Posted by
Günther Greindl on
Nov 17, 2007; 9:12pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FRIAM-and-causality-tp525252p525280.html
Hi,
> Well, my primary objection is that "A" is only post-observation
> description or pre-observation prescription determined to be a _unit_.
> My original point was that all cause is complex and all effect is
> complex. Perhaps I didn't say that clearly.
Ok - we agree so far.
> This means that there really isn't an "A" as an (a single, autonomous)
> effect. "A" is a _situation_ that obtains. And that situation consists
> of many things. I.e. "A" is embedded inextricably in a context.
Agreed.
> Granted, one can hyper-focus some observation so as to artificially
> label some slice of the situation and call that slice the unit "A".
> But, that's an act of either description or prescription and is merely a
> _model_ of the situation (often an impoverished one at that).
> Hence, what you really have in the light cone is a gooey glob of effects
> and causes that are related by partial order. This will be true as long
> as the "locality" is not small enough to hit the quantum discretization
> boundary.
>
> Does that make more sense?
Ok - but the gooey glob is also only a description - we can extend the
gooey glob to contain the whole universe (the Hubble volume). Would you
say that at that level we have total ordering?
I guess the problem boils back down to the question of a deterministic
universe or an indeterministic one.
Only if you subscribe to indeterminism partial ordering arises.
And to the hammer/nail question: in the macroworld determinism well
established (because even if one assumes totally indet. quantum
fluctuations they would cancel out).
How could you ever get a partial odering in the hammer/nail question?
Regards,
G?nther
--
G?nther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/Blog:
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