On 9/20/05, Stathis Papaioannou <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> On 19th September 2005 Marc Geddes writes:
>
> >Here's a speculation:
> > The model I'm working with for my theory seems to suggest 3 different
> >fundamental kinds of 'cause and effect'.
> > The first is physical causality - motion of physical objects through
> >space.
> >The second is mental causality - agents making choices which effect
> agents
> >The third is what I call 'Multiverse causality', a sort of highly
> abtsract
> >'causality' close to the notion of logical consistency/consilience - that
> >which ensures that knowledge has a certain ordered 'structure' to it .
>
> How does the second type differ from the first? Descartes thought there
> was
> a difference, and a puzzle: how can the non-physical (i.e. the mental)
> affect the physical? His solution was that that the two fundamentally
> different domains - the mental and the physical - must somehow connect and
> interact at the pineal gland. Of course, this conclusion is laughable,
> even
> for a dualist.
>
> The interaction of billiard balls is an archetypical example of what you
> call "physical causality". Suppose it were shown that this interaction
> implements a conscious computation, as the less immediately accessible but
> (do you agree?) fundamentally similar interaction of atoms in the brain
> implements a conscious computation. Does the billiard ball interaction
> then
> transform from the first type to the second type, or both types, or what?
>
> As for the third type of causality, could you give an example?
>
> --Stathis Papaioannou
>
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>
In the example with the billiard balls, there no reason why both kinds of
causality cannot be equally valid properties of the system. There are simply
two different interpretations of the system at work - one interpretation is
in terms of function - changes in state - that we see as physical
causality. The
other interpretation is in terms of teleology - aims or ends - that we see
as mental causality. Both valid.
It's very difficult for me to try to explain the third kind of 'causality',
because I'm not yet totally clear on what it is myself. I suspect it's some
kind of subtle pattern across the multiverse which can't be easily described
in plain English.
Stephen Hawking proposed the notion of 'Imaginary Time', a kind of time
existing 'at right angles' to ordinary physical time. This, I suspect, is
equivalent to my proposed third kind of causality.
To get a handle on the idea, you have to realize I'm not talking about
something which takes place in ordinary physical or mental time. It's better
to think of it , in fact, as a static platonic property of the multiverse. It's
what grants 'Existence' to a thing - how the existence of a thing is implied
by the existence of other things. So this kind of causality is better
thought of as an abstract *logical* relationship between things.
--
Please vist my website:
http://www.riemannai.org
Science, Sci-Fi and Philosophy
---
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
-Emily Dickinson
'The brain is wider than the sky'
http://www.bartleby.com/113/1126.html
Received on Wed Sep 21 2005 - 17:22:32 PDT