Proactive Behaviour and Causality

[BaalChatzaf]

The underlying nature of entities and causation lies at the heart of the free will vs determinism debates. It is also at the root of disagreements over quantum physics. It's about time we started to seriously question our intuitive understandings of the nature of entities and causation. I think it is mistakes in these intuitions that are causing the problems.

Paul

Your observation is astute. Intuition in the form of -common sense- has been a poor guide to formulating theories of the physical world. Common sense is our way of integrating everyday experiences in the world of man size things over time intervals compatible with our short life spans and our crude sense organs. What has common sense intuition produced? The caloric theory of heat (heat is a fluid). The phlogiston theory of combustion. The aether theory of light. Vital Essence as a unifying principle of living matter and deterministic physical states. Do you know why the first capacitors were called Leyden Jars? Because it was believed electricity was a fluid and we still refer to electrons in motion as -current- and we refer to electric current in the slang as -juice- (as in turn on the juice). In all of these instances common sense intuition has led us astray. We still talk about sunRISE and sunSET rather than Earth turn.

Reality is NOT like our accustomed man size world. It is much different and a lot stranger than we can imagine easily. Matter is not infinitely divisible (as Aristotle claimed) nor does energy come in continuous quantities as Planck discovered. Light is particulate, as Einstein showed and particles are waves as DeBroigle showed. The only way in which we have integrated this anti-common-sense stuff is through rather abstract mathematical models and theories (shades of Pythagoras!). Quantity rules and quality is at best a shorthand guide to quantity.

One of the defects of the philosophical approach is that it works in the domain of common sense (by and large) and is centered on qualities rather than quantities. Qualities are subjective. Quantities can be objective. My love is NOT like a red, red rose and beauty is NOT truth. Nor is truth always beauty. The Good, The True and the Beautiful are wills of the wisp. The only truth that really counts of the empirical variety. The truth of accurate measurements and accurate counts. The truth of the accountant and the carpenter, not the truth of poet, is what rules.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

The underlying nature of entities and causation lies at the heart of the free will vs determinism debates. It is also at the root of disagreements over quantum physics. It's about time we started to seriously question our intuitive understandings of the nature of entities and causation. I think it is mistakes in these intuitions that are causing the problems.

Paul

Your observation is astute. Intuition in the form of -common sense- has been a poor guide to formulating theories of the physical world. Common sense is our way of integrating everyday experiences in the world of man size things over time intervals compatible with our short life spans and our crude sense organs. What has common sense intuition produced? The caloric theory of heat (heat is a fluid). The phlogiston theory of combustion. The aether theory of light. Vital Essence as a unifying principle of living matter and deterministic physical states. Do you know why the first capacitors were called Leyden Jars? Because it was believed electricity was a fluid and we still refer to electrons in motion as -current- and we refer to electric current in the slang as -juice- (as in turn on the juice). In all of these instances common sense intuition has led us astray. We still talk about sunRISE and sunSET rather than Earth turn.

Reality is NOT like our accustomed man size world. It is much different and a lot stranger than we can imagine easily. Matter is not infinitely divisible (as Aristotle claimed) nor does energy come in continuous quantities as Planck discovered. Light is particulate, as Einstein showed and particles are waves as DeBroigle showed. The only way in which we have integrated this anti-common-sense stuff is through rather abstract mathematical models and theories (shades of Pythagoras!). Quantity rules and quality is at best a shorthand guide to quantity.

One of the defects of the philosophical approach is that it works in the domain of common sense (by and large) and is centered on qualities rather than quantities. Qualities are subjective. Quantities can be objective. My love is NOT like a red, red rose and beauty is NOT truth. Nor is truth always beauty. The Good, The True and the Beautiful are wills of the wisp. The only truth that really counts of the empirical variety. The truth of accurate measurements and accurate counts. The truth of the accountant and the carpenter, not the truth of poet, is what rules.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes, but results trump theory, eventually--that is, if a thing doesn't work the theory may have to be one of the things to be re-evaluated. And I would suppose that some technology might work in spite of an incorrect theory. There's naturally a lot of bump and grind involved in putting things to work.

