cause v. reason

[Advocate]

This is properly epistemology but it comes up most often in metaphysics.

When asking questions about the nature of consciousness, for example, it's critically important to distinguish between cause and reason, which are often used interchangeably.

Cause is best understood as how.
Reason is best understood as why.

Every event has a cause but not every event has a reason, and by distinguishing the two in this particular way, it becomes vastly easier to answer such questions. The universe doesn't exist for a reason, and if it has a cause it is yet to be understood. Many similar questions fail on this point by asking why, which presumes intent, rather than how, which is usually empirical rather than logical.

[Sculptor]

This is much like the problem of teleology.
When we talk about the functions of the body, or the evolutionary reasons "why" we have this or the other trait we often are in the position of wrongly implying a reason ,when what we really have is a cause.
Why do we have kidneys for example. We can reliably say that wihout them we would die of toxicity. But it could be misleading to say what are they for, or why do we have them.
More care to avoid teleological assumptions are needed. How we come to have kidneys is that all higher animals without them die; such necessary functions such as breathing, urinating, ecreting, pumping blood, eating etc.. are all best described by their functionalism rather than intelligent design.

Potential confusion in language can be found in the most simple descriptions of nature.
Why is the sky blue. Why me? Why are we here?
All such questions are nonsense since there is no reason for any of these things, though you can offer some HOW suggestions.
It's clear that any why question in science that cannot be reworked to use HOW instead is no question at all.
We can describe how the sky appears blue; how circumstances led to you; and how we all come to be here.
But any assertion of "why" would have to imply intentionality or design.

[odysseus]

Sculptor wrote
This is much like the problem of teleology.
When we talk about the functions of the body, or the evolutionary reasons "why" we have this or the other trait we often are in the position of wrongly implying a reason ,when what we really have is a cause.
Why do we have kidneys for example. We can reliably say that wihout them we would die of toxicity. But it could be misleading to say what are they for, or why do we have them.
More care to avoid teleological assumptions are needed. How we come to have kidneys is that all higher animals without them die; such necessary functions such as breathing, urinating, ecreting, pumping blood, eating etc.. are all best described by their functionalism rather than intelligent design.

Potential confusion in language can be found in the most simple descriptions of nature.
Why is the sky blue. Why me? Why are we here?
All such questions are nonsense since there is no reason for any of these things, though you can offer some HOW suggestions.
It's clear that any why question in science that cannot be reworked to use HOW instead is no question at all.
We can describe how the sky appears blue; how circumstances led to you; and how we all come to be here.
But any assertion of "why" would have to imply intentionality or design.

Consider:

This issue of the "design" problem of purely causal accounts for things does persist. A kidney, for example, we want to say does not clean the blood because such a "purpose" is not built into the things of the world, and to say it is would be the worst kind of anthropomorphic fallacy. But the rub lies in putting all witnessed affairs in the world in the hands of causality. Efficient cause is a simple principle, to which any complexity of affairs is supposed to be reducible, and this makes the interpretation of things like kidneys and, of course, brains quite unbalanced, the explanatory bottom line being incommensurate and inadequate with the observed phenomenon. I mean, kidney's may not be conceived and planned out like human minds conceive and plan things out, BUT: there is what you might call a qualitative threshold that is crossed that insists for more that what mere causality can provide. It is not that causality is wrong at all; it is that, and this is the big point, the rather "thin" principle of sufficient cause needs to be reconceived to explain what rises out of complex systems like human beings. There is MORE than simply conceived causality is in play here. If not teleology, if not some organized planning antecedent to organs and the like coming into existence, then something IN the causal sequences that only is revealed in complexity.
Put it this way: take two causally governed existences: one, if left to its possibilities will, in 13 billion years or so, will produce human minds, and ethics and entities that create art and literature and technology; and so forth. The other does not produce any of these. If the latter were the case, no one would complain about the lack of minds and the rest. In fact, one would expect just this deficit of the qualitatively distinct affairs we call human.

[Advocate]

[quote=odysseus post_id=478232 time=1604331042 user_id=15698]
[quote] Sculptor wrote
This is much like the problem of teleology.
When we talk about the functions of the body, or the evolutionary reasons "why" we have this or the other trait we often are in the position of wrongly implying a reason ,when what we really have is a cause.
Why do we have kidneys for example. We can reliably say that wihout them we would die of toxicity. But it could be misleading to say what are they for, or why do we have them.
More care to avoid teleological assumptions are needed. How we come to have kidneys is that all higher animals without them die; such necessary functions such as breathing, urinating, ecreting, pumping blood, eating etc.. are all best described by their functionalism rather than intelligent design.

