Ruth and causality (General)

by dhw, Saturday, August 17, 2013, 12:29 (4115 days ago) @ David Turell

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...