Is Causality a Mental Framework Rather Than an Objective Feature of Reality?

[LordKing777]

Think about what happens when you drop a glass on the floor. You don’t assume it shattered by magic; you immediately know your slippery fingers caused it to fall. Our brains are hardwired to look for the “why” behind everything that happens. This was Immanuel Kant’s main point: cause and effect isn’t something you can physically touch out in the world. Instead, it’s like a built-in pair of glasses that our minds use to organize information. Without those glasses, life would just feel like a confusing mess of random events.

At the same time, it’s hard to believe cause and effect is just an idea in our heads. Stars were exploding and rocks were tumbling down hills long before humans were around to think about them. The physical world really does push and pull itself around, whether we are watching or not. In the end, our brains probably think in terms of cause and effect for a very simple reason: if our ancestors couldn’t figure out that a rustling bush meant a predator was nearby, they wouldn’t have survived. We see causes because the world actually has them, and learning to spot them keeps us alive.

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

[PatternChaser]

Welcome to our dance, @LordKing777! I hope you enjoy your time here, as I am doing!

@LordKing777

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. But once we’re aware of the human concept of causality, we can spot many real-world examples of things that seem to happen because other things had happened previously. To demonstrate that ALL events have a cause would be difficult or impossible, though.

So we can be fairly confident that causality — or something that looks A LOT like it — exists in the real world, and that it might apply to all events. Perhaps excluding the ‘first event’.

[Mww]

@LordKing777

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

Change belongs to the physical environment, the cosmos. Observation of change over time, and subsequent possible comprehension of it, conceptually represented by cause/effect relations, resides in, if no where else than at least in the human intellect, the cogito.

That there are forces in Nature is given; that forces are causes, must be thought.

[Wayfarer]

I second MWW’s post above. You might also find this essay relevant to your enquiry The Mathematics of Idealism (written by me, but not linked for any pecuniary reason.)

[jkop]

Things (including Cogito) genuinely possess powers, forces, or dispositions to produce effects.

Hume and Kant looked elsewhere, e.g. between the things, in our inferences, or in the cogito.

But a fire, for instance, is not caused by two separate events (e.g. a match’s flammability + oxygen’s oxidising power), nor by a cognitive necessity, but by their powers that manifest when they’re brought together.

[Johnathanrs]

My answer is both. I can create a simulation that has causality built into the world and build a artificial construct with my character settings in that world that holds the belief that their world is real. From the perspective of my virtual self, I wouldnt be real and would simply be a voice in their head that can represent many things. The more interesting question now becomes under a specific scenario what happens when they both can access each other worlds and view each other as being a artificial construct of themselves?

My answer is cognito and not the cosmos. “I think therefore I am”. If I am a brain in a jar, the ancient example of what we might call a virtual headset today, than my body or avatar isnt real, my being is a manifestation of a world someone or I created on my own. The only truth that matters to me right now is how much control that I have over it.

My answer is cosmos and not cognito. “All the world is a stage”. I can be many things but I am a empiricist at heart. Any metaphysics deriving from thought that isnt testable is mere speculation. The substance of the universe means very little, the truths that actually hold weight are the mechanics of how its done not the meaning of what it is. This is because thought itself isnt sound and can fail you. What isnt is structuring ones ideaology around what life is showing you that is. Regardless if you believe that the fire isnt real, the pain that you feel as you place your hand in it is. One truth that becomes inescapable are the rules that govern your existence remains constant and do not need your approval to function. Go against those rules and reality will demonstrate the why or what regardless of whatever you may believe.

My answer is neither. I am a pragmatist. The question itself has no meaning and is rejected. It is theoretical by design.

My answer is outside this box/scope. Are the little ones asleep yet? I can predict and play out what life they are going to experience based on their response.

[ages]

Does ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘spacetime’, ‘gravity’, ‘thought’, ‘thinking’, ‘love’, ‘mind’, and ‘knowing’ also belong to the ‘cosmos’ or the ‘cognito’, as well?

[Johnathanrs]

I’m not sure if your question is directed to me or the author or anyone. If its the author, then I apologize and ignore the following; Lets go and do “klapgorezepop” tomorrow okay?

klapgorezepop is form that has no meaning. It has no being.(I made it up and am a creationist. Yet I can coherently still use it and possibly trick you into believing that it does. Why? Because language itself was created by someone it does not predate our species.)

