[ExI] Anti-transhumanist crap on Kuro5hin and related.

[scerir]

> > This reminds me of J. Steinbeck.
> > "Non-teleological thinking concerns itself
> > primarily not with what should be, or could be,
> > or might be, but rather with what actually 'is'
> > .... attempting at most to answer the already
> > sufficiently difficult questions 'what' or 'how',
> > instead of 'why' ... In the non-teleological sense
> > there can be no 'answer'. There can be only pictures
> > which become larger and more significant as one's
> > horizon increases."

[from 'Log From the Sea of Cortez']

Kevin:
> If we're referencing Aristotle here, what about
> the other four causes? Aren't efficient causes,
> material causes, and formal causes also explanations
> and answers to the question "why"?

Bertrand Russell wrote, in a 1912/13 paper, 'On the Notion
of Cause', that 'The law of causality, I believe, like much
that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone
age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is 
erroneously supposed to do no harm'. [*]

The concept of causality - in the sense of causality
'in time' - has specific problems.

Here is one.

There is a general agreement that, 'explaining' the 
two-entangled-photon interference, it is incorrect 
to say that the experimenter's arbitrary choice 
of measuring (the position *or* the momentum of)
the idler photon somehow *caused* a specific collapse 
of the signal photon wavepacket. 
Only nonlocal, instantaneous, and *uncaused*
correlations-at-a-distance are predicted by the theory.
*However* whether or not signal photon interference 
fringes, in coincidence detection, show up, *depends* 
on the arbitrary choice by the experimenter of measuring, 
even *in the future* (delayed choice), (the position 
or the momentum of) the idler photon. 
So, the behaviour of the signal photon depends on 
the specific measurement performed, *at a later time*, 
on the idler photon.

(The possibility of superluminal signals, or backwards
causality, is under investigation. But there are several
problems - i.e. the complementarity between single-photon 
and two-photon interferences, in other words the size 
of the source of the entangled photons is relevant - 
which make this tests difficult, or even impossible in 
principle).

(Notice also that, to criticize FTL propagation, the 
argument that, in a given reference frame, the only 
criterion for saying that an event is the cause of 
another one, is the time ordering in that frame, 
does not appear so strong, at least when the events 
happen in different places, in the same reference frame. 
If A represents the emission of a signal and B its 
reception, It is possible consider A the cause of B 
not just because it happened at an earlier time,
but mainly because the opposite would be unbelievable, 
given a certain specific context.)

Stories like the above gave life to a different concept
of causality: the statistical causality (I think there is
something on the book of Judea Pearl on causality).

According to (my interpretation!) of the statistical 
causality, the primitive and irreducible concept is 
the 'correlation', the statistical correlation between 
two (or more) events. 
You cannot 'explain' these correlations in more primitive 
terms (this is true in the quantum domain; it can be wrong 
in different fields like sociology, economy, ...). 
You cannot 'explain' the correlations in terms of space, 
in terms of time, in terms of possible hidden variables.
Even the 'ignorance interpretation' by Einstein -
according to which chance and randomness are apparent,
they are only the manifestation of our 'ignorance' - 
seems to be inconsistent, if there are no hidden variables,
no space, no time.

Now, a question arises (because I'm ignorant about that).
What sort of causation does the doctrine of evolution, 
based on some essential randomness, presuppose? I'm inclined 
to think that the concept of statistical causality might play
some role here. 

Another interesting point would be the following.
What kind of essential randomness does the doctrine
of evolution presuppose?
'What appears to be more frightening: a clocklike 
universe which is totally governed by deterministic laws, 
or a lawless universe which is totally unpredictable 
and random?' asked Karl Svozil.
http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/2000-vreal.htm
>From the microphysics we know there is a brilliant 
mixture of randomness and determinism. No total randomness 
(it would mean total chaos, pure uncomputability, etc.), 
no total determinism (it would mean complete nonlocality,
possible triviality in the propagation of information,
no role for chance, etc.). It seems that such 
a brilliant mixture of randomness and determinism 
produced a good (or the best possible?) environment 
for the evolution (of the inanimate and animate world).    
 
As you can see there are several uncertainties.
It seems (to me) that causal explanations cannot give
100% satisfactory answers to questions like 'what'
or 'how', not to mention 'why'.

> The only thing teleology says is that some natural 
> purpose for the thing is the explanation for that
> thing and how it develops. For example, the hand was 
> developed because of our need for grasping things, 
> or the sexual drive was developed because for the sake 
> of reproduction. While this kind of thinking is easy 
> to entertain, the theory of evolution contradicts it.

