Ouroboros]

I've done as much as we can do, and in may ways we aren't that much better than we were in the 40s. Reductionism works pretty well for most physics and chemistry (right up until you get to particle physics, in many ways). It sucks for computational neuroscience and biophysics. In order to model functions we have to map the functions as global or non-local top-down controls. Otherwise we just get chaos. This is true even of single neuron models. That's why reductionism is abandoned in the systems sciences (like systems biology) as in inadequate method and a flawed paradigm. QM isn't the only nonlocal mechanics. Classical electrodynamics and other classical mechanical physics are as well (in some ways more so, as quantum mechanics has, at least mathematically, fairly specific and constrained nonlocality).

I wanted to frubal this but the system told me I couldn't. So here's a virtual frubal through a post instead.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

...This went way over my head. Can you try to dumb it down just a little?

ME!? God no. That's a job for someone with intelligence. Luckily, I'm not the first to say this by a long shot and in addition to the many written materials I have on the subject I happen to know of a lecture which addresses this very issue. Rather than plagiarize an explanation, I can provide it instead:

[youtube]NZ-ElsvYKyo[/youtube]
Lecture 1 | Topics in String Theory

The lecture begins with reductionism and why "modern theories really do spell the end of reductionism".

is it because those "simple" parts are more complex than what they make?

For particle physics (in a word)- yes. For complex systems, things like circular causality and arbitrary choice of dependent vs. independent variables get in the way. The most famous example is Rosen's Metabolism-Repair [M, R] systems. When trying to model a function like metabolism-repair, it quickly becomes obvious that you can't explain it in terms of it's parts as the function is both constantly causing and being caused by basically the whole cell. Put simply, things are very connected in ways that make it impossible to treat the system in terms of its parts.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So here's a virtual frubal through a post instead.

Worth even more. Thanks!

 

[PolyHedral]

Classical electrodynamics and other classical mechanical physics are as well (in some ways more so, as quantum mechanics has, at least mathematically, fairly specific and constrained nonlocality).

I'm fairly sure its possible to prove that classical electromagnetism is local.

For particle physics (in a word)- yes. For complex systems, things like circular causality and arbitrary choice of dependent vs. independent variables get in the way. The most famous example is Rosen's Metabolism-Repair [M, R] systems. When trying to model a function like metabolism-repair, it quickly becomes obvious that you can't explain it in terms of it's parts as the function is both constantly causing and being caused by basically the whole cell. Put simply, things are very connected in ways that make it impossible to treat the system in terms of its parts.

So why are you extrapolating from, "This is impractical to model" to, "This is ontologically not the case?"

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I'm fairly sure its possible to prove that classical electromagnetism is local.

It isn't:
"In light of the important role that principles of locality have played in the interpretation of classical electrodynamics, it might come as a surprise that Dirac's [classical theory of the electron], which, as we have seen, is the most promising candidate for a fully consistent theory of classical charged particles, is causally nonlocal. On its standard interpretation, the theory allows for forces to act where they are not and for superluminal causal propagation."


Frisch, M. (2005). Inconsistency, asymmetry, and non-locality. Oxford University Press.

So why are you extrapolating from, "This is impractical to model" to, "This is ontologically not the case?"

I'm not. I just simplified. First, reductionism fails ontologically at the level of particle physics at least. It fails from a theoretical/empirical perspective at least when dealing with complex systems.

ontological indeterminacy involves unpredictably that cannot become predictable even with ideal observers and measurements. That is, even in theory we couldn't know future states. Ontological means it "really exists". Epistemic indeterminacy, on the other hand, concerns practical limits. We can't "know" future states because there are just too many variables or processes for us to handle now, but if we had perfect instruments and ideal observers, then we could know these states. In the former case, we are limited because the unpredictability is part of the system itself. This need not involve random (in the probabilistic sense) processes like in QM. Nonlinear systems present a challenge because our approach to nonlinearity mathematically involves treating curves like lines. Locally, they are like lines. However, in higher dimensions the phase space of complex systems behave so erratically that even infinitesimal changes in time lead to fluctuations we can't even in theory model. Such systems are ontologically indeterminate in that the necessary solutions are impossible (the systems are mathematically intractable). Epistemic indeterminacy can be quite similar to this type of ontological indeterminacy. The difference is subtle, but a simplistic and easier way of conceptualizing it is to think of complex systems which are ontologically indeterminate as being too complex for mathematical models to "solve" while epistemic indeterminacy involves too many processes and external influences for use to control (or control for) mechanically in e.g., an experiment.