I reject this premise. Our language does predate our species and was not created by someone. How is that possible? Welcome to the field of the philosophy of language. Lets shift this conversation to that. (Even though I mostly answered this question already if you understood my previous post when combined with this statement “Colorless green ideas sleep furiosly.”)

[Johnnywas]

Hi

Thanks for this

There are fields in nature and the interaction between them constitute what we call cause and effect. For all practical purposes they are causes and effects but their mechanisms are hard to determine because that requires observations that are technologically beyond us.

There is no reason to believe thaf there was a first cause or that it was exceptional. Thats something trotted out dutifully by those who want to believe in supernatural origins. It comes from Aristotle.

Activity in the brain can be both caused and be an effect. The activity in brains is caused by things and causes thing.

The mind generates models of the world that include predictions of cause and effect.

[Materialist]

@LordKing777

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

It’s reasonable to believe there is causality in the world.

@PatternChaser

So we can be fairly confident that causality — or something that looks A LOT like it — exists in the real world, and that it might apply to all events

Yes, it is at least logically possible, but because there’s no evidence to the contrary, it is more justified to believe it applies to all events.

@Mww

That there are forces in Nature is given; that forces are causes, must be thought.

The proposition that forces are causes is thought, but there are good reasons to believe that proposition corresponds to an aspect of reality.

@Johnnywas

The mind generates models of the world that include cause and effect within the model

Agreed, and I suggest that we are justified in believing the “cause-effect” model corresponds to reality. We can adjust that model as we learn more, but so far - we haven’t encountered evidence that contradicts it.

[ages]

@Johnathanrs

I’m not sure if your question is directed to me or the author or anyone.

I started writing in reply to quotes from the opening post, but then I deleted that part, so it was directed at the opening post author, I just forgot that I deleted their quotes. I haven’t read your reply yet, but my question is open to anyone.

@Johnathanrs

If its the author, then I apologize and ignore the following; Lets go and do “klapgorezepop” tomorrow okay?

This is a public forum, so any question I ask is open to anyone.

@Johnathanrs

klapgorezepop is form that has no meaning. It has no being.(I made it up and am a creationist.

Who or what is a so-called “creationist”, exactly?

@Johnathanrs

Yet I can coherently still use it and possibly trick you into believing that it does.

But ‘you’ cannot trick ‘me’ into believing anything, for the simple reason that ‘I’ have already chosen to neither believe nor disbelieve absolutely anything. To me, either I know something or I do not.

@Johnathanrs

Why? Because language itself was created by someone it does not predate our species.)

The why question is redundant. For the reason I just provided.
I am not sure why ‘you’ are telling ‘us’ that human language specifically does not predate the human species.

@Johnathanrs

I reject this premise.

Why then did ‘you’ present a premise here that ‘you’, “yourself”, reject?

@Johnathanrs

Our language does predate our species and was not created by someone.

If this is what you really want to believe and say in a public philosophy forum, then this is perfectly fine and okay with me.

@Johnathanrs

How is that possible?

Because ‘you’, being a human being, are absolutely free to choose to believe and/or reject absolutely anything you want to, so that is how it is possible.
For example, if you really want to believe that human language predates the creation of human beings through evolution, then okay.

@Johnathanrs

Welcome to the field of the philosophy of language.

1. What does the word ‘philosophy’ mean or refer to, to you, exactly?
2. What do the words ‘the philosophy of language’ mean or refer to, to you, exactly?
3. What are the words ‘the field of the philosophy of language’ referring to, to you, exactly?

@Johnathanrs

Lets shift this conversation to that.

I am not yet sure what the ‘that’ word here is referring to, exactly. So, I will wait for you to clarify first, before ‘we’ shift this conversation to whatever ‘that’ is.

@Johnathanrs

(Even though I mostly answered this question already if you understood my previous post when combined with this statement “Colorless green ideas sleep furiosly.”)

Again, I have not yet read your previous post, nor any other previous post, except of course the opening post only.
Were you presuming or believing that I had read your previous post?

[Wayfarer]

@LordKing777

At the same time, it’s hard to believe cause and effect is just an idea in our heads. Stars were exploding and rocks were tumbling down hills long before humans were around to think about them. The physical world really does push and pull itself around, whether we are watching or not.

