/sci/ - Science & Math

>CAUSALS
FFFFFFFFFFFFF

Regards,
/v/

I'd say yes, but I can already hear the christfags implying therefore god caused the universe.

>>1356957
I should clarify. Do you think that causality means that everything will forever be predetermined? Or can we only follow it backwards.

>>1356971
Your confusing causality with determinism.

>>1356971
No, because of pi.

>>1356992
Similar concepts. Determinism results from the observation of causality. My question is, does chance exist? Is there a random factor that makes it so the future is in fact unpredictable.

causality is overrated.

Causality is interesting, but I prefer the many worlds interpretation.

People that think everything is predetermined are week-willed, pathetic, sorry excuses for Human beings (Welcome to 98% of the world) To some extent things are predetermined, we are grow and die. Sometimes we get into the "Living" of existing, but most people are shallow shells of what a person should be. They think in too narrow of a spectrum, they are ignorant BEYOND all belief. And generally only think about themselves. The other 2% of people out there are those who are outcast from "Normal" clicks of the aforementioned people, who actually think for themselves and want to carve out there own life, and not just live up to stereotypes.

>>1357034

What the fuck are you on about? Just get out you faggot

Hmmm..
>>1357034 makes an interesting point. Is your willingness to believe in determinism swayed by your particular desires?

Still, neither case OP has presented allows for free will.

>>1356957

1) Put vile of poison triggered to release on the decay of a single atom in box.
2) Put Cat in box.
3) Close box.
4) Disprove determinism
5) ?????
6) Profit.

causality? pfff!

>>1357080
Wether or not we can observe the cat existing doesn't change the fact that it either does or doesn't. Existence is not dependent on observation.

>>1357034
All science points towards the fact in a certain starting situation only one outcome can happen (well, more with quantum fluctuations, but on a larger scale these don't have much effect).
Life is just this but on a larger scale. So stfu faggot and learn some science before posting on a science board saying "lol i want free will". It doesn't exist retard. The illusion does, so just happily live with that.
Of course if you were to do something or not to do something, your life will be effected, however you were always going to do one of those things, but if you were following this thought stream and said "Just let nature figure it out", that was always going to happen, so you were always going to do nothing. It just becomes very complex, and it is easier to just ignore the fact free will is an illusion in everyday life.

>>1357090
That hardly seems like a justified position.

ITT: People who don't understand the difference between the "determinism" used by philosophers, and determinism used by scientists.

Unfortunately the concept that our minds are governed by nothing more than the laws of physics got named determinism because all understood physics was deterministic until the 20th century. It confuses people into thinking non-deterministic physics disproves the major implications of deterministic philosophy such as the lack of free will.

>>1357098
Determinism by scientists is the same as used by philosophers, except it includes a tiny degree of randomness on the quantum scale, which has very small effects in reasonably short term on the larger scale, still making free-will an illusion.

>>1357090
Does the uncertainty become so complex that free will can just as easily be said to be real?

>>1357102
Quantum events are random, not choice. So no, even if it were as you say, it would not be free; it would be random.

>>1357091
Lrn2 Copenhagen interpretation - the cat's existance does depend on you observing the state of the trigger particle; until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead

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>>6931

>>1357102
>>1357102
Unless you can magicaly control quantum uncertainty you've still got no free-will. Just because outcomes can at a fine level not be predicted doesn't imply your in any way deliberately responsible for the uncertainty.

>>1357098
>>1357101
Ok ok ok, So free will is an illusion in that what we think are random decisions are actually predetermined by our genetics and experiences. BUT, seeing as how the illusion is all we experience, it becomes subjective reality.

Does anyone think that causality is something that exists to us because of the way we experience time?

If time doesn't really exist then can causality? Help me out hurr.

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>>5530

>>1357119
Reality. Subjective.
Get the fuck out of /sci/ , right now I mean it. Come back after you understand the universality of the scientific method.

>>1357110
No, the cat was dead wether you knew it was dead or not. Unless "observation" can be taken to mean "interaction" then that idea is implying that the universe's existance hinges upon observation.

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>>2373

>>1357131
Lulz. Ever hear of Double Slit Experiment?

>>1357136
It doesn't mean observation by a human. It means observation by another particle, ie interaction with any other particle.

>>1357131
It does. In fact, the universe is actually nothing but!

That's not science, but it's what I am convinced of.

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>>2497

>>1357136
Yes, I've heard of it. Go on.

>>1357120
There's a very interesting piece of philosophy on that topic (Strawson I think). He says that causality is a linguistic phenomenon that should properly be removed from language. He proposes to divide talk about time into two 'series', an 'A series' and a 'B series'

The 'A series' contains events which are objectively true at all possible moments - "The Battle of Hastings was before the Battle of Waterloo" or "The Battle of the Bulge occured at the same time as the Second World War"

The 'B series' contains statements which are only indexically true, such as "Vietnam happened in the past" or "We will invade Korea in the future". After a certain amount of time (either forwards or backwards) these statements become false

His contention is that it is only a linguistic fluke we tend to see causal events as being 'A series' (X caused Y), and properly we should be able to translate them into 'B series' talk. But if this is the case then the 'causal' aspect drops out altogether and we are left with a series of chronologically occuring events.

>>1357034
>We ARE grow and die

Are you by any chance asian?

>>1357139
It means observation by a human. Lrn2 Double split experiment - you get different data if you record it as it happens to if you look at the data after you're done

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>>4695

>>1357152
Double split experiment is effected by where the interaction between the particle happens; whether the interaction happens at/before the slits of after them. Human observation has no effect on this.

>>1357146
interesting. So is it the general consensus that time is an illusion? How people explain away our experiencing of it?