Quantum mechanics is a statistical mechanics at heart. It is entirely deterministic only because it treats the system as being in multiple states at once. There is no way of knowing which one of (potentially infinite) possible states one will get without measurement. The indeterminacy is absolute and we cannot even in theory "know" future states. Currently, although some postulate that there are other, similar processes that are absolutely-even-in-theory-indeterminate we have no empirical evidence that these aren't just too hard to model mathematically or too difficult for us to work with experimentally rather than exhibiting the kind of randomness inherent in QM.

 

[Mycroft]

I'm not well versed in the philosophy of cause and effect. Growing up it seemed like a rather easy to grasp. I do X and I'll get Y. Much of what we do rely on cause and effect, and religion itself especially in Christianity positions God as a Cause and the Universe as an effect.

I've been trying to read up on causality lately and I'll admit it flies over my head, but it seems that the way we "perceive, think, or accept" causality may not be how it actually operates. I've also learned that a lot of things deal more with correlations rather than a singular known cause.

I was hoping someone could clear this up for me, and if a good debate comes out of it as well, the better

Yes.

evidence:

You saw a new post in the thread you made (cause)

You went to read it (effect).

You saw what was written (cause).

You decided to reply (effect).

This is why I don't believe in free-will, because free-will implies effect without cause, but everything is caused by something else.

 

[Thief]

Yes.

evidence:

You saw a new post in the thread you made (cause)

You went to read it (effect).

You saw what was written (cause).

You decided to reply (effect).

This is why I don't believe in free-will, because free-will implies effect without cause, but everything is caused by something else.

Now, now, now....
Reaction to a post is not cause and effect.

For every effect there is a cause and for every cause there is an effect.
No science experiment is valid without one to the other.
Without one to the other, no certainty can be made.

I say....the big bang had a Cause.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This is why I don't believe in free-will, because free-will implies effect without cause, but everything is caused by something else.

I have two paired photons 11 kilometers apart. Their spins are correlated, meaning that there is a causal connection between the two. However, we know mathematically that it is impossible for their to be any causal connection between the two without violating special relativity by exceeding the speed of light. Causality requires locality. In order to "cause" some effect, things have to make contact (I can yell at someone from a hundred meters away, but they only turn because of the local effect of sound hitting their ear drum). There is no way for anything to make contact in this case. What causes the correlation?

Causality is inconsistent with modern physics

"The stretching and folding operation of a chaotic attractor systematically removes the initial information and replaces it with new information: the stretch makes small-scale uncertainties larger, the fold brings widely separated trajectories together and erases large-scale information. Thus chaotic attractors act as a kind of pump bringing microscopic fluctuations up to a macroscopic expression. In this light it is clear that no exact solution, no short cut to tell the future, can exist. After a brief time interval the uncertainty specified by the initial measurement covers the entire attractor and all predictive power is lost: there is simply no causal connection between past and future."
James P. Crutchfield, J. Doyne Farmer, Norman H. Packard, and Robert S. Shaw

"A simple representation of components to a system is the input/output block diagram. In this representation, each block represents an agent that effects a change on something, namely its input. The result of this interaction is some output. The abstract way of representing this is

