Barry Loewer - What is Causation?

In a ‘billiard-ball world’ of Newtonian science, causation was obvious—things had to touch each other in space and a cause always had to precede an effect. But quantum mechanics destroys such notions. What then is causation? Moreover, must causes always be physical? Is ‘mental causation’ a coherent concept? What about ‘top-down causation’?




Barry Loewer is a philosopher and Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[timwoodruff]

Dr Loewer ran with the first question for seven minutes non stop, one brilliant insight seguing into the next, like a fountain in the desert overflowing with crystal clear water. The Mentaculus? What a fabulous, deep theory "of everything." Hard to believe a human could have dreamed that up. This man is a mega-genius.

[Jalcolm]

One part of causality is locality, so that all causes are local. Einstein was unhappy with quantum entanglement since it implies non-local causation. So what the spectrum of interactions at the quantum level includes, we must admit we don’t know. This IS NOT theology. We are not asking “why the laws ?“ but “what and how the laws “. Quantum physics includes indeterminacy and at this level determinism breaks down. But the general idea that effects have causes still holds at the classical level.

[stanh]

Barry Loewer’s account makes sense, and his match striking example is likely as good as any.
As he points out, what about the instances in which the match is struck but doesn’t light? Then of course there’s many possible reasons why the match didn’t light, and then what about the causes of those causes?
My idea is that causation is real, but the causal chain is infinite, including infinite branches, therefore causation may only be inferred.

[ApurvaSukant]

Thank you again for such a wonderful video. I found the last lines most poignant. "... many people will find that statistical explanations are merely predictive and not explanatory. But I feel that this notion of a theory being really explanatory (as opposed to descriptive) has a theological origin which can not be made sense of."

Just as Mr. Kuhn explains in his videos that his basic drive is to understand the universe (in an explanatory sense), Mr. Loewer's views are directly antithetical to that.
To the best of my understanding, Mr. Loewer is saying that an explanatory narrative is non-sensical.

I bought one of your tshirts. Cant express how deeply I appreciate your content. You make me cry with most of these.

[binbots]

General relativity and quantum mechanics will never be combined because they take place at different moments in time. Because causality has a speed limit (c) every point in space sees itself as the closest to the present moment. When we look out into the universe, we see the past which is made of particles (GR). When we try to look at smaller and smaller sizes and distances, we are actually looking closer and closer to the present moment (QM). The wave property of particles appears when we start looking into the future of that particle. It is a probability wave because the future is probabilistic. Wave function collapse happens when we bring a particle into the present/past. GR is making measurements in the predictable past. QM is trying to make measurements of the probabilistic future.

[romliahmadabdulnadzir]

Causality is a reality on different scales. Nothing is the smallest scale thing, it is the causality of something reality, not nothing.

[audiodead]

How we make sense of 'causality' depends a lot on our conceptions of spacetime. If you believe in 4-dimensional spacetime (Einstein, Minkowski) where past, present and future all co-exist alongside each other and where nothing ever changes (i.e. the 'block universe'), then it makes no sense to say that one event 'caused' another. Everything is correlation (and not causation).

But if you believe that the flow of time is real (i.e. that there is such a thing as 'now' and that one event actually precedes another) then it probably does make sense to talk about one event causing another, whether directly (through embuing it with energy) or indirectly (through intermediate forces which we can't see).

[jeffwilliams]

Calling Dr. Wittgenstein! There are flies in bottles needing your immediate assistance!

[Abmotsad]

"Yes, philosophers do talk about questions like that, but philosophers don't come up with answers very often." Absolutely true. I graduated with a master's in philosophy, originally intending to go on to a PhD. But after having to listen to about the 100th hour-long conversation about whether or not things exist, I took the MA, ran screaming from the building, and became a carpenter.

[rc]

6:51 it shows a specific deterministic outcome, despite the degree of uncertainty...

[maxwellsimoes]

Fundamental law phich keep out sustain propababilitis causation in phich reality. In quantum causation are phich ilusion when underteminate particles . Predict phich causation are big phich mistake though it come from unpredicted conscieness. How predict phich reality when conscieness unpredicted picture phich reality?

