Ruth and causality (General)
Causality is the subject of another section of Ruth's Chapter 7, initially headed "Hume's elimination of causality", and once more I'm having trouble with the argument. I don't have a problem when she says that cause preceding effect in the empirical world "should not be thought of as necessarily extendable to the unobservable entities of the micro-world" (and I particularly like the word "necessarily"). But I do find it extremely confusing when scientists and philosophers apply their anti-causality theory to empirical reality itself. Ruth gives an example of a cue ball striking a second ball in a game of billiards, thus (apparently) causing the second ball to move:-RUTH: However, we never actually SEE the cause; all we see is the pattern of events, which is repeated every time we perform these actions. [...] the cue ball striking the second ball is not OBSERVABLY a 'cause'. It is simply an event. Our expectation that the second ball must move is based on the fact that we have always seen this happen. It is certainly conceivable that the second ball could just sit there, despite having been hit. The motion of the second ball is predicted by physical law; but again, physical law simply describes patterns of events; it does not say WHY they happen. For this reason, Hume concluded that causation is not really in the world, but it is something we INFER from what he termed the "constant conjunction of events"."-Some people argue that NOTHING is "really in the world", and the basis of the whole problem may well lie in definitions: by what criteria do we judge what is and isn't "real"? It's inevitably linked also to our definition of knowledge and to the key topic of subjectivism. Ruth's example, however, common-sensically assumes the real existence of the balls, and if we can accept that, and if we can accept that the second ball really moves after being hit by the first, then we can also accept (on the same commonsense level) that this is a connected sequence. The fact that experience teaches us to have expectations seems to me irrelevant. A child on first seeing a cue ball strike a second ball will have no expectations, but that doesn't alter the fact of the connected sequence. It is indeed conceivable that the second ball may just sit there, but if so, that too will have a cause-and-effect explanation: perhaps someone drilled a hole through the billiard table and the ball and stuck a rod through it.-To classify this as "simply an event" again requires a definition of "event", and even among philosophers there's no consensus on what it means. For most of us, it's an occurrence within space/time that involves change of some kind, and for most of us change entails a sequence of cause and effect. The change here is in the position of the two balls, and we can trace this back to an endless chain of "events" (i.e. causes that create effects which become causes that create effects etc.) going back to the Big Bang. Physical law may only describe "patterns of events" (which some of us might call patterns of cause and effect), but I don't think physicists would have difficulty explaining WHY one movable object has moved after being struck by another movable object on a smooth surface with sufficient space for movement. They needn't make predictions unless they wish to extrapolate laws, but it's true that these will engender expectations and that the physicists INFER a general principle from events. However, the fact that something is inferred doesn't mean it isn't real. Experience teaches us over and over again that in our space/time world the inference IS real. If you don't believe me, step in front of a bus. -Ruth follows this up with references to Russell and Salmon, and with somewhat recondite examples, but these lead to the same conclusion: "Hume and Russell (1913) were right: causality is NOT an ontological feature of the world. In TI terms, it is an inference we make based on situations involving very probable transactions [...] -Why "probable"? Again this relates to predictions, which can always be thwarted by unforeseen causes and their effects (the rod in the billiard ball). How does this invalidate past and present sequences of cause and effect? Is a predicted future the only "reality"? It seems to me that the apparent evidence against causality takes place in a quantum world nobody understands (so let us by all means keep an open mind in that context), while the only objection within our empirical space/time world is a matter of language (e.g. what we mean by "event", or by "real") plus the assumption that, despite all our experiences to the contrary, inference automatically means that what is inferred is "not really in the world". Am I alone in my confusion? If so, perhaps Ruth or someone else will hit me with an intellectual cue ball and pot me into the pocket of enlightenment.