Potential confusion in language can be found in the most simple descriptions of nature.
Why is the sky blue. Why me? Why are we here?
All such questions are nonsense since there is no reason for any of these things, though you can offer some HOW suggestions.
It's clear that any why question in science that cannot be reworked to use HOW instead is no question at all.
We can describe how the sky appears blue; how circumstances led to you; and how we all come to be here.
But any assertion of "why" would have to imply intentionality or design.[/quote]

Consider:

This issue of the "design" problem of purely causal accounts for things does persist. A kidney, for example, we want to say does not clean the blood because such a "purpose" is not built into the things of the world, and to say it is would be the worst kind of anthropomorphic fallacy. But the rub lies in putting all witnessed affairs in the world in the hands of causality. Efficient cause is a simple principle, to which any complexity of affairs is supposed to be reducible, and this makes the interpretation of things like kidneys and, of course, brains quite unbalanced, the explanatory bottom line being incommensurate and inadequate with the observed phenomenon. I mean, kidney's may not be conceived and planned out like human minds conceive and plan things out, BUT: there is what you might call a qualitative threshold that is crossed that insists for more that what mere causality can provide. It is not that causality is wrong at all; it is that, and this is the big point, the rather "thin" principle of sufficient cause needs to be reconceived to explain what rises out of complex systems like human beings. There is MORE than simply conceived causality is in play here. If not teleology, if not some organized planning antecedent to organs and the like coming into existence, then something IN the causal sequences that only is revealed in complexity.
Put it this way: take two causally governed existences: one, if left to its possibilities will, in 13 billion years or so, will produce human minds, and ethics and entities that create art and literature and technology; and so forth. The other does not produce any of these. If the latter were the case, no one would complain about the lack of minds and the rest. In fact, one would expect just this deficit of the qualitatively distinct affairs we call human.
[/quote]

The fallacy is in believing that because there are gaps in our understanding, causality isn't infinite. Causality is found everywhere we can measure, isn't that sufficient, ffs? The human species is knowledge sperm and you're pretending at a doctorate.

[commonsense]

Anyone,

If the purpose of kidneys is to clear toxins, isn’t it reasonable to say that the reason why we have kidneys is to clear toxins? Or is that merely a circular statement (I.e. what something does is why something exists; a thing’s function is its purpose)? Is it reasonable to say that what causes kidneys to be is evolution (or intelligent design if you must have it that way)?

The cause and reason for kidneys must surely apply to the other internal organs, but can they apply to the universe? Is the purpose (why) of anything its function? Is there anything that has neither function nor purpose?

For that matter, is evolution (or design) the cause of everything? There must be more to it than that.

[Advocate]

[quote=commonsense post_id=478234 time=1604333535 user_id=14610]
Anyone,

If the purpose of kidneys is to clear toxins, isn’t it reasonable to say that the reason why we have kidneys is to clear toxins? Or is that merely a circular statement (I.e. what something does is why something exists; a thing’s function is its purpose)? Is it reasonable to say that what causes kidneys to be is evolution (or intelligent design if you must have it that way)?

The cause and reason for kidneys must surely apply to the other internal organs, but can they apply to the universe? Is the purpose (why) of anything its function? Is there anything that has neither function nor purpose?

For that matter, is evolution (or design) the cause of everything? There must be more to it than that.
[/quote]

To ask "why?" either means "how?" or "from what purpose or to what end?", which requires intent.

[odysseus]

Advocate wrote
The fallacy is in believing that because there are gaps in our understanding, causality isn't infinite. Causality is found everywhere we can measure, isn't that sufficient, ffs? The human species is knowledge sperm and you're pretending at a doctorate.

That's one way to put it. We have this simply concept of efficient cause, but, as I said, when it comes to complex systems and the qualitative emerging events, the causal explanation we have proves inadequate, and in some cases, in the most egregious way: Take epistemology. S knows P, but what IS this relationship? There is the lamp on the table, and here is my brain; how do these get together to produce my knowledge of that lamp? In science, relationships are first and foremost, defined causally (quantum issues aside). So unless you site some "spooky, at a distance" relationship, you will never get that lamp in my brain. Yet, I know the lamp in a way that exceeds what the simple model of causality provides (of course, you can deny this knowledge ever occurs, but then you will end up cancelling knowledge about the outside world altogether. This is perhaps a bridge too far. for you. Not for me, though). The question arises as to how a sequence of causal events "carries" the lamp to me. (Or, perhaps I know the lamp no better than the fender of my car "knows" the offending guard rail??)