Yes, I agree, the doctrine of teleological causation is
something obscure. Only Aristotle could apply it now,
safely :-)

But there are problems that I still see unsolved.

In example. I cannot imagine what principles are
at work in this universe, but there is a smooth 
transition from an entropic 'hardware' (thermodynamics
for inanimate objects) and a neg-entropic 'software'
(neg-entropy, or extropy, is evident in the behaviour
of the animate objects). No question that theorems
do hold anyway (neg-entropy must equal entropy).
Nevertheless this smooth, looong transition
means that unknown principles are working here
(concentration of the available information? Chaitin
complexity vs Heisenberg principle? flight to quality?
what else?).    

No doubt that Zurek is already studying all that!
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/bib/nf/z/wjcchhzr.htm

Better stop here this 'delirium'.

s.


-----------------------------------------

[*]

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2007-11-06

Huw Price and Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the
Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited, Oxford University
Press, 2007, 403pp., $35.00 (pbk), ISBN 9780199278190.

Reviewed by Marc Lange, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ....


This is an excellent collection of papers concerning the ontological
status of causal relations in light of the microworld revealed by
physics. The contributors are Arif Ahmed, Helen Beebee, Richard Corry,
Antony Eagle, Adam Elga, Mathias Frisch, Christopher Hitchcock, Douglas
Kutach, Barry Loewer, Peter Menzies, John Norton, Huw Price, and Jim
Woodward. The volume's sub-title ("Russell's Republic Revisited") alludes
to Bertrand Russell's much-quoted remark comparing the "law of causality"
to the monarchy as a "relic of a bygone age, surviving . . . only because
it is erroneously supposed to do no harm."[1] Unlike Russell, all of this
volume's contributors emphasize the value of causal judgments, especially
in practical deliberation (which presupposes the distinction between
"effective" and "ineffective" strategies for causally influencing the
future).[2] The contributors disagree about whether there are causal
relations throughout the microphysical world, or only in certain special
parts of it, or only when certain parts are considered in isolation from
the rest, or not really at all. Price and Corry situate many of the
contributors as rejecting a "monarchist" metaphysical primitivism
regarding causation as well as an "anarchist" Russellian eliminativism in
favor of some form of "causal republicanism" according to which We, the
People -- whether through our special interests, our limited powers of
observation and control, or our perspectives as agents -- are partly
responsible for the existence (so to say) of causal relations or, at
least, for the utility of causal judgments.

Inevitably, I cannot try to summarize all of these stimulating papers or
all of the fascinating issues they raise. I must be content with giving
just a few of the many highlights.

Norton ("Causation as Folk Science") argues that various folk causal
theories in physics (and common sense), though strictly false, are
heuristically useful in certain limited applications, just as heat
behaves in many respects as if it were a conserved flowing substance.
Caloric and causes are in some sense real: they are not wholly fictional
(like unicorns) but they do not belong to fundamental ontology. (I'll
return to Norton in a moment.)

Eagle ("Pragmatic Causation") and Menzies ("Causation in Context") agree
with Norton in denying that causal relations belong to fundamental
ontology. Whereas Norton argues that the utility of folk causal theories
(like the rough accuracy of caloric theory) can be derived by applying
fundamental physics to a circumscribed range of cases, Eagle and Menzies
argue that causal ascriptions fail to supervene on non-causal facts
because they depend on which factors can be ignored and which behaviors
count as defaults in a given conversational context. Of course, it is
tempting to reply that certain factors can be ignored precisely because
they are not among the causes of those things we are interested in, and
likewise that a certain behavior is the default for a given system
precisely because the system behaves in that way when no external causes
are acting upon it. Menzies replies that it would be inadvisable to see
this kind of worry as a reason to reject this model of causal reasoning
because the kind of default reasoning that this model deems central to
causal reasoning is also central to many of our best scientific theories
(from Newtonian mechanics to population biology). "Consequently, the
rejection of the kind of default causal reasoning described in this paper
would necessitate the rejection of the reasoning embedded in some of our
best scientific theories" (p. 222). But to reject a philosophical theory
according to which causal ascriptions are made true partly by
context-sensitive defaults (rather than the other way around) is not to
reject default reasoning or the scientific theories that employ it.