Ruth and causality
by David Turell 
, Saturday, August 17, 2013, 00:38 (4115 days ago) @ dhw
dhw:Causality is the subject of another section of Ruth's Chapter 7, initially headed "Hume's elimination of causality", and once more I'm having trouble with the argument.-Ruth's chapter is beyond the average non-scientific reader, which is why she has to write the book for lay folks. I've had to struggle with it. > > RUTH: However, we never actually SEE the cause; .... The motion of the second ball is predicted by physical law; but again, physical law simply describes patterns of events; it does not say WHY they happen. For this reason, Hume concluded that causation is not really in the world, but it is something we INFER from what he termed the "constant conjunction of events"."-I think you miss her point. As a confirmed billiards player in college I think I can make her point for you. Let us start from the usual position of how and why. Gould wanted theology/philosophy and science to be separate majisteria. They are not and never can be. What we see when the billiards player steps to the table is what scinece studies, his actions perfectly visible to us. The force of his blow can be measured as can the angle used to strike the cue ball and the ball it hits. What cannot be measured are the judgements he makes in his frontal lobe from what he sees in his occipital lobe. He is using his consciousness to make decisions that will result in what we can measure scientifically. We can put an EEG skull cap on him and we will see spikes and waves in various parfts of his brain, the final ones over the motor strip as he strikes the cue ball, with an unseen decision of how hard a blow. We see all the results but no direct observation of the source. Yet we do know much of how the cause relates to the result. -That is Ruth's point. Those pesky quanta are over there on the other side, not really in our spacetime manifold. We never get a full view of them, but we can study them when they are activiated here and become cueballs we can watch.- > dhw: To classify this as "simply an event" again requires a definition of "event", and even among philosophers there's no consensus on what it means. For most of us, it's an occurrence within space/time that involves change of some kind, and for most of us change entails a sequence of cause and effect.-I have redefined it for you. Quantum events are real when they occur in our spacetime, and they are real in their own realm. But we can never fully see the cause. > dhw:Ruth follows this up with references to Russell and Salmon, and with somewhat recondite examples, but these lead to the same conclusion: "Hume and Russell (1913) were right: causality is NOT an ontological feature of the world. In TI terms, it is an inference we make based on situations involving very probable transactions [...] -I think this is understandable if my analogy is followed. We never fully understand the billiard player's brain work. (A bunch of ionized particles running around along nerve axons.) > > dhw: Why "probable"? Again this relates to predictions, which can always be thwarted by unforeseen causes and their effects (the rod in the billiard ball). How does this invalidate past and present sequences of cause and effect? Is a predicted future the only "reality"? It seems to me that the apparent evidence against causality takes place in a quantum world nobody understands. -Of course there are quantum causes. All the equations that work in QM are just taking averages of what the particular quanta are doing at a given time. The equations amazingly work, even if infinities are wiped out! It doesn't mattter if they are entangled or not, if their angular momentum (spin) is this way or that way or all ways. The average of all the probabilities works. But each individual quantum particle (bad word, but it is all we have) is doing its own thing and we can't 'see' each individual at the source of 'cause'. That is why she used 'probable'. Heisenberg's wall of uncertainty. We can understand only so much, and probably never all of it.- > dhw:Am I alone in my confusion? If so, perhaps Ruth or someone else will hit me with an intellectual cue ball and pot me into the pocket of enlightenment.-I think my prowess with the cue ball has now got you in the right pocket. Actually I grew to prefer billiards, but you wanted a pocket.