But one might say, it is not that we don't understanding causality, but that it is NOT causality that defines the occasion. It is something else entirely. But if you want to keep causality, fine. It is, as you say, much more than we know. But THIS brings about the inevitable line of inquiry: What IS it that is suggested by the matters of qualitative novelty (thought, knowledge, value, and so forth) that also suggests a new conception of causality? Maybe quantum entanglement is a clue; maybe, you and I and everyone and everything is "connected" (?)

[odysseus]

commonsense wrote

If the purpose of kidneys is to clear toxins, isn’t it reasonable to say that the reason why we have kidneys is to clear toxins? Or is that merely a circular statement (I.e. what something does is why something exists; a thing’s function is its purpose)? Is it reasonable to say that what causes kidneys to be is evolution (or intelligent design if you must have it that way)?

The cause and reason for kidneys must surely apply to the other internal organs, but can they apply to the universe? Is the purpose (why) of anything its function? Is there anything that has neither function nor purpose?

For that matter, is evolution (or design) the cause of everything? There must be more to it than that.

But you are ignoring the critical part of this: Reasons are not simple causes in this discussion. We may talk like there is no difference all the time, but asking a criminal, say, why he robbed the bank is a very different question than "why does it snow in the winter?" In the former, there is a plan, a purpose and intent; in the latter there is simply a description of causal sequences: temperature falls, water reaches its freezing point causing molecular changes, and so on.

[Sculptor]

Sculptor wrote
This is much like the problem of teleology.
When we talk about the functions of the body, or the evolutionary reasons "why" we have this or the other trait we often are in the position of wrongly implying a reason ,when what we really have is a cause.
Why do we have kidneys for example. We can reliably say that wihout them we would die of toxicity. But it could be misleading to say what are they for, or why do we have them.
More care to avoid teleological assumptions are needed. How we come to have kidneys is that all higher animals without them die; such necessary functions such as breathing, urinating, ecreting, pumping blood, eating etc.. are all best described by their functionalism rather than intelligent design.

Potential confusion in language can be found in the most simple descriptions of nature.
Why is the sky blue. Why me? Why are we here?
All such questions are nonsense since there is no reason for any of these things, though you can offer some HOW suggestions.
It's clear that any why question in science that cannot be reworked to use HOW instead is no question at all.
We can describe how the sky appears blue; how circumstances led to you; and how we all come to be here.
But any assertion of "why" would have to imply intentionality or design.

Consider:

This issue of the "design" problem of purely causal accounts for things does persist. A kidney, for example, we want to say does not clean the blood because such a "purpose" is not built into the things of the world, and to say it is would be the worst kind of anthropomorphic fallacy. But the rub lies in putting all witnessed affairs in the world in the hands of causality. Efficient cause is a simple principle, to which any complexity of affairs is supposed to be reducible, and this makes the interpretation of things like kidneys and, of course, brains quite unbalanced, the explanatory bottom line being incommensurate and inadequate with the observed phenomenon. I mean, kidney's may not be conceived and planned out like human minds conceive and plan things out, BUT: there is what you might call a qualitative threshold that is crossed that insists for more that what mere causality can provide. It is not that causality is wrong at all; it is that, and this is the big point, the rather "thin" principle of sufficient cause needs to be reconceived to explain what rises out of complex systems like human beings. There is MORE than simply conceived causality is in play here. If not teleology, if not some organized planning antecedent to organs and the like coming into existence, then something IN the causal sequences that only is revealed in complexity.
Put it this way: take two causally governed existences: one, if left to its possibilities will, in 13 billion years or so, will produce human minds, and ethics and entities that create art and literature and technology; and so forth. The other does not produce any of these. If the latter were the case, no one would complain about the lack of minds and the rest. In fact, one would expect just this deficit of the qualitatively distinct affairs we call human.

The purpose of the Kidneys is what they do; purify the blood of what we like to call "toxins". Some of these so-called toxins are, to plant matter, fertiliser. So we might say that the purpose of kidneys is to fertilise plants.
Futhermore the lungs' purpose is to remove, what we like to call a toxic gas Carbon DIoxide. Plants thrive on CO2. The purpose of animals lungs is to recycle carbon from edible matter to provide plant life with more carbon in the atmosphere so that they can make more carbohydrates so that animals can eat them, so that they in turn can produce CO2 from their lungs to feed plants.
Modern science offered the term function and Functionalism to avoid the connotations of "purpose", and teleological explanations. Purpose is associated with WHY. Function with HOW.
Purposes and Why are associated with God, and intelligent design.
Function and How with Evolution and natural selection.
Take your pick.