Norton argues that centuries of failed attempts to formulate a
principle of causality, robustly true under the introduction of
new scientific theories, have left the notion of causation so
plastic that virtually any new science can be made to conform to it.
Such a plastic notion fails to restrict possibility and is
physically empty. (p. 12)

To show that "[e]ven quite simple Newtonian systems can harbor uncaused
events and ones for which the theory cannot even supply probabilities"
(p. 22), Norton offers a wonderfully provocative new example of
indeterminism in classical mechanics: a point particle perched at the
apex of a frictionless domed surface in a uniform gravitational field,
where the dome is cunningly shaped so that Newton's laws are obeyed not
only if the body remains at the apex forever, but also if it remains
there until some arbitrary moment and then no longer. The body just takes
off down the hill for no reason -- without its having even had some
determinate chance of taking off at that moment.[3]

One might try to turn this example against Norton by arguing that if (as
Norton says) a body acting under the influence of such a force in
classical physics cannot be interpreted in causal terms, then a
"principle of causality" does indeed "place a restriction on the factual
content of a science" (p. 15) since it rules out such a force, given the
classical dynamical laws. Therefore, a principle of causality must not be
as empty as Norton claims. Norton might reply that such a restriction
would be "a kind of a priori science that tries to legislate in advance
how the world must be" (p. 15). But why should such a principle of
causality, limiting the range of possible force functions, be any more a
priori than the rest of classical physics?[4]

Woodward ("Causation with a Human Face") and Hitchcock ("What Russell Got
Right") note that on an interventionist or manipulationist account, some
of the ordinary presuppositions for the application of causal notions are
not satisfied by the universe taken globally, to which the notion of an
intervention from outside is inapplicable. Folk causal models of the kind
described by Norton best fit subsystems that can be treated for our
purposes as isolated from a great deal of their surroundings. Elga
("Isolation and Folk Physics") aims to identify the features of the
fundamental natural laws that make so many ordinary subsystems amenable
to such treatment. Roughly speaking, the behaviors of distant things make
only small differences to the medium-sized objects that we tend to care
about, and those small differences are unlikely to pull in a consistent
direction (given the fundamental probability distribution over the
possible microrealizers of the universe's initial low-entropy macrostate)
and so are unlikely to affect the rough macroscopic behaviors of those
objects. Thus, a folk model can succeed by characterizing a subsystem's
default behavior and how it can be disturbed by interactions with only a
few other subsystems. Folk causal models can even encompass systems that
are sensitive to small differences (and hence to many distant factors) by
including objective chances, which themselves are insensitive to such
small differences.

Notice, though, that in giving this account, Elga uses causal notions.
For instance, the fundamental probability distribution over the
universe's possible initial conditions "counts it as unlikely that small
differences in forces would affect the rough behavior of" a given
macroscopic object (p. 110). I wonder: Does that use of causal vocabulary
also fall under the account being given?

Price ("Causal Perspectivalism") understands being a cause as neither
like containing some quantity of caloric nor like containing some
non-zero number of unicorns, but rather as like being a foreigner or
being at rest: a property possessed only from a given perspective. Price
argues that if the temporal asymmetry of causation is fixed by some
primitive metaphysical fact, rather than by facts about us or our
environment, then the reason why it plays such an important role in our
practical deliberations remains mysterious. Russell was right that the
asymmetry is not built into the fundamental laws of physics. If it is
fixed by some environmental asymmetry (such as the thermodynamic
asymmetry: that entropy typically increases toward the future), then when
considering a possible world where that asymmetry is reversed (or
absent), the direction of causation should be reversed (or causal
relations should be absent). But that is not the case, Price argues. When
we causally characterize a possible world or hypothetical spacetime
region where the actual fundamental laws of nature hold but entropy
typically decreases toward the future (or has no typical trend), we
ascribe the usual kinds of causal relations. We do not exchange causes
and effects. Price concludes that the temporal asymmetry of causal
relations is fixed not by the environment of the events standing in those
relations, but rather by the environment of the ascriber of those
relations.

Price sees the perspective taken in practical deliberation as essentially
involving a distinction between what is settled and what is open. (Our
practical deliberations concern one open feature: our course of action.)
Because of the prevailing thermodynamic asymmetry, we typically find the
past rather than the future epistemically accessible and so take the past
as fixed. Since the deliberative perspective treats the future
differently from the past not by stipulation, but only in view of
accidental environmental circumstances, the deliberative perspective can
account for the asymmetry of causation. Price suggests that deliberators
where the thermodynamic arrow is reversed would correctly (from their
perspective) regard the future as typically causing the past (since they
would be taking their cues from the prevailing thermodynamic asymmetry)
and so would deliberate regarding the past. This strikes me as akin to
suggesting (with Mach) that the water's surface in Newton's bucket would
be curved if the universe were made to revolve around it.