--Brant

[Kevin Haggerty]

Hi Paul,

I know the thread is over a year old now, so I'm not surprised if the stuff I referenced doesn't seem to be part of this thread, but that's where I got it. In addition to the quote of yours that I posted, your Nathaniel Branden quotes are from post #22 as well, and Dragonfly seemed to be arguing that "free will" was the modern equivalent of a cargo cult pretty much the whole time he was posting here (you and he had obviously been working the topic over in other threads, but I don't believe I've read those).

To state my position more starkly, I don't see how determinism is at all compatible with a notion of "self esteem." In psychology, the deterministic world view is pretty indivisible from depression and a belief in the self as victim. Don't know how one can consider one's self a true "actor on the world stage" if everything one does is the result of forces external to the self. And as I said, mere functionality ("Yay, the machine isn't broken!") doesn't strike me as much to esteem.

And Bob,

I don't think a lot of people who value intuition as a concept would equate it with "common sense." Perhaps you get your definition from phrases like "intuitively obvious." I doubt that's the "intuition" Paul is talking about. What I would call "intuition" seems, often as not, to be completely at odds with "common sense."

You know, the world is constantly supplying our minds with far more information than we can consciously process. We have basic (largely subconscious) filters that decide what is to be foregrounded in the conscious mind and what's to be backgrounded to the subconscious mind (if we didn't we'd all be autistic). Even though so much of our experience goes right past our conscious awareness, our minds seem to be able to process and double check this info for meaning. That's where the intuition comes in, when our minds draw conclusions from the welter of unconscious information we gather every minute of the day. That's how Kekule was able to come up with the benzene ring. And that's where someone like Paul may get his intuition that determinism is not the final word on causality.

-Kevin

[BaalChatzaf]

[

Yes, but results trump theory, eventually--that is, if a thing doesn't work the theory may have to be one of the things to be re-evaluated. And I would suppose that some technology might work in spite of an incorrect theory. There's naturally a lot of bump and grind involved in putting things to work.

--Brant

Postively! Results trump theory. Fact trumps theory. Ever and always. That is the scientific approach. The main figure pf merit for a scientific theory is the quality of its predictions.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

[

Yes, but results trump theory, eventually--that is, if a thing doesn't work the theory may have to be one of the things to be re-evaluated. And I would suppose that some technology might work in spite of an incorrect theory. There's naturally a lot of bump and grind involved in putting things to work.

--Brant

Postively! Results trump theory. Fact trumps theory. Ever and always. That is the scientific approach. The main figure pf merit for a scientific theory is the quality of its predictions.

Ba'al Chatzaf

This means you have no essential disagreement with Michael over "primitive" science. It's all science--that is, finding out the truth of the matter or matters.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

[

Yes, but results trump theory, eventually--that is, if a thing doesn't work the theory may have to be one of the things to be re-evaluated. And I would suppose that some technology might work in spite of an incorrect theory. There's naturally a lot of bump and grind involved in putting things to work.

--Brant

Postively! Results trump theory. Fact trumps theory. Ever and always. That is the scientific approach. The main figure pf merit for a scientific theory is the quality of its predictions.

Ba'al Chatzaf

This means you have no essential disagreement with Michael over "primitive" science. It's all science--that is, finding out the truth of the matter or matters.

--Brant

Primitive science (so called) lacks the sophistication of the hypothetico-deductive method (see the Wiki article). But at its core it is good old induction and reason being put to work. So called primitive science does not scale well when you go from the very large (diameter of the cosmos) to the very small (Planck Length). Modern physics can do that. Crude empirically based heuristics cannot.

Primitive science (so called) has the ingredients necessary to real science, but it is not sufficiently sophisticated in making testable inferences about things not directly observable. There is nothing wrong with so-called primitive science. It is raw human intelligence in action. It just lacks some depth and sophistication. Primitive science could not have produced quantum physics and relativity theory. For starters, it lacks the mathematical tools. if you don't have the math, you don't get the physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Heh.