Ruth and causality
In Chapter 7 Ruth claims, along with Hume, that causality "is not really in the world". She gives as an example a billiard ball striking a second ball, thus causing (or not causing?) the second ball to move.-RUTH: However, we never actually SEE the cause; all we see is the pattern of events, which is repeated every time we perform these actions [...] the cue ball striking the second ball is not OBSERVABLY a 'cause'. It is simply an event. Our expectation that the second ball must move is based on the fact that we have always seen this happen. It is certainly conceivable that the second ball could just sit there, despite having been hit. The motion of the second ball is predicted by physical law; but again, physical law simply describes patterns of events; it does not say WHY they happen. For this reason, Hume concluded that causation is not really in the world, but it is something we INFER from what he termed the "constant conjunction of events".-DAVID: I think you miss her point. As a confirmed billiards player in college I think I can make her point for you. [...] What we see when the billiards player steps to the table is what scinece studies, his actions perfectly visible to us. The force of his blow can be measured as can the angle used to strike the cue ball and the ball it hits. What cannot be measured are the judgements he makes in his frontal lobe from what he sees in his occipital lobe. He is using his consciousness to make decisions that will result in what we can measure scientifically. We can put an EEG skull cap on him and we will see spikes and waves in various parfts of his brain, the final ones over the motor strip as he strikes the cue ball, with an unseen decision of how hard a blow. We see all the results but no direct observation of the source.-Thank you for this magnificent effort to explain Ruth's arguments and to read her mind. However, as you will see, I have restored those parts of the quote that you missed out. Ruth never once mentions the player's mental processes. She is talking solely about the motion of the second ball being (or not being) caused by the impact of the cue ball. I have pointed out that the sequence of cause and effect can go all the way back to the Big Bang, and this sequence would include the player's mental processes which we cannot observe, plus the unknown causes of life and consciousness. But not knowing causes does not mean there is no such thing as causality. (In my post, I have also questioned the relevance of expectations and predictions, and the assumption that inference automatically means that what is inferred is not part of reality. These are two essential elements of Ruth's argument that you have ignored.) Your own argument seems to be that we can't see the mental processes, and we can never know all the causes and effects that go to make up an event. This is obviously true. But how does that prove that the movement of the second ball was not CAUSED by the impact of the cue ball, let alone that causality has been "eliminated"? We really need Ruth to disentangle all these threads, but in the meantime it would be interesting for me to know whether (and for what reasons) you yourself believe that causality "is not really in the world", or even more emphatically "is NOT an ontological feature of the world" (Ruth's capitals). -dhw: Am I alone in my confusion? If so, perhaps Ruth or someone else will hit me with an intellectual cue ball and pot me into the pocket of enlightenment.-DAVID: I think my prowess with the cue ball has now got you in the right pocket. Actually I grew to prefer billiards, but you wanted a pocket.-Maybe American billiards is different from British. Our table has pockets into which you can pot the red or other white ball (regarded as bad form and also bad tactics, as it remains in the pocket), or go in-off either ball. I used to play too. That could be the "cue" for another joke...
Ruth and causality
by David Turell , Saturday, August 17, 2013, 16:34 (4114 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: Am I alone in my confusion? If so, perhaps Ruth or someone else will hit me with an intellectual cue ball and pot me into the pocket of enlightenment. > > dhw: Maybe American billiards is different from British. Our table has pockets into which you can pot the red or other white ball (regarded as bad form and also bad tactics, as it remains in the pocket), or go in-off either ball. -In America we have pocket billiards, or pocket pool as one form of play. Six pockets, a cue ball and 10 other balls set in a triangle, all these balls numbered. The cue ball strikes the group which obviously spread out despite Ruth and the various games are played pocketing one ball after another. In 'eight ball' that ball is pocketed last. In straight pool one simply pockets the balls in any order. In billiards there are three balls and no pockets. One either strikes one ball directly into the other two or makes more of a score using banks.-> In Chapter 7 Ruth claims, along with Hume, that causality "is not really in the world". She gives as an example a billiard ball striking a second ball, thus causing (or not causing?) the second ball to move. > > RUTH: However, we never actually SEE the cause; all we see is the pattern of events, which is repeated every time we perform these actions [...] the cue ball striking the second ball is not OBSERVABLY a 'cause'. It is simply an event. ........ but again, physical law simply describes patterns of events; it does not say WHY they happen. For this reason, Hume concluded that causation is not really in the world, but it is something we INFER from what he termed the "constant conjunction of events".-I still think I understand Ruth. We all know cause and effect in our reality. We see events and we understand the physical lays governing them. We know the HOW, but Ruth is asking for the WHY. Why's are looking for underlying reasons that we can never fully know. I know you undertand this, but I think you are missing Ruth's point that in looking at QM we only have a partial understanding and her PTI approach is an attempt to increase our view of WHY. QM is not really in our world to paraphrase her. This is why she is a philosopher of QM. It requires that sort of approach, not just studying entanglement at greater and greater distances, which teaches us nothing. We have already concluded the entire universe is entangled.-> > dhw:Thank you for this magnificent effort to explain Ruth's arguments and to read her mind. However, as you will see, I have restored those parts of the quote that you missed out. Ruth never once mentions the player's mental processes. She is talking solely about the motion of the second ball being (or not being) caused by the impact of the cue ball.-You are being too literal with her. I used the mental processes example to bring in the concept of consciousness. Some folks think that our consciousness affects the QM study results, go so far as to say the universe is a result of our consciousness. Patently absurd, as our consciousness is a late comer, unless one wants to use that twisted argument for a universal consciousness. Our conscious choices affect results because quanta can be so many things at once. Once again: we can make mathematical descriptions (laws) from all the physical observations we make, but to quote Paul Davies we don't really know the WHY things are the way they are. We just accept things as they are, but why are they that way? In that sense we only have a partial view of our reality, and our view of QM is even worse.-Please ask Ruth to come back. I'd like to know what she thinks of my analysis of her approach.
Ruth and causality
In Chapter 7 Ruth claims, along with Hume, that causality "is not really in the world". She gives as an example a billiard ball striking a second ball, thus causing (or not causing?) the second ball to move.-DAVID: I still think I understand Ruth. We all know cause and effect in our reality. We see events and we understand the physical laws governing them. We know the HOW, but Ruth is asking for the WHY. Why's are looking for underlying reasons that we can never fully know. I know you undertand this, but I think you are missing Ruth's point that in looking at QM we only have a partial understanding and her PTI approach is an attempt to increase our view of WHY. QM is not really in our world to paraphrase her. [...] I'm fine with "QM is not really in our world", but not with CAUSATION "is not really in the world". Ruth links her scepticism to expectation and prediction, with the billiard balls as her empirical example. When you were a practising physician, if your patient did not respond to treatment as expected /predicted, did you assume there was no "real" cause, or did you look for a cause you might have missed? And if the treatment worked, did you say there can't have been a "real" causal sequence (a) between disorder and illness because you don't know WHY the disorder caused the illness, and (b) between illness, medication and cure because you don't know WHY the treatment worked? Does the fact that we don't know all the causes mean they're not "really" there?-dhw: Ruth never once mentions the player's mental processes. She is talking solely about the motion of the second ball being (or not being) caused by the impact of the cue ball.-DAVID: You are being too literal with her. I used the mental processes example to bring in the concept of consciousness. Some folks think that our consciousness affects the QM study results, go so far as to say the universe is a result of our consciousness. Patently absurd, as our consciousness is a late comer, unless one wants to use that twisted argument for a universal consciousness. Our conscious choices affect results because quanta can be so many things at once. Once again: we can make mathematical descriptions (laws) from all the physical observations we make, but to quote Paul Davies we don't really know the WHY things are the way they are. We just accept things as they are, but why are they that way? In that sense we only have a partial view of our reality, and our view of QM is even worse.-I agree with all of this, but I suspect your WHY relates to purpose, not to the reality of cause and effect. And you won't find any of it in Ruth's section on CAUSALITY which, along with Hume and Russell, she claims is not an ontological feature of the world. In my last post, I asked whether (and for what reasons) you believed this. So forget the billiards for now, and cue me in on your own opinion.-DAVID: Please ask Ruth to come back. I'd like to know what she thinks of my analysis of her approach.-So would I! But contributors to this forum are free to come and go as they wish. Ruth, if you read this, do please enlighten us!
