Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA29115 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 13 Apr 2001 23:15:42 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 17:18:19 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Determinism Message-ID: <3AD734DB.3165.45F38D@localhost> In-reply-to: <20010413203016.A2347@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <3AD5F6E0.16979.29DF38@localhost>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 06:41:36PM -0500 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 13 Apr 2001, at 20:30, Robin Faichney wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 06:41:36PM -0500, joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On 12 Apr 2001, at 19:34, Robin Faichney wrote: > > > If higher
> level entities are lower level ones, aggregated, then there > > can be
> no causal flow top-down *or* bottom-up. Causation has an > >
> ineliminable element of time, and in this model, time is horizontal >
> > while hierarchy is vertical, restricting causation to the horizontal
> > > dimension. This is very simple, and, I think, absolutely > >
> unanswerable. > > > Actually, umm, err, no. A cause does not become
> a cause > until it causes an effect, and an effect is only an effect
> once it is > caused. These terms are correlatively defining, and
> their referents > are correlatively grounding. A cause becomes a
> cause at the > same precise moment that an effect is effected; it is a
> > simultaneous event with respect to the two entities involved.
>
> Sure, the cause only actually acts as such at the same time as the
> effect is "actively" being an effect. No prob.
>
> > The
> > causal entity may exist prior to becoming a cause, with the
> > potential of becoming a cause, and the effected entity may perdure
> > after it is caused, with the history of once having been caused, but
> > the happening - causation - necessarily involves the spatiotemporal
> > contiguity of the two.
>
> Absolutely.
>
> > Causational happenings do not require the
> > passage of time or changes in space, for causation is
> > instantaneous;
>
> No, there is no reason to believe that. Perhaps you're thinking of
> the classic (and classically misleading) billiard ball illustration,
> where the period of contact is, in human terms, extremely brief, but
> even there it's far from infinitesimal, and I'd guess that it's quite
> easily measured, using modern techniques.
>
You might be confusing a string of causations in the same
direction for a single one. Every tiny slide of a textonic plate
generates its own pressure; together they are enough to cause an
earthquake, but each, while related to the others in a
concatenatory chain, is its own entity. One may logically
subdivide pressing of billiard balls, deformation, rebound and
springing into a series of related but distinct cause-effect relations.
But perceptually, we perceive a flow to these things, not a series of
snapshots. This has persuaded us to include pre- and post-causal
relations into an illegitimately expanded causality.
>
> > spatiotemporality is occupied solely by the previous
> > and subsequent history of the entities concerned.
>
> Seems to me, even if the duration of causation were always absolutely
> instantaneous (though I'm convinced it's not -- is anything?), that
> the concept of causation requires the causal entity to precede that
> instant, and the caused one to survive it. I'd say it's part of the
> definition of causation, as that word is normally used, that cause
> precedes effect. Now, I can't deny that there might be some
> specialised usage, of which I'm not aware, in which that's not the
> case. But I'd seriously question the utility of any such usage.
>
In fact, all the relevant interacting entities usually both pre-date and
post-date such a moment existentially, and what occurs between
them is mutual alteration, where one cannot be labeled the cause
and the other the effect. let us look at P-E pairs, however. When
they come together, what entity survives their mutual annihilation?
>
> And you're still a long, long way from establishing vertical
> causation.
>
I'm actually establishing that simultaeous cause-effect relations are
the only kind we have, so if we don't have simultaneous causation,
we are in a world of shit, because sequential causation is an
illusion. Also, what's the problem you have with top-down
causation that you don't seem to have with bottom-up causation?
They are BOTH vertical, and the fact that one's decisions affect
which parts of the brain are accessed to effectuate them does not
even transgress an entire level; the dynamically recursive reflection,
born of the material substrate and reflecting back upon it, is not a
completely different level that is absolutely nonrelated to the ground
from which it emerged, although they are not seamlessly blended
into an amorphic unsignifying nonselfconsciousness, either. They
are neti, neti (not one, not two).
> --
> Robin Faichney
> Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
> (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 23:18:43 BST