FRIAM and causality

[Nick Thompson]

Phil,

OK.  So, it's images all the way down, so we cant get any traction there.  I suppose one might argue that a single hammering and a pattern of hammerings (if you will) exist at different levels of organization, and you might prefer one level to another for some reason external to this argument.  So far, so good.

But my position is that the attribution of causality forces you either to myth-making OR to the higher level of organization.  The first level of organization at which one can know hammer causality is the level many experiences with hitting nails with hammers and seeing them go into wood or or not, and not hitting nails with hammers and not seeing them go into wood or not, etc., ad nauseam.  So, in my idiotic postivisitic mode, I assert,   that pattern IS what causality is.  I mean why would one bother to attribute it anywhere else than where we know it.  

I have been thinking this way with respect to such mental attributions as motivation, emotion, feeling, etc, for years and only recently realized that these arguments apply as well to such  "hard-science" terms as disposition, cause and probability.  This tendency to hypostize complex relations into phantom single instances seems to go deep.  In fact, where would differential calculus be without it???!  

With respect to probability, Frank Wimberly has shaken my confidence a bit by reminding me that some probability attributions arise by deduction from theory, rather than induction from experience.   I guess I have to qualify my basic assertion to say that to the extent that the attribution that the hammer drove the nail into the wood derives from experience, it derives  from our experience with hammers and nails, etc., in general, rather than our experience with this hammer and this nail in this instance.  

All the best,

Nick




----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Henshaw
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: gbarker at bucknell.edu; pderr at clarku.edu; caleb.thompson
Sent: 11/16/2007 4:41:46 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FRIAM and causality
 

NIck,
Didn't you place the only things that physcally cause anything, the individual hammers and the individual nails in the direct action of driving a nail, in the place of the 'unreal' in you argument?    The things that don't actually exist except in our minds, the categories of hammers and of nails and their presumptive relation in an orderly arrangement of ideas, you seemed to treat as being real and causal.    Doesn't that what you mean depends on what you're using the words to refer to, the physical things on one hand, or the relations of images on the other?    Perhaps they're different, and a good bit of the con-fusion occurs as a result of not being clear about which we're referring to.

Phil

 
On 11/12/07, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
"The truth arises from arguments amongst friends" -- David Hume

One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk discussion about causality.   I don't think I was particularly articulate, and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try to state my position clearly and succinctly.    

The argument was between some who felt that causality was "real" and those that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.    The argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence anytime anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause of Y.  Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X's "fault".  To say that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling the most reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y would not have occurred had not X occurred.  But there is no particular reason that the world should always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it is also ALWAYS possible to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y's occurrence was not the responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable the original causal attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer and nail, claiming that if he could but drive a nail into the surface of one of St. John's caf? tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that his hammering had been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not withstanding his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered to be JUST THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his account, his hammering had had nothing to do with the nail's penetration, but that the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had randomly parte d and sucked the nail into their midst.  

How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.   By experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails were driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the hammer missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb was driven into the wood.)   Also, despite its theoretical possibility, none of us has EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by random motion of the surface's molecules.  So it is the comparative analysis of our experience with hammers and nails that would have convinced us that the hammering had driven in the nail.  

            So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of our language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.   We not only  say that Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know to be true, we also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be embedded in the wood.  Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced concreteness.   Causality is easily attributed to the pattern of relations amongst hammers and nails, but we err when we allow ourselves to assert that that higher order pattern is exhibited by any of its contributory instances.   In fact, that in our experience the missed nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a real part of our notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit nail is.    Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.  

            The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in our conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a fallacy all the same.  Other instances of it are intentions, dispositions, personality traits, communication, information etc., etc., and such mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a point.    Whenever we use any of these terms, we attribute to single instances properties of aggregates of which they are part.  

            Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we stop and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually goes into making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes embedding, information which is not available in any of its instances.   Second, we then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the human mind to sift through this data and identify patterns in it.  Third, and finally,  we stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our evolution, our neurology, our cognition, our culture, or our language that causes us to lodge this knowledge in the one place it can never be ? single instances.  

            Are we done?

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)




============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org




--

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
explorations: www.synapse9.com
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[Robert Holmes]

On Nov 16, 2007 5:32 PM, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:
>
> <snip>  So, in my idiotic postivisitic mode, I assert,   that pattern IS
> what causality is.  I mean why would one bother to attribute it anywhere
> else than where we know it.
>
> No it's not Nick, as witnessed by the following story: I was walking
through Santa Fe, when who should I meet but Nick, loudly ringing a brass
handbell. "Nick, why are you ringing that bell?" "I always do this when I
walk through Santa Fe, Robert. It scares the crocodiles off and stops them
attacking me." "But there aren't any crocodiles in Santa Fe". "Looks like
it's working then"

Pattern is a necessary condition for causality but it is not sufficient. You
also need *relevance*. This is exactly the same challenge that Hempel's
"covering law" model of scientific explanation faces (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological)

Robert
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[Phil Henshaw-2]

But why can't you accept the existence of physical things?  
 
All language derives its meaning from connecting you with things outside
its structure after all, since anything purely self-referential is
meaningless.   Why even attempt to eliminate pointing at things that are
beyond definition, the age old functional method, and why not treat
images alone, however high you pile them, as hopelessly flimsy and
inadequate contraptions to substitute for the simple useful act of
'look'? Don't we need to get off the kick of thinking what's in our
brains is so all fired important?
 