Ruth and causality
by David Turell , Sunday, August 18, 2013, 16:26 (4113 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I'm fine with "QM is not really in our world", but not with CAUSATION "is not really in the world". Ruth links her scepticism to expectation and prediction, with the billiard balls as her empirical example. When you were a practising physician, if your patient did not respond to treatment as expected /predicted, did you assume there was no "real" cause, or did you look for a cause you might have missed? ...... Does the fact that we don't know all the causes mean they're not "really" there?-You are using a bad example. My medical detective work was in this reality. I preferred to know the cause or answer before I fired my magic bullet with a rifle not a shotgun. But sometimes the cause was not known, had to be there, but never found. As you know I believe everything has a cause. > > dhw: Ruth never once mentions the player's mental processes. She is talking solely about the motion of the second ball being (or not being) caused by the impact of the cue ball.-My opinion is she used a bad example, and it is why I'm twisting her interpretaton somewhat to fit my won concepts. > > DAVID: You are being too literal with her. .... We just accept things as they are, but why are they that way? In that sense we only have a partial view of our reality, and our view of QM is even worse. > > dhw: I agree with all of this, but I suspect your WHY relates to purpose, not to the reality of cause and effect. And you won't find any of it in Ruth's section on CAUSALITY which, along with Hume and Russell, she claims is not an ontological feature of the world...... and cue me in on your own opinion.-My WHY comes from the fact that we can observe and apply organization, math formulas to what we observe, but we still don't know why what we observe has to be the way we see it arranged. In basic particles we find three leptons (includes the electron), eight gluons, six quarks, one photon, one higgs, the W W Z group, three types of neutinos, making up three forces, matter and fields. And missing so far is gravity and its particle, the graviton. The WHY is just that. Why does it have to be just that arrangement and no other? There is a reasonable 'cause' for that arrangment. But my guess is we will never know it. And that 'reasonable cause' implies purpose in the sense that the arrangement created our reality, allowed us (life) to develop from it, created conciousness, which allows us to study it and wonder. This is a paraphrase of Paul Davies. You are agnostic because you cannot see the 'cause'. The hidden cause has to exist. Ruth's hidden causes in QM have to exist. Hidden doesn't mean non-existent.
Ruth and causality
dhw: I'm fine with "QM is not really in our world", but not with CAUSATION "is not really in the world". Ruth links her scepticism to expectation and prediction, with the billiard balls as her empirical example. When you were a practising physician, if your patient did not respond to treatment as expected /predicted, did you assume there was no "real" cause, or did you look for a cause you might have missed? ...... Does the fact that we don't know all the causes mean they're not "really" there?-DAVID: You are using a bad example. My medical detective work was in this reality. I preferred to know the cause or answer before I fired my magic bullet with a rifle not a shotgun. But sometimes the cause was not known, had to be there, but never found. As you know I believe everything has a cause.-Hume never knew about quantum mechanics. He also meant this reality, and Ruth agrees with him that causality is NOT an ontological feature of the world! That's why she uses the billiard ball example. The key to our whole discussion is your next statement: "My opinion is she used a bad example, and it is why I'm twisting her interpretation somewhat to fit my own concepts." Precisely. You are substituting your own concepts in the hope that she has mis-stated hers! -DAVID: My WHY comes from the fact that we can observe and apply organization, math formulas to what we observe, but we still don't know why what we observe has to be the way we see it arranged. [...] There is a reasonable 'cause' for that arrangment. But my guess is we will never know it. And that 'reasonable cause' implies purpose in the sense that the arrangement created our reality, allowed us (life) to develop from it, created conciousness, which allows us to study it and wonder. This is a paraphrase of Paul Davies. You are agnostic because you cannot see the 'cause'. The hidden cause has to exist. Ruth's hidden causes in QM have to exist. Hidden doesn't mean non-existent.-You cannot SEE the cause either, but you think you know what it is. I am agnostic because although I believe there is a cause, I have no idea what it is. I have no idea either what goes on in the quantum world, but yes indeed, hidden/unknown/unexpected/unpredictable causes are still causes (as in my version of the billiard ball example). That's why I've questioned Ruth's support for Hume and Russell, who claim to have eliminated causality as an ontological feature of the world. However, like yourself, I'm not a trained philosopher. I can only comment on the arguments in front of me, and while you prefer to twist them, I'll just plead for clarification of those points I find confusing. Ruth, won't you come riding to our rescue?