The nature of the physical world as it is in itself is not known to us. Drawing on a 2022 book called Mind and the Cosmic Order by mathematician Charles Pinter, I maintain that the mind proceedes by the identification of ‘gestalts’, that is, meaningful wholes. This applies to animal cognition as much as human. All organisms rely on recognising shapes, movement, and other attributes of bodies, which they carve out from the background as being subjects of interest - meaningful wholes or gestalts. (Think bees and flowers, or lions and antelopes.) Absent this cognitive processing there are no ‘things’ as such.

This doesn’t mean that the unperceived world does not exist, but that the kind of existence it possesses is by nature inconceivable or incomprehensible. So existence and non-existence are not polar opposites - what we understand as existence is what is brought forth or manifested by our cognitive systems.

More details in the Medium essay The Mathematics of Idealism (friend link).

[ages]

@PatternChaser

@LordKing777

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. But once we’re aware of the human concept of causality, we can spot many real-world examples of things that seem to happen because other things had happened previously. To demonstrate that ALL events have a cause would be difficult or impossible, though.

Why do you believe that just demonstrating that ALL events have a cause would be difficult or impossible?

@PatternChaser

So we can be fairly confident that causality — or something that looks A LOT like it — exists in the real world, and that it might apply to all events.

Could this ‘fairly confident’ claim of yours that ‘causality’, itself, (or something that looks like A LOT like ‘causailty’, whatever ‘causality’ itself actually ‘looks like’), exists in the so-called ‘real world’ become ‘undone’ by something like your previous words about the ‘human concept of causality’, itself.
Just maybe, when we see the effect that happens when one thing/event causes some other thing/event, which we refer to and call ‘causality’, is what we actually see in what you refer to as ‘real-world’ examples. And, it is only ‘this effect’ that we have put a label upon and which we now call ‘causality’, itself, although there is no actual physical thing as ‘causality’, itself.

Now, I can show and demonstrate, through words, how this phenomenon plays out, happens, or occurs, even when there is in fact no actual physical thing, itself, existing.
And, I can also explain how those other words I listed in a prior post in this thread exist without them necessarily being actual physical things as well.

@PatternChaser

Perhaps excluding the ‘first event’.

Again, there was NO such thing as a so-called ‘first event’. Well, NOT in ‘the way’ you people here have been imagining and perceiving there to be.

[ages]

@Mww

That there are forces in Nature is given; that forces are causes, must be thought.

When you say here, “must be thought”, what do you mean exactly?

[ages]

@jkop

Things (including Cogito) genuinely possess powers, forces, or dispositions to produce effects.

Hume and Kant looked elsewhere, e.g. between the things, in our inferences, or in the cogito.

But a fire, for instance, is not caused by two separate events (e.g. a match’s flammability + oxygen’s oxidising power), nor by a cognitive necessity, but by their powers that manifest when they’re brought together.

Absolutely every thing was caused, or created, by the coming together of two prior things. And, the coming together of two things causes, or creates, something anew. Which, also and by the way, every newly created thing evolves, and while evolving is interacting with other things causes more newly created things. Which is just what the One and only constantly-changing Creation, Itself, is actually.
‘Causality’ is just a term and word created by the human species that denotes the always evolving-Creation that the Universe, Itself, is.

[ages]

@Johnnywas

Hi

Thanks for this

There are fields in nature and the interaction between them constitute what we call cause and effect. For all practical purposes they are causes and effects but their mechanisms are hard to determine because that requires observations that are technologically beyond us.

Do you mean in the days when this is being written, or forever more?

@Johnnywas

Activity in the brain can be both caused and be an effect. The activity in brains is caused by things and causes thing.

What is the word ‘things’ here referring to, exactly?

@Johnnywas

The mind generates models of the world that include predictions of cause and effect.

What is this ‘mind’ thing, exactly, which you here speak of?

[ages]

@Materialist

@LordKing777

Does Causality Belong to the Cosmos or the Cogito?

It’s reasonable to believe there is causality in the world.

Why is it, supposedly, reasonable to believer there are things, in ‘the world’, when you do not yet have any proof for.
Do you have any evidence at all that there is some actual physical ‘thing’ that the ‘causality’ could be linked to. Let alone any actual proof?