That causal relations exist from our perspective because we deliberate
leaves it mysterious (I think) why we deliberate at all. The alternative
is that we deliberate as we do because we want to affect the future. On
this view, we fail to deliberate in the same way regarding the past not
fundamentally because we already know all about the past (at least "in
principle"), but rather because we know that there would be no point in
deliberating about the past (except in time-travel scenarios and so
forth) since we cannot causally influence it. Of course, causal relations
would then have to exist independent of our deliberative standpoint,
raising Price's worry that once we characterize causation metaphysically,
it will be unclear why we care about "affecting" the future. But this
worry must compete with (what seems to me) Price's inability to explain
why we take the deliberative standpoint in the first place.

Causal asymmetry is significant not only in practical deliberation, but
also in an important variety of scientific explanation. If causal
relations are tied to the deliberative standpoint, then they are not
essential to science if the deliberative standpoint is not. Perhaps, if
causal relations are creatures of some perspective, then an "explanatory
perspective" would more easily capture their scientific significance.

How is the thermodynamic asymmetry responsible for the typical difference
in epistemic accessibility between the past and the future? Loewer
("Counterfactuals and the Second Law") presents an explanation that
ultimately grounds the causal asymmetry not in our deliberative
perspective, but (contrary to Russell) in asymmetries of natural law,
which yield asymmetries in counterfactual dependence. Given that the
universe long ago had an extremely low-entropy macrostate (the "past
hypothesis", in David Albert's suggestive terminology[5]) and given the
canonical probability distribution over this macrostate's possible
microrealizations (both of which, Loewer says, qualify as laws on David
Lewis's "best-system" account and so function as laws in counterfactual
reasoning), the deep past is constrained in ways that the far future is
not. Accordingly, current "traces" constrain and so allow us to know the
relatively recent past, unlike the relatively near future. Although there
are possible microrealizations of today's foot-shaped depression in the
sand that, traced back in time according to microdynamical law, derive
from a conspiracy of unrelated "random" events rather than a human foot,
the past hypothesis and microcanonical initial probability distribution
make these microrealizations very unlikely. On this picture, unlike the
interventionist account, causal notions are applicable even to the
universe taken globally.

Frisch ("Causation, Counterfactuals, and Entropy") replies that our
ordinary inferences from current "traces" to the relatively recent past
do not appeal to the past hypothesis: "most people are not at all in a
position to assume what that initial condition might be" (p. 370).
Indeed, Frisch might have added, for our knowledge of the past to
presuppose the past hypothesis would be for our historical knowledge
(whether based on memory or on other records) to depend implausibly on a
relatively recent discovery of physics. Of course, the past hypothesis
might nevertheless be partly responsible for the rough accuracy of the
folk causal theories on which our knowledge of the past depends (though
Frisch incisively questions whether it is sufficient for the reliability
of records and for the past's counterfactual independence from the
present). But knowledge, at least in an internalist sense, requires more
than just a belief produced by a reliable mechanism. When we infer from
today's foot-shaped depression in the sand to a human foot's having
imprinted it, Frisch argues, our presumption that there were probably no
prior "random" sandy events conspiring to produce a foot-shaped
depression is based not on any knowledge of the universe's initial
condition, but rather on our past observations of sandy beaches.

Whether causal relations are of, by, and for the people, or whether the
laws of nature and of nature's God entitle certain events "causes" and
others "effects", will continue to be debated. This volume is an
excellent place to join that debate.

[1] "On the Notion of Cause", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 13
(1913): 1-26, p. 1.

[2] The contributors are inspired almost as much by Nancy Cartwright's
classic "Causal Laws and Effective Strategies" (Nous 13 (1979): 419-38)
as they are by Russell.

[3] There are other examples of force functions to which classical
physics offers multiple solutions, assigning no particular objective
chances to any of them. See, for instance, Keith Hutchison, "Is Classical
Mechanics Really Time-Reversible and Deterministic?", British Journal for
the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993): 307-23. Norton's example has already
received considerable attention. See, for example, David Malament,
"Norton's Slippery Slope", PSA 2006, forthcoming.

[4] For more on the possible status of such principles, see my "Must the
Fundamental Laws of Physics Be Complete?", Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, forthcoming.

[5] Time and Chance, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.