Ruth and causality
by David Turell , Monday, August 19, 2013, 15:46 (4112 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I'm fine with "QM is not really in our world", but not with CAUSATION "is not really in the world". Ruth links her scepticism to expectation and prediction,-Re-read her blog with George Musser. it makes her theory clear to me:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/06/21/can-we-resolve-quantum-paradoxes-by-stepping-out-of-space-and-time-guest-post/-"My development of the Transactional Interpretation makes use of an important idea of Werner Heisenberg: "Atoms and the elementary particles themselves ... form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than things of the facts." This world of potentialities is not contained within space and time; it is a higher-dimensional world whose structure is described by the mathematics of quantum theory. The Transactional Interpretation is best understood by considering both the offer and confirmation as Heisenbergian possibilities—that is, they are only potential events. That removes the possibility of causal-loop inconsistencies, since neither the positive-energy offer wave nor the negative-energy confirmation wave carries real energy, and neither is contained in spacetime. It is only in the encounter between the two that real energy may be conveyed within spacetime from an emitter to an absorber—and when this occurs, all the energy is delivered in the normal future direction."- -> dhw:That's why I've questioned Ruth's support for Hume and Russell, who claim to have eliminated causality as an ontological feature of the world. ..... Ruth, won't you come riding to our rescue?:-"As is evident from von Baeyer's article, quantum theory truly challenges us to think outside the box—and, in this case, I submit that the box is spacetime itself. (my bold)If this seems farfetched, consider the eloquent point made by physicist and philosopher Ernan McMullin: "Imaginability must not be made the test for ontology. The realist claim is that the scientist is discovering the structures of the world; it is not required in addition that these structures be imaginable in the categories of the macroworld." Only if we face the strange non-classical features of the physical world head-on can we have a physical, non-observer-dependent account of our reality that solves longstanding puzzles such as the problem of Schrödinger's Cat."-And in comments: "As is well-known, the collapsed calculation in quantum mechanics gives also 2/36. However, the uncollapsed result in QM can be anything from zero to 4/36, depending on the relative phases of the probability amplitudes. This sort of thing is not seen in Vegas, but it is seen with the double slit. Thus looking, or, if you like, the collapse, has an observable consequence, unlike in the classical situation. This result violates the 4th and 7th Laws of Probability of Laplace. But these 18th-century laws are based on nothing more than the assumption that intermediate events, whether observed or not, actually happen. In consequence, unobserved intermediate events do not happen, as Feynman pointed out. (my bold)-This is the headache in its full face. It's resolution is another matter, but mere subjectivity fails to resolve it.-James H. Cooke Los Alamos, NM"-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-quantum-beyesnism-fix-paradoxes-quantum-mechanics-Conclusion: there are no immediate causes and effects in QM. It is all probability, results depending upon what you look for. I still defend Ruth. This blog is what originally caught my eye. If correct it makes perfect sense because it takes us away from classical cause and effect.