We live in a world that is truly physically exploding with the
unmanageable complexity of our multiplying overlapping contraptions,
which we try to act like we don't notice, though the evidence is starkly
clear in the daily accelerating change in how we all live.    You
thought endless growth in multiplying resource extraction was bad for
the earth.   Wait till you see growth without resources, on pure
complication.   That's what those economist fellows call 'decoupling',
the  perpetual motion machines the authors of the IPCC climate models
decided will allow mankind to continually multiply wealth without
effect.   We might just as well propose the whole lot of us lift off the
planet in a swirl of pixy dust!    This is our planet and our watch, and
we're missing the physical process about to destroy several centuries of
hard forged real investment in making it a descent place to live,
because we won't intellectually tolerate the existence of things that
aren't in our minds.    What's 'out there' beyond our minds may well be
completely undefinable, and even 'meaningless' in the sense that it's
not something our minds are able to make, but it's what actually does
matter.    You might even find it oddly familiar, perhaps looking from
the perspective with which our natural faculties evolved...  :-,)
 
Phil


Phil,
 
OK.  So, it's images all the way down, so we cant get any traction
there.  I suppose one might argue that a single hammering and a pattern
of hammerings (if you will) exist at different levels of organization,
and you might prefer one level to another for some reason external to
this argument.  So far, so good.
 
But my position is that the attribution of causality forces you either
to myth-making OR to the higher level of organization.  The first level
of organization at which one can know hammer causality is the level many
experiences with hitting nails with hammers and seeing them go into wood
or or not, and not hitting nails with hammers and not seeing them go
into wood or not, etc., ad nauseam.  So, in my idiotic postivisitic
mode, I assert,   that pattern IS what causality is.  I mean why would
one bother to attribute it anywhere else than where we know it.  
 
I have been thinking this way with respect to such mental attributions
as motivation, emotion, feeling, etc, for years and only recently
realized that these arguments apply as well to such  "hard-science"
terms as disposition, cause and probability.  This tendency to hypostize
complex relations into phantom single instances seems to go deep.  In
fact, where would differential calculus be without it???!  
 
With respect to probability, Frank Wimberly has shaken my confidence a
bit by reminding me that some probability attributions arise by
deduction from theory, rather than induction from experience.   I guess
I have to qualify my basic assertion to say that to the extent that the
attribution that the hammer drove the nail into the wood derives from
experience, it derives  from our experience with hammers and nails,
etc., in general, rather than our experience with this hammer and this
nail in this instance.  
 
All the best,
 
Nick
 
 
 
 

----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Henshaw <mailto:[hidden email]>  
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net;The Friday Morning
<mailto:friam at redfish.com> Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: gbarker at bucknell.edu; pderr at clarku.edu; caleb.thompson
<mailto:caleb.thompson at sjcsf.edu>
Sent: 11/16/2007 4:41:46 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FRIAM and causality


NIck,
Didn't you place the only things that physcally cause anything, the
individual hammers and the individual nails in the direct action of
driving a nail, in the place of the 'unreal' in you argument?    The
things that don't actually exist except in our minds, the categories of
hammers and of nails and their presumptive relation in an orderly
arrangement of ideas, you seemed to treat as being real and causal.
Doesn't that what you mean depends on what you're using the words to
refer to, the physical things on one hand, or the relations of images on
the other?    Perhaps they're different, and a good bit of the
con-fusion occurs as a result of not being clear about which we're
referring to.
 
Phil

 
On 11/12/07, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:




"The truth arises from arguments amongst friends" -- David Hume

 

One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some
fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk
discussion about causality.   I don't think I was particularly
articulate, and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try
to state my position clearly and succinctly.    

 

The argument was between some who felt that causality was "real" and
those that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.
The argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence
anytime anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause
of Y.  Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X's "fault".  To say
that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief
that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince
somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling the most reasonable
story in which it seems obvious that Y would not have occurred had not X
occurred.  But there is no particular reason that the world should
always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it is also ALWAYS possible
to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y's occurrence was not the
responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable the original causal
attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer and nail, claiming that if
he could but drive a nail into the surface of one of St. John's caf?
tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that his hammering had
been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not withstanding
his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered to be JUST
THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his account, his
hammering had had nothing to do with the nail's penetration, but that
the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had randomly
parte d and sucked the nail into their midst.  

 

How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of
unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.
By experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails
were driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the
hammer missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb
was driven into the wood.)   Also, despite its theoretical possibility,
none of us has EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by
random motion of the surface's molecules.  So it is the comparative
analysis of our experience with hammers and nails that would have
convinced us that the hammering had driven in the nail.  

 

            So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that
proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of
our language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.   We not only
say that Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know
to be true, we also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be
embedded in the wood.  Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced
concreteness.   Causality is easily attributed to the pattern of
relations amongst hammers and nails, but we err when we allow ourselves
to assert that that higher order pattern is exhibited by any of its
contributory instances.   In fact, that in our experience the missed
nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a real part of our
notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit nail is.
Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.  

 

            The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in
our conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a
fallacy all the same.  Other instances of it are intentions,
dispositions, personality traits, communication, information etc., etc.,
and such mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a point.
Whenever we use any of these terms, we attribute to single instances
properties of aggregates of which they are part.  

 

            Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we
stop and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually
goes into making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes
embedding, information which is not available in any of its instances.
Second, we then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the
human mind to sift through this data and identify patterns in it.
Third, and finally,  we stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our
evolution, our neurology, our cognition, our culture, or our language
that causes us to lodge this knowledge in the one place it can never be

 single instances.  

 

            Are we done?

 

Nick

 
 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)
 
 
 








============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
<http://www.friam.org/>





--

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
explorations: www.synapse9.com

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