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>>5355

>>1357156
It's because we remember stuff and sort it by date. Pretty simple.

>>1357159
sure, but why do we sort it pointing in one direction?

>>1357146
But this isn't much of a surprise or mindfuck for modern philosophers, it is generally accepted that Hume saw off the notion of causation hundreds of years ago.

Like a good scientist, Hume would only allow evidence from his senses to form the basis of his reasoning. If he didn't have a direct impression of an object in front of him, he would cast around his memory to try and find an idea (memory) of the object. His contention was that you could only remember things that you had once interacted with (inb4 unicorns, gold mountains - he has an easy answer for them).

He then considered an idea of 'causation', drawing on an example of two billiard balls colliding. He knew one would hit the other, and that the second would move off, but he also knew he never saw the 'causal glue' holding the interaction together. So he rejected causation as a notion and prefered to think of it as 'constant connexion' - a condition where we become accustomed to seeing event A followed by event B.

Thus 'causation' is shorthand for a psychological state

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>>5878

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>>4875

>>1357160
Geez, that's like asking why we build a house from the bottom to the top and not from the top to the bottom....

>>1357160
Strawson says it is an epiphenomenal function of our experience of the world. I'm not sure I agree with him, but in fairness only one of us was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University.

His idea hinges on the fact that language surrounding time will always be imprecise because language has developed in accordance with our experience of the world, meaning that we order and talk about events as though they happen in one particular way. Viewed from another, non-natural perspective, events may happen 'backwards', or even in a random order, so a well-behaved language should reflect this

>>1357168
Yeah, it's the same question essentially, but the answer doesn't seem as obvious as you seem to think it is.

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>>2335

"it is an epiphenomenal function of our experience of the world"

So does this basically mean "just because"?

>>1357172
But it's not just our language that sorts chronologically, it's our whole method of thinking.

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>>6993

Chronological thinking:

Proof that God exists.

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>>5439

>>1357181
Sorry, I'm half writing out of my notes and I forgot to convert that out of philosophy-speak

'Epiphenomenal' means that it is not real, it is a system which can be explained exactly by describing the state of some other system. So for example a rainbow is epiphenomenal because everything 'really' happening can be described with reference to the position of the sun and water droplets.

So Strawson says that the way we measure time is epiphenomenal because everything 'really' happening can be described with reference to his 'A series' of time (X happened before Y), and even our subective experience (which he regards as real and I don't) can be described with a 'B series'. Since it is epiphenomenal, it can be stripped out of the language with no loss to accuracy

So tl;dr is yes, "Just because" is a pretty accurate description but has less fancy words!

>>1357191
Since you that up, I have some thoughts on god.

Everything is part of a whole. So is god part of the whole, or the whole? Is there really a difference between the two in the end? If god is everything then isn't he essentially meaningless? What good is a word that can be used in infinite ways, it literally has no meaning.

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>>3707

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>>3111

>>1357198
What does it mean to say that God is everything? If God were everything, there would be no free will, in which case he would not be God.
God CREATED everything, is the first cause. Which is what I was only half joking about when I said that chronological thinking is proof of God. We build our chronologies on first causes, all of which are in the past, like God.

So, if you want to understand the way I think, and of course, that is all I can offer, then you should know that free will is integral to man's existence. Perhaps God only created one thing, Free Will, and the universe is the product of that.

>>1356957
You can't believe in science without believing in causality.

>>1357198
>>1357203
Quit fagging up my extremely naieve amateur science thread!

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>>5735

>>1357205
No

>>1357197
I thought it was the opposite, that experience is the only thing that is actually real.

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>>5489

>>1357203
but if he's linked causally to the rest of the universe then in one way of perceiving, when you zoom out to look at the big picture, it isn't it all just part of one big whole, and thus meaningless?

OP here. So, if causality is real and observable, and free will is an illusion, then you could suppose that "destiny" is a real thing.

>>1357211
Depends who you ask - I tend to agree with you but I have a lot of respect for Wittgenstein, Strawson, Kripke and that lot for trying to pull off something more coherant because there are frequently times it seems to me that they might have a very, very good point I just haven't understood yet.

Regardless, Hume - who is the model empiricist - does not believe causation exists. >>1357161

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>>3431

>>1357220
Yes. If all events are precausally determined then all events will be precausally determined, but that's not much of a logical leap.

Also, 'free will' is almost a totally different subject to causation - you need to be REALLY strict with your definition of free will before you rule it out

>>1357218
free will and causality are not friends. Sometimes they just glare at each other, at other times, they launch warheads.

If causality is King, then everything you do is out of your control. In which case there is no free will. In which case, yes, the universe probably seems like an undifferentiated whole.

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>>3263

>>1357220
Well yeah, if you happen too believe in "destiny" then you automatically believe in a deterministic universe.

In which case not only the "good" things where/are bound too happen to certain people, but also the "bad". This opens up a whole new subject on which too speculate.

>>1357229
For that matter, our definition of ourselves, which is the core of free will.

>>1357229
Right right.

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>>2757

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>>1344

>>1357237
I was more or less trying to argue that while what we experience as free will is just an illusion, since we all experience it the same way (to our knowledge), and until there is some sort of outside observation, we may as well just accept it as real.

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>>6179

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>>1876

Seems like a good time to float my various philosophical musings, I'm not in college so they are probably pretty amateurish.

You can only have knowledge of something by perceiving a "separate" object from it. It is only these differences that allow you to form thoughts about reality. In the end reality is all there is, making true knowledge an impossibility.

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>>5784

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>>1739

I beileve OP is a faggot.

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>>6084

>>1357268
Awww, that's your answer to everything.

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>>2981

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>>2928

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>>6321

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>>1948

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>>5793

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>>5560