Ruth and causality
dhw: I'm fine with "QM is not really in our world", but not with CAUSATION "is not really in the world". Ruth links her scepticism to expectation and prediction.-DAVID: Re-read her blog with George Musser. it makes her theory clear to me: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/06/21/can-we-resolve-quan...-I've reread the blog, and also our brief discussion of those same passages under the heading "quantum mechanics: at another level" (see our exchange on 28 June at 12.31 and 16.01, and 29 June at 08.26), on the thread "Combine General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics" (opened on 9 January). We reached an amicable agreement, so do please reread those three posts. I need to reiterate that like yourself I'm intrigued by the possibility that QM may open a window onto a world outside of space and time. It stands to reason that if there is such a thing, it may not conform to the same laws as those that govern our own space/time world, and this may tie in with psychic experiences like NDEs. I remain open-minded. But Ruth invited us to read her Chapter 7 and to ask questions which might help with her new book for lay readers. That is what I'm doing.-I've sought clarification of her concepts of knowledge and reality, have asked how the problem of subjectivity "evaporates" because the same transaction is "interpreted differently by the different observers", and now I'm grappling with her "elimination" of causality. At the start of this thread I wrote: "I don't have a problem when [Ruth] says that cause preceding effect in the empirical world "should not be thought of as necessarily extendable to the unobservable entities of the micro-world." [...] But I do find it extremely confusing when scientists and philosophers apply their anti-causality theory to empirical reality itself." This is what Ruth does with her billiard balls. You think it's a bad example because you want her to confine the argument to the quantum world, but that is precisely my point. In spite of the above reference to cause preceding effect, Ruth does take her scepticism into the empirical world. If the billiard ball example is a mistake, and Ruth does NOT mean that causality has been "eliminated" and "is not an ontological feature of the world", then perhaps the wording of the text itself is the cause of my confusion rather than my ignorance of the subject. Only Ruth can tell us.-DAVID: Conclusion: there are no immediate causes and effects in QM. It is all probability, results depending upon what you look for. I still defend Ruth. This blog is what originally caught my eye. If correct it makes perfect sense because it takes us away from classical cause and effect.-Once again, I don't have a problem with that ... the quantum world is a total mystery to me, as is the origin of life and of consciousness, and so I remain open-minded. But you have said yourself (18 August at 16.26) that "everything has a cause", and "Ruth's hidden causes in QM have to exist". How, then, can you defend the claim that causality is not an ontological feature (i.e. not part of the 'reality') of the world? If you also dispute this claim, we are in agreement. And both of us need clarification from Ruth!
Ruth and causality
by David Turell , Tuesday, August 20, 2013, 16:08 (4111 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw: I've sought clarification of her concepts of knowledge and reality, have asked how the problem of subjectivity "evaporates" because the same transaction is "interpreted differently by the different observers", and now I'm grappling with her "elimination" of causality. At the start of this thread I wrote: "I don't have a problem when [Ruth] says that cause preceding effect in the empirical world "should not be thought of as necessarily extendable to the unobservable entities of the micro-world." [...] .........then perhaps the wording of the text itself is the cause of my confusion rather than my ignorance of the subject. Only Ruth can tell us. > > DAVID: Conclusion: there are no immediate causes and effects in QM. It is all probability, results depending upon what you look for. I still defend Ruth. This blog is what originally caught my eye. If correct it makes perfect sense because it takes us away from classical cause and effect. > > dhw:Once again, I don't have a problem with that ... the quantum world is a total mystery to me, as is the origin of life and of consciousness, and so I remain open-minded. But you have said yourself (18 August at 16.26) that "everything has a cause", and "Ruth's hidden causes in QM have to exist". How, then, can you defend the claim that causality is not an ontological feature (i.e. not part of the 'reality') of the world? If you also dispute this claim, we are in agreement. And both of us need clarification from Ruth!-I'm on your side. I view, as I've said before, the wall between quantum reality and our reality is semi-permeable: we can pull quanta out to ur side, but going back the other way doesn't work. Cause and effect fully exist here, but as Feyynman noted not there:-"But these 18th-century laws are based on nothing more than the assumption that intermediate events, whether observed or not, actually happen. In consequence, unobserved intermediate events do not happen, as Feynman pointed out. (my bold)( from yesterday) He is discussing quantum cause and effect when 'over there' it is all probability and potentiality. Thus the discussion is really at two levels about two different planes of reality.-Ruth's problem from our standpoint is her book is written at a level that confuses us. I'm not sure she will be able to write a book we can appreciate, if what she offered us, so far, is Chapter Seven. Our current confusion should be very instructive to her for that other new book project.