Subject: RE: rts2-25
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:34:10 -0500


i'll try to explain things better as soon as i can make sense of this quote
from the earlier post:

"The whole is more than the sum of the parts.  This is called "emergence"."

the poster has thereby defined "emergence", but what does it mean to say
that the whole is more than the sum of its parts?  that we can look at
causation at different levels of abstraction?  taking the example of raising
the arm, i can give a biological explanation to PART of the sequence of
events leading from the sound signals of the requester to the molecular
muscle actions causing the raising of the hand, but so what?  what's the
"sum of the parts" in the example?  can't understand the point of this post.

lets look at this part of the post again:

"I forget the details of what point he made about this to the audience, but
the general thrust of it was that the physical course of the world had just
been altered by his and my intentional actions.  A few seconds earlier I had
no idea that I was about to lift my arm.  I was also not forced to lift my
arm when Roy asked me, but the decision to do this was made then and there
within a couple of seconds."

certainly the physical course of the WHOLE world didn't change by this arm
movement.  i didn't hear of any astronomer publishing a paper citing the arm
as moving some planets around a bit because of the raised arm.  the only
part of the world that i can see changed is that the respondent and maybe
others in the room at the time since then have a memory of the event that
they didn't have before, but so what?  can anyone out there think of any
other cause of this action?

i disagree with the assertion that the person was not forced to raise his
arm because that violates the P of C&E which i assumed we are all accepting
as a universal principle.  if not, then like good philosophers, we had
better lay down our postulates and undefined terms and start all over again.
we can't have it both ways, either the P of C&E operates in total, inside
and outside the head, or someone will have alter the P of C&E to leave room
for "free will" (or whatever one wants to call it), or prove when the
Principle operates and when "something else" operates in place of it.

ERGO, the "decision" (see above quote) was caused (determined) by a whole
sequence of physical events, inside and outside the head, and of course the
arm raiser didn't know it was going to happen.  how could he?  who can
predict what causes will work their effects on us in the future?  

more generally, when we consider the entire world of arm raisers and
whatever else people do, how can anyone hope to predict anything that is
going to happen next?  anyone out there want to predict the Apocalypse?  the
death of Capitalism?  the rise of Anarchism?  over the last 500 years i see
a lukewarm trend of more republican polities and more capitalistic
economies, but what is a mere 500 years in the range of human existence?

norm





-----Original Message-----
From: Mikalac Norman S NSSC [mailto:MikalacNS-AT-navsea.navy.mil]
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 8:20 AM
To: 'seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu'
Subject: RE: rts2-25


i'm confused by the excerpt below.

i always thought that the Principle of Cause and Effect (P of C&E) was an
axiom that one accepts, along with other axioms and undefined words, to
begin a chain of reasoning (logic + evidence, another axiom) to arrive an
true or false statements.  this axiom takes you (at least) from the Big Bang
to the present state of the universe, including events that occur inside our
heads as well as outside it (so much for the silly idea of "free will").
(what happened before the Big Bang is not for mere mortals to understand.)

if you accept this Principle, then "...there isn't an endless chain of
causation of thing leading to the next going indefinitely back into the past
and forward into the future..." is a false statement because it contradicts
the P of C & E.  IOW, there WAS and IS an endless chain of causation from
the Big Bang to now and there WILL BE a continuance of this chain into the
future because it is an axiom from which all else follows.'

also, ".... the world consists of complex things which are not fully
determined ["caused", sic] ..." is  contrary and false for the same reason.
IOW, events were, are and always will be caused (determined).

the REAL problem, IOM, is that mere mortals cannot usually "understand" or
"perceive" the proximate and remote causes of events because they are too
complex for our little brains.  that especially true of human events.

IOW, please don't confuse determinacy (causation) with human understanding
of this determinacy.  the same confusion exists with Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle.  H. doesn't say that things are not caused, but that
we can't know about their causation at an atomic level.  he certainly
believed in the P of C&E w/o exception.