So you are saying that you can make the journey without taking the first step?

You can't have sophisticated science without primitive science first. One is built on the other. It kinda evolved that way.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Heh.

So you are saying that you can make the journey without taking the first step?

You can't have sophisticated science without primitive science first. One is built on the other. It kinda evolved that way.

Michael

All Beginnings are difficult. From baby's first steps to formulating nuclear physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Heh.

So you are saying that you can make the journey without taking the first step?

You can't have sophisticated science without primitive science first. One is built on the other. It kinda evolved that way.

Michael

We must all babel first before we can speak and write profoundly in our later life. All Beginnings are Hard.

Bal'Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

You don't understand. Why are you blaming the baby for not being able to run a 100 yard dash? Why are you saying that if this can't happen, the baby has no feet?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

You don't understand. Why are you blaming the baby for not being able to run a 100 yard dash? Why are you saying that if this can't happen, the baby has no feet?

Michael

What I -am- saying is that Mankind did not have science until about 400 years ago or so.

Without the mathematics for describing motion (dynamics) there can be no science. The closest thing to science in the ancient world were the works of Archimedes (the science of static or balanced forces) and some of the inventions of Heron, where were remarkable examples of ancient mechanical technology.

The Egyptians built the Pyramids using ramps, levers and rollers. There science and mathematics was remarkably crude. However their management skills were first rate and equal to anything in modern times. They were able to do the supply and logistics for 100,000 workers on the Kufu Pyramid and without the benefit of computers. Ditto for the Mayans and the Aztecs. The water and river engineering of the ancient Chinese was first rate, but it was not scientific. It was based largely on empirical cut and try. They really did not have a science of physics, particularly of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics. But they did remarkable things with what they had.

Humans are just plain smart. They have always been smart for the past 250,000 years which is about the time that homo sapien evolved from a lesser species of homonid.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What I -am- saying is that Mankind did not have science until about 400 years ago or so.

[... snip ...]

The Egyptians built the Pyramids using ramps, levers and rollers. There science and mathematics was remarkably crude.

Bob,

You don't see the contradiction here? How can there be "crude science" if there is no science at all? And that is in the same post.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

What I -am- saying is that Mankind did not have science until about 400 years ago or so.

[... snip ...]

The Egyptians built the Pyramids using ramps, levers and rollers. There science and mathematics was remarkably crude.

Bob,

You don't see the contradiction here? How can there be "crude science" if there is no science at all? And that is in the same post.

Michael

For the last time. The ancients NEVER EVER EVER developed the hypothetico-deductive method. NOT EVER. They had trial and error (which mankind has always had since the beginning). Science as we know it is an instantiation of the hypothetico-deductive method of combining induction. abduction and deduction. It was invented about 400 years ago and Isaac Newton was its first great practicer. I am stating a historical FACT. The "crude science" of the ancients was crude and it WAS NOT science. It was trial and error empiricism.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

For the last time.

Why doesn't this convince me?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

What I -am- saying is that Mankind did not have science until about 400 years ago or so.

[... snip ...]

The Egyptians built the Pyramids using ramps, levers and rollers. There science and mathematics was remarkably crude.

Bob,

You don't see the contradiction here? How can there be "crude science" if there is no science at all? And that is in the same post.

Michael

For the last time. The ancients NEVER EVER EVER developed the hypothetico-deductive method. NOT EVER. They had trial and error (which mankind has always had since the beginning). Science as we know it is an instantiation of the hypothetico-deductive method of combining induction. abduction and deduction. It was invented about 400 years ago and Isaac Newton was its first great practicer. I am stating a historical FACT. The "crude science" of the ancients was crude and it WAS NOT science. It was trial and error empiricism.

You cannot know this is true. All we can know is that nothing to that effect was written down and survived. In fact this method may have been used itself on the "trial and error empiricism" level and discarded. The only way to know that your statement is true is by proving a negative. You merely keep asserting the negative is true. In fact, you can't have pure trial and error empiricism. That'd be like writing a book only knowing that it is composed of the letters of the alphabet and putting them up at random until some reader exclaims, "There's a word!" Hence an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time will reproduce all the works of William Shakespeare. NOT!