where f is the process that takes input A into output B. Clearly B can now become the input for some other process so that we can visualize a system as a network of these interactions. The relational system represents a very special kind of transition this way. Rather than break everything down in the usual reductionist manner, these transitions are selected for an important distinguishing property, namely their expression of process rather than material things directly. This is best explained with an example. The system Rosen uses for an example is the Metabolism-Repair or [M,R] system. The process, f, in this case stands for the entire metabolism going on in an organism. This is, indeed, quite an abstraction. Clearly, the use of such a representation is meant to suppress the myriad of detail that would only serve to distract us from the more simple argument put this way. It does more because it allows processes we know are going on to be divorced from the requirement that they be fragmentable or reducible to material parts alone...
The transition, f, which is being called metabolism, is a mapping taking some set of metabolites, A, into some set of products, B. What are the members of A? Really everything in the organism has to be included in A, and there has to be an implicit agreement that at least some of the members of A can enter the organism from its environment. What are the members of B? Many, if not all, of the members of A since the transitions in the reduced system are all strung together in the many intricate patterns or networks that make up the organism’s metabolism. It also must be true that some members of B leave the organism as products of metabolism. The usefulness of this abstract representation becomes clearer if the causal nature of the events is made clear...
the mapping, f...is a functional component of the system we are developing. A functional component has many interesting attributes. First of all, it exists independent of the material parts that make it possible. This idea has been so frequently misunderstood that it requires a careful discussion. Reductionism has taught us that every thing in a real system can be expressed as a collection of material parts. This is not so in the case of functional components. We only know about them because they do something. Looking at the parts involved does not lead us to knowing about them if they are not doing that something. Furthermore, they only exist in a given context. “Metabolism” as discussed here has no meaning in a machine. It also would have no meaning if we had all the chemical components of the organism in jars on a lab bench. Now we have a way of dealing with context dependence in a system theoretical manner. Not only are they only defined in their context, they also are constantly contributing to that context. This is as self- referential a situation as there is. What it means is that if the context, the particular system, is destroyed or even severely altered, the context defining the functional component will no longer exist and the functional component will also disappear...
The semantic parallel with language is in the concept of functional component. Pull things apart as reductionism asks us to do and something essential about the system is lost. Philosophically this has revolutionary consequences. The acceptance of this idea means that one recognizes ontological status for something other than mere atoms and molecules. It says that material reality is only a part of that real world we are so anxious to understand. In addition to material reality there are functional components that are also essential to our understanding of any complex reality.

Mikulecky, D. C. (2005). The Circle That Never Ends: Can Complexity be Made Simple?. In Complexity in Chemistry, Biology, and Ecology (pp. 97-153). Springer

 

[Mycroft]

Now, now, now....
Reaction to a post is not cause and effect.

For every effect there is a cause and for every cause there is an effect.
No science experiment is valid without one to the other.
Without one to the other, no certainty can be made.

I say....the big bang had a Cause.

Actually stimuli and reaction are proper fields in cause and effect.

Let's look at an example in physics, though.

People say 'the tree fell over', which is not true. A tree doesn't just fall over with the implication of having a will.

A tree falls over when the rain softens the soil. (cause) > The tree to lean outside of its centre of gravity (cause). > Gravity then acts upon the tree (cause). > The tree then falls over (effect).

If you hold a ball in your hand and then release it (cause) gravity will act on the ball causing it to fall (effect).

And so on.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Let's look at an example in physics, though.

How about self-organization in complex systems or functional causation? Or causality in QM?

 

[Knight of Albion]

I'm not well versed in the philosophy of cause and effect. Growing up it seemed like a rather easy to grasp. I do X and I'll get Y. Much of what we do rely on cause and effect, and religion itself especially in Christianity positions God as a Cause and the Universe as an effect.

I've been trying to read up on causality lately and I'll admit it flies over my head, but it seems that the way we "perceive, think, or accept" causality may not be how it actually operates. I've also learned that a lot of things deal more with correlations rather than a singular known cause.

I was hoping someone could clear this up for me, and if a good debate comes out of it as well, the better

The Law of Cause and Effect is the fundamental law of the Universe.
It is an entirely self-regulating law. God does not 'punish' you, nor in this respect 'reward' you.
You reap what you sow. No more and no less. And why should it be any different?

(The famous disincarnate spirit teacher Silver Birch said, "If a man seeks to escape the consequences of his actions then he is not a man, he is a coward.")

We all have freewill, to do good or evil. The choice is ours - and so will be the consequences...

'I am the master of my Fate:
I am the captain of my soul'

 

[Mycroft]

How about self-organization in complex systems or functional causation? Or causality in QM?

Causality in QM is a bit out of my field for this humble primate, mate, sorry!

As for self-organisation in complex systems, explain exactly what you mean by this.

 

[Mycroft]

We all have freewill, to do good or evil. The choice is ours - and so will be the consequences.

Not true. There is no evidence for free-will. The choice to do good or evil is determined by the environment whose values and ideals you will reflect as a result of being part of that environment. If you grew up in Nazi Germany and Nazi propaganda was the only influence upon your experiences in life, you would become a Nazi. All of your choices would be in relation to that conditioning to being a Nazi.

North Korea is a prime example of why there is no free-will.