[frankyjayhay]

Causation is surely the whole essence of physics, not some philosophical debate. Striking a match knocks sand molecules against match molecules supplying enough energy to overcome the bonds and cause a domino effect as it flares. If it didn't light then you didn't supply enough energy - simple physics and chemistry. In defence of philosophers, philosophy isn't a disconnected dream world, it's role is to initiate ideas and make "intelligent guesses", of course they don't have all the answers straightaway, we know it can take decades of work to come up with the final physical explanations.

As for quantum mechanics I don't think it destroys the general idea of things pushing against each other, it just blurs the way it happens. We can't predict the exact behaviour of any individual particle but we do know the exact behaviour of huge numbers of them. Some things don't even make sense but give the right answers in actual situations so we regard them as "physical but unknown" or even "unknowable" but never "non-physical". Perhaps that's where physics and philosophy humbly merge.

If mental causation actually happened then we'd say it was due to some physical energy we don't know about yet so we can still say that a cause is always physical, effectively replacing the term "non-physical" by "unknown physical mechanism". We might even extend the definition of "physical" to include 100% repeatable experiments even if we've no idea of the physical mechanism involved. Ultimately spiritual events could be included in dusty old physics books if they are sufficiently repeatable (heresy!).

Many arguments ultimately come down to semantics and definitions: real energy and real packets of energy cause real events but they 're only regarded as real precisely because they _do_ cause real events.

[User-kjxklyntrw]

Causation relationship with free will, free to act but not free with the consequence, the interesting fact about causation is, it is not just effect mentality or personal or metaphysic, but can has relation with physical matter (not just dna, but surrounding event or surrounding physics), it only happen if, just if, everything on same field of matrix, so can interact. That when supernatural phenomenon become possible. Quantum field can make something from nothing but involve physic law, but supernatural somehow can make something from nothing without involve physic law, that only possible with matrix theory. Can we using physics to detect metaphysics, maybe metaphysics not electromagnetic field, maybe hidden field that we still need figure out using right instrument to detect it.

[jamesruscheinski]

probabilities or possibilities of what can be are different than the causation of what happens? something is added to possibility or probability for causation?

[jamesruscheinski]

what happens when equation of causation having change in space less change in time is used with equations of space-time?

[TerryBollinger]

6:52 Kuhn “It sounds like probabilities, though, are a predictive way — as opposed to an explanatory way — of [explaining] what causation is.” Robert Lawrence Kuhn, have there ever been two identical spacetime events in the universe? No? Why, then, do we say they are the same? Because, _probabilistically, _ we define sets of tests — predicates — that tell us, “These two are close enough.” So it is also for causation since no two _causes_ of events in the universe’s history are identical.

Digging deeper, such almost-universal probabilistic rules of causation emerge through restriction, not diversity — a universe that, at its roots, is hamstrung by a lack of energy, a lack of options, and the omnipresent limits of its forms of computation. We touch those limits when the quantum version of the restrictions we call spacetime ceases to give us enough detail to place the spinning bundle of quantum numbers we call an electron anywhere more precisely than in a fuzzy (to us, not to the electron) orbital.

[2023-01-24.10.07 EST Tue]

[stephenlawrence]

That was good. I agree causation is not fundamental. For causes to appear we need to think about what will/ would have happened if... in a given situation. And here I think the trick is we're not thinking about the actual situations. We're thinking about what will happen if, or would have happened if, in this type of situation. I think by understanding that, we can make sense of our concept of causation and it's link to fundamental laws.

[sonarbangla]

Different types of energy transforming into other forms is the basis of causation. Empiricists wanted to know what relates cause and effect. Not finding any way they are related, philosophers settled that there is no relation, cause and effect are independent, until complex variable identified the complex number i relates cause and effect. Beautifully explained by Tristan Needham in VISUAL COMPLEX ANALYSIS, page 217, where i is defined as the ratio of change in effect y due to change in cause of x in the complex number z=x+iy when mapped on to the w-plane. Thus when a paper burns chemical energy into heat energy, cause and effect is related by i.

[changliu]

causation maybe is the measurements the speeds of the transmissions of information

[osip]

"all sorts of processes at the macroscopic level involve causation"
i wonder if "causation" is in effect, something emergment ?