It seems that in primitive science there should be a primitive type of hypo-deductive.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

You cannot know this is true. All we can know is that nothing to that effect was written down and survived. In fact this method may have been used itself on the "trial and error empiricism" level and discarded. The only way to know that your statement is true is by proving a negative. You merely keep asserting the negative is true. In fact, you can't have pure trial and error empiricism. That'd be like writing a book only knowing that it is composed of the letters of the alphabet and putting them up at random until some reader exclaims, "There's a word!" Hence an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time will reproduce all the works of William Shakespeare. NOT!

It seems that in primitive science there should be a primitive type of hypo-deductive.

--Brant

I will restate the matter. There is not a single shred of evidence to show that mankind had the hypothetico-deductive method of systematic knowledge prior to around 400 years ago. Not a shred. Not a bit. Nada. Zip, Bupkis. K'duchas. Zero. The closest anyone (that we know of) came in ancient time was Archimedes. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that humans have always been smart. We are the apes that solve problems. We are, and have always been, meat that thinks.

Maybe Advanced Science was lost when Atlantis sunk beneath the waves (sure, sure) and only rediscovered in recent times. Newton believed things along these lines. He believed that there was advanced ancient knowledge that was deliberately suppressed by a corrupt Church. But if you go by evidence (I do), there is no indication that the great threads of logic/a priori thinking and empirical thinking were well joined until recent times. The Greeks missed it. The Chinese missed it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited September 5, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just wonder why a person uses "science" and "science" in the same post apparently to mean two different things.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I just wonder why a person uses "science" and "science" in the same post apparently to mean two different things.

Michael

In my usage, science = hypothetico-deductive method (look it up). That is what I mean.

This is not to be confused with empirical, rule of thumb cut and try methodology which has been with the human race since our ape ancestors made flint tools.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

A human "meat machine" is a butcher. Meat is "the flesh of animals as used for food." Meat doesn't think. It is dead, rendered tissue.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

A human "meat machine" is a butcher. Meat is "the flesh of animals as used for food." Meat doesn't think. It is dead, rendered tissue.

--Brant

Meat = flesh. Have it your way. We are flesh machines. We operate according to the same physical laws as rocks and trees. There is nothing essentially different in our basic substance and makeup from any other organic being. There is no spirit. There is no soul. There is only flesh and blood operating in accord with physical laws.

Ba'al Chatzaf (materialist, reductionist, physicalist mystic of muscle).

[Brant Gaede]

A human "meat machine" is a butcher. Meat is "the flesh of animals as used for food." Meat doesn't think. It is dead, rendered tissue.

--Brant

Meat = flesh. Have it your way. We are flesh machines. We operate according to the same physical laws as rocks and trees. There is nothing essentially different in our basic substance and makeup from any other organic being. There is no spirit. There is no soul. There is only flesh and blood operating in accord with physical laws.

Ba'al Chatzaf (materialist, reductionist, physicalist mystic of muscle).

Well, I've got spirit!

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

I just wonder why a person uses "science" and "science" in the same post apparently to mean two different things.

Michael

In my usage, science = hypothetico-deductive method (look it up). That is what I mean.

This is not to be confused with empirical, rule of thumb cut and try methodology which has been with the human race since our ape ancestors made flint tools.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Michael, please, man -- give it up! Robert is right about this.

Remember when Rand said that religion is a "primitive philosophy"? It's philosophy in a sense, a primitive view of the world. In that same respect, inquiry into the nature of the physical world before about 1600 was "primitive science," thought not science in the fullest, systematized sense of the word ("real science," if you will) -- parallel to the way in which Plato and Aristotle and Kant were systematic, method-driven philosophers in the fullest sense of the word ("real philosophers"), as against the primitive religion/philosophies of the ancient Egyptians or Amazon River natives.