"... the whole is more than the sum of its parts..."  is this an axiom?  if
not, then prove it!  seems more like a leap of faith to me.

"... That dogs bark and that humans strive for freedom cannot be deduced
from the laws of physics or chemistry but is a higher level of causation..."

definitely so, and there's the rub with all "theories" of causation as they
move to higher and higher levels of abstraction.  and that brings us to Marx
and his interpretation of history, a very high level of abstraction about
human behavior.  i'll be looking for the logical chain and the evidence that
supports this theory, if we get that far.

norm
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

".... If we then ask why things are determined so late, why there
isn't an endless chain of causation of one thing leading to
the next going indefinitely back into the past and forward
into the future, the answer is: the world consists of
complex things which are not fully determined, and which
interrupt this chain of causation.  The whole is more than
the sum of the parts.  This is called "emergence".  The
human body must obey the laws of physics just like a robot,
but it is able to subject the physical laws to its own
purposes by promoting certain physical processes and
inhibiting others. This is something a robot cannot (yet)
do.  That dogs bark and that humans strive for freedom
cannnot be deduced from the laws of physics or chemistry but
is a higher level of causation. ...."



-----Original Message-----
From: Hans Ehrbar [mailto:econ-AT-lists.econ.utah.edu]
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 3:41 AM
To: seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: rts2-25



Here is an attempt to come at the subject matter of our
current reading from a slightly different angle:


One of the basic tenets in Bhaskar's philosophy is that
every event must be caused (and that, if two events are
different, there must be a cause for their difference).
Much of the argument in RTS builds on this idea: causes must
be active and real, i.e., matter is not pushed around
passively according to some disembodied choreography, but
the inner makeup of things determines how they act.  This
can be considered to be the answer to the question: *where*
is this causal power located?  It does not float around in
space but is located in the things themselves.


The present reading addresses the question *when* this
causation occurs, and the answer is: later than we tend to
think.  The physical course of the world is not determined
by the initial conditions of all the elementary particles,
as the regularity determinist thinks, but it can be
influenced by causal laws which are not of physical origin.
Bhaskar illustrated this in one of his talks there at the
University of Utah: During his lecture he asked me to raise
my right hand, and I did.  I forget the details of what
point he made about this to the audience, but the
general thrust of it was that the physical course of the
world had just been altered by his and my intentional
actions.  A few seconds earlier I had no idea that I was
about to lift my arm.  I was also not forced to lift my
arm when Roy asked me, but the decision to do this was made
then and there within a couple of seconds.

If we then ask why things are determined so late, why there
isn't an endless chain of causation of one thing leading to
the next going indefinitely back into the past and forward
into the future, the answer is: the world consists of
complex things which are not fully determined, and which
interrupt this chain of causation.  The whole is more than
the sum of the parts.  This is called "emergence".  The
human body must obey the laws of physics just like a robot,
but it is able to subject the physical laws to its own
purposes by promoting certain physical processes and
inhibiting others. This is something a robot cannot (yet)
do.  That dogs bark and that humans strive for freedom
cannnot be deduced from the laws of physics or chemistry but
is a higher level of causation.  This is an important point
which we should discuss a little more.  In DPF, p. 49,
Bhaskar writes:

> In emergence, new beings ... are generated out of
> pre-existing material from which they could have been
> neither induced nor deduced. ...  This is matter as
> creative.

I like to think of it as: the creation of the world is not
something in the past but it is still going on.  Emergence
is not easy to discuss.  It is something new which cannot be
reduced to its roots in what is already there, i.e., it
cannot be explained.  But we know by transcendental
arguments that it must exist.  What do we know about
emergence?  Let's collect as many examples as we can.  Are
there examples of it which we really understand well?  Let's
talk about emergence.


-Hans.



     --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


     --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


     --- from list seminar-14-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---