@Materialist

@PatternChaser

So we can be fairly confident that causality — or something that looks A LOT like it — exists in the real world, and that it might apply to all events

Yes, it is at least logically possible, but because there’s no evidence to the contrary, it is more justified to believe it applies to all events.

Could you and will you explain what this ‘physical thing’ is or could be, exactly, that must be linked or be within absolutely every thing, which causes ‘cause and effect’ itself, if ‘it’ is, as you say, ‘logically possible’?

@Materialist

@Mww

That there are forces in Nature is given; that forces are causes, must be thought.

The proposition that forces are causes is thought, but there are good reasons to believe that proposition corresponds to an aspect of reality.

Could you say more without saying any less?
Again, what ‘good reason’ could there ever be to ‘believe’ something is true, when one has absolutely no proof yet for it to be true?

Also, if you really want to talk about and mention ‘an aspect of reality’, then how are you defining the ‘reality’ word here, exactly?

@Materialist

@Johnnywas

The mind generates models of the world that include cause and effect within the model

Agreed, and I suggest that we are justified in believing the “cause-effect” model corresponds to reality.

Obviously, with a username like yours here “materialist” you are gong to keep saying things “we have good reasons to believe, or we are justified in believing, something that aligns with a physical/material only world”. your ‘current’ point of view and world view could NEVER allow you to see or believe things are any other way.
And, just because you add the ‘reality’ word in here, by the way, never adds more weight nor credence to ‘your beliefs and claims’ here.

@Materialist

We can adjust that model as we learn more, but so far - we haven’t encountered evidence that contradicts it.

LOL Says the one who can only look at and see things from one very narrow or closed perspective only.

[Banno]

Why can’t it be both?

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

[Materialist]

@ages

Could you and will you explain what this ‘physical thing’ is or could be, exactly, that must be linked or be within absolutely every thing, which causes ‘cause and effect’ itself, if ‘it’ is, as you say, ‘logically possible’?

Relations between types of things. This is the way “Law Realists” account for laws of nature.

@ages

Again, what ‘good reason’ could there ever be to ‘believe’ something is true, when one has absolutely no proof yet for it to be true?

It’s an explanatory hypothesis, which I judge to be an inference to best explanation. As such. it’s certainly not provable, and it’s fallible. I’m open to considering an alternative theory if someone can argue for an even better explanation.

@ages

Also, if you really want to talk about and mention ‘an aspect of reality’, then how are you defining the ‘reality’ word here, exactly?

Fair question. Reality= All that exists. For example, it could consist solely of this universe, or of an ensemble of universes in a multiverse. It’s logically possible that it includes immaterial beings, a platonic 3rd realm, other imaginable things, or unimaginable things- but I’ve encountered no compelling reasons to believe they do. Hence, my name.

@ages

Obviously, with a username like yours here “materialist” you are gong to keep saying things “we have good reasons to believe, or we are justified in believing, something that aligns with a physical/material only world”. your ‘current’ point of view and world view could NEVER allow you to see or believe things are any other way.

You’re jumping to conclusions. Consider the possibility that I might have arrived at materialism rationally. I also remain open to arguments and evidence that undercut my beliefs- I have no emotional commitment. But typically, people just bring up logical possibilities. These mean I’m possibly wrong, but possibility is not an undercutter.

@ages

LOL Says the one who can only look at and see things from one very narrow or closed perspective only.

Seems a hasty conclusion, given that you couldn’t possibly understand why I believe as I do.

@ages

And, just because you add the ‘reality’ word in here, by the way, never adds more weight nor credence to ‘your beliefs and claims’ here.

Of course. But I don’t think my definition of “reality” is controversial. Materialism is a metaphysical theory about reality. I’m not pushing my theory, I’m just describing it, and defending it when asked.

[Johnathanrs]

@ages

It seems like you need more literal direction. I was using a rhetorical technique, stating a common premise only to immediately reject it, to set up a broader discussion about how to apply theory. I presume that people are able to follow my abstraction, but am willing to cater to those that cannot.

Asking for basic dictionary definitions of words or treating this as a courtroom examination is a waste of time unless you can clearly explain why anyone should cater to your needs, which i’m open to doing if you can justify as to why. If you’re willing to moving past syntax and exploring how language structures operate on a philosophical basis, than i’ll await for you to open a new thread. Otherwise this is getting to off topic.