For heaven's sake, even Peikoff is on Robert's side on this! In lecture 3 of his "Induction in Physics and Philosophy," Peikoff says:

[W]e’re going to start looking at the processes by which physicists rise beyond the simple generalizations accessible to children or primitives. How do great scientists, who are to be our guides here, perform the feat of rising from level to level of the hierarchy of [generalizations]? The answer is complex. For a while, it is continuous with our cognitive development in pre-scientific life. But real science begins with a special distinctive method of its own experiment, experiment.....I’ve chosen to look at a few great scientists in the course, giving you some examples from their epochal experiments. And today, I want to discuss, from this viewpoint, the first of them, Galileo, the man honored everywhere as the Father of the experimental method in science.

Galileo -- early 17th century -- beginning of "real science," i.e., science developed according to the hypothetical-deductive and inductive-integrative methods used in an ever greater cascading series during the past 400 years.

Michael, you are straining mightily to try to make Robert wrong about this. You need to find some different targets. He certainly presents enough of them.

And Robert, I heartily commend Peikoff's lecture series "Induction in Physics and Philosophy." You just might find that he is not as much of a lamebrain in re philosophy, physics, and mathematics as you think he is. (I have my differences with him, but there is a lot of value in his lectures.)

REB

P.S. -- I think everyone here, if they really want to understand science and philosophy, should avail themselves of these fine lectures. Or, wait a few years, and David Harriman's book will come out, and you can read the ideas, which is a much better format for critical study.

P.P.S. -- Peikoff's earlier lectures, "Objectivism through Induction," are also of some value, though I think his methodology is sloppier in these lectures than in the later set.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

This discussion started as an affirmation by Bob that science invalidates philosophy while I stated that they are two types of interrelated knowledge, science needing instruments and specialized knowledge and philosophy merely needing the use of direct observation, introspection and logic.

This is the sense of science I have been meaning, and in this sense, science existed in ancient times. And Bob even used it in his post, where he also used his other meaning:

What I -am- saying is that Mankind did not have science until about 400 years ago or so.

. . .

The Egyptians built the Pyramids using ramps, levers and rollers. There science and mathematics was remarkably crude.

(He actually meant "their science," and not "there science.")

Either ancient Egyptians had science or did not have science. Bob's statement above claims they had science AND did not have science at the same time. (Either that was his meaning or maybe he meant ancient Egyptians were not part of mankind.)

Bob's switcheroonie allowed him to say that Aristotle's philosophical observations have held back humanity for centuries because his science of planets, etc., has proven to be wrong. (He calls Aristotle's science "philosophy," then bashes the philosophy.)

And even with all your explanations, you have not convinced me of the need to eliminate the concept "ancient science" (as opposed to "modern science") from human knowledge. I agree with your explanations (and even his) if the term "modern science" is used instead of just "science."

Bob is proposing to eliminate the entire concept of ancient science and hijack the work "science" only to mean "modern science" (er... but sometimes using it in the former sense when he slips).

This whole thing is getting really esoteric. I am against Objectivism becoming so esoteric that it is a turn-off to most people, especially when it tells everybody that a word the whole world uses with a certain meaning is wrong and only Objectivism is right about its meaning.

Michael

[Rodney]

For perspective on the issue of "science," I think it helps to go deeper, as I did in 667; or, How Objectivists Are Not Materialists.

[BaalChatzaf]

For perspective on the issue of "science," I think it helps to go deeper, as I did in 667; or, How Objectivists Are Not Materialists.

Living organisms are governed by the same physical laws as non-living organisms. The main difference is in the detailed interaction of the parts. Living organisms can replicate and they have homeostatic regulatory processes that keep their functioning in line with external conditions. Contrary to Rand's declaration that life is self-generation, living organisms require energy from outside themselves and them must dump heat into a lower temperature ambient than their temperature. Living organisms are -self-regulating- but life is not self generating. That would violate several thermodynamic laws.

We are all material, we are all physical. Everything that exists is physical and obeys physical laws. Consciousness is an epiphenominon of physical processes.

Ba'al Chatzaf