Your choices are also limited by your frame of reference, which again comes from your experiences in life. The chieftain of a primitive amazonian tribe, for example, who has had no contact with the outside world, can't wake up one day and think 'I'd like to buy a BMW' he can't, he has no frame of reference for 'bmw'.

Similarly if you said to the same chieftain, 'Choose anything you want. Wish for anything!' He's going to wish for something that's already within his frame of reference (within his culture and society) but out of his reach. Maybe better harvest, maybe a better medicine man. But he wont say something like 'I wish for a $45,000 a year executive position at Microsoft. He can't.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

As for self-organisation in complex systems, explain exactly what you mean by this.

There are many types but they all share similar features. Take sandpiles and granular physics. The final configuration is logically consistent with physical laws but is not itself a consequence of only laws of physics. To a certain extent, sandpiles (like crystalline structures) self-determine their configuration states when they are subjected to external pressures, temperatures, etc., that force them to reconfigure.

"The athermal nature of granular media implies in turn that granular configurations cannot relax spontaneously in the absence of external perturbations. This leads typically to the generation of a large number of metastable configurations; it also results in hysteresis, since the sandpile carries forward a memory of its initial conditions. Bistability at the angle of repose is yet another consequence, since the manner in which the sandpile was formed determines whether avalanche motion will, or will not, occur at a given angle.
The above taken together, suggest that sandpiles show complexity; that is, the occurrence and relative stability of a large number of metastable configurational states govern their behaviour."
Mehta, A. (2007). Granular physics. Cambridge University Press.


Self-organization is an emergent property. It happens when a physical system is open, typically far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and nonlinear. Systems like living systems are in constant flux. Things like consciousness or metabolic-repair aren't determined by the constituent parts. They are functions that emerge from the whole and determine the evolution of the system itself. A sandpile has no "memory" it can carry. This is shorthand for a level of complexity which can only be explained by an organizing property that emerges from the system as a whole.
"Emergent or self-organizing properties can be defined as properties that are possessed by a dynamical system as a whole but not by its constituent parts. In this sense, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Put in different terms, emergent phenomena are phenomena that are expressed at higher levels of organization in the system but not at the lower levels."
Walleczek, J. (Ed.). (2000). Self-organized biological dynamics and nonlinear control: toward understanding complexity, chaos and emergent function in living systems. Cambridge University Press.

 

[Thief]

Actually stimuli and reaction are proper fields in cause and effect.

Let's look at an example in physics, though.

People say 'the tree fell over', which is not true. A tree doesn't just fall over with the implication of having a will.

A tree falls over when the rain softens the soil. (cause) > The tree to lean outside of its centre of gravity (cause). > Gravity then acts upon the tree (cause). > The tree then falls over (effect).

If you hold a ball in your hand and then release it (cause) gravity will act on the ball causing it to fall (effect).

And so on.

I was correcting someone's notion of an item wrought of freewill.

 

[kndght]

I know that hitting my finger with a hammer will lead to me having pain, but is it necessarily the cause of my pain, wouldn't it be considered a correlation, more so than a cause? For instance you can feel pain without being hit by a hammer, or anything some people have experienced pains that are strictly in their minds.

But isn't your body an effect? Isn't your mind also an effect? You can go back and back infinitely and you'll see how everything happening at this moment is due to countless causes. Take any object and you'll see how it has no independent character. A tree depends on the Sun, water, minerals and the seed it sprung from and all these things have countless effects. You can go back to the very creation of this Universe and how you, me and the tree all depend on everything else.

 

[Mycroft]

There are many types but they all share similar features. Take sandpiles and granular physics. The final configuration is logically consistent with physical laws but is not itself a consequence of only laws of physics. To a certain extent, sandpiles (like crystalline structures) self-determine their configuration states when they are subjected to external pressures, temperatures, etc., that force them to reconfigure.

I don't know enough about this to answer. My main field of study is human behavioural science and, there at least, cause and effect still runs rampant like the little scamp it is!

But I can't imagine anything happening of itself. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, of course, it just means I can't imagine it happening. But my immediate thought is that something must be causing it even if we don't have the tools to measure that cause, say if it was causality at the quantum level. Sometimes we see things happen and cannot trace any cause. That doesn't mean there is no cause, of course, (as equally as it means there is one), it just means that we do not possess the necessary tools to measure whether there is or isn't a cause to a definite degree.

All you and I can really say is 'There is no cause that I can find'.