[Sculptor]

commonsense wrote

If the purpose of kidneys is to clear toxins, isn’t it reasonable to say that the reason why we have kidneys is to clear toxins? Or is that merely a circular statement (I.e. what something does is why something exists; a thing’s function is its purpose)? Is it reasonable to say that what causes kidneys to be is evolution (or intelligent design if you must have it that way)?

The cause and reason for kidneys must surely apply to the other internal organs, but can they apply to the universe? Is the purpose (why) of anything its function? Is there anything that has neither function nor purpose?

For that matter, is evolution (or design) the cause of everything? There must be more to it than that.

But you are ignoring the critical part of this: Reasons are not simple causes in this discussion. We may talk like there is no difference all the time, but asking a criminal, say, why he robbed the bank is a very different question than "why does it snow in the winter?" In the former, there is a plan, a purpose and intent; in the latter there is simply a description of causal sequences: temperature falls, water reaches its freezing point causing molecular changes, and so on.

You have used the word "why" is two distinct ways.
Scientists who have read a bit of philosophy often replace the second "why" with "how.
This renders the question about snow as making far more sense. "How does snow form in the winter" is a proper scientific question, and avoids such answers to why it snows like "God want to make the world beautiful in the winter".
If you scientific quesion cannot be re-worded with a "how" question then it is not a science question.

[Advocate]

>That's one way to put it. We have this simply concept of efficient cause, but, as I said, when it comes to complex systems and the qualitative emerging events, the causal explanation we have proves inadequate,

That inadequacy is because most answers (explanatory story) misunderstand the boundary conditions between levels of understanding ie. emergence. The mind/body problem is easily understood as a layers of metaphor, complex otherwise. 100% of our knowledge so far is of a causal, determinate, physical universe, and to deny that is the height of egoism. The only places we don't find it is where we know we don't know how things work yet. Causality IS knowledge - predictive certainty. That's also the root of logic and science.

>and in some cases, in the most egregious way: Take epistemology. S knows P, but what IS this relationship?

Knowledge is justified belief. And before anyone asks what "is" is, it means this understanding will answer any related questions effectively.

>There is the lamp on the table, and here is my brain; how do these get together to produce my knowledge of that lamp? In science, relationships are first and foremost, defined causally (quantum issues aside). So unless you site some "spooky, at a distance" relationship, you will never get that lamp in my brain. Yet, I know the lamp in a way that exceeds what the simple model of causality provides (of course, you can deny this knowledge ever occurs, but then you will end up cancelling knowledge about the outside world altogether. This is perhaps a bridge too far. for you. Not for me, though). The question arises as to how a sequence of causal events "carries" the lamp to me. (Or, perhaps I know the lamp no better than the fender of my car "knows" the offending guard rail??)

Our experience of things like tables and lamps is that they have spacial reality (being that which continues to act the same way all the time, as expected). The understanding we use to represent your internal experience of those things (being patterns with a purpose) is called "mind", psychology, personality, social skills, emotions, etc. just as the ones we use to understand the physical brain are called biology, neuroscience, chemistry, etc, at various levels of analysis. They are, simply, layers of metaphor for the same physical stuff.

>maybe, you and I and everyone and everything is "connected" (?)

Yes, but not in a way that's meaningful. So long as we are embodied beings with unique perspectives and experiences, the only way we're one is to the extent we share motives and understandings.

[Impenitent]

the reason the billiard ball moved is cause the other one hit it...

it was morally obliged to move as it did cause of moral facts

I've got this bridge for sale...

-Imp

[odysseus]

Sculptor wrote
The purpose of the Kidneys is what they do; purify the blood of what we like to call "toxins". Some of these so-called toxins are, to plant matter, fertiliser. So we might say that the purpose of kidneys is to fertilise plants.
Futhermore the lungs' purpose is to remove, what we like to call a toxic gas Carbon DIoxide. Plants thrive on CO2. The purpose of animals lungs is to recycle carbon from edible matter to provide plant life with more carbon in the atmosphere so that they can make more carbohydrates so that animals can eat them, so that they in turn can produce CO2 from their lungs to feed plants.
Modern science offered the term function and Functionalism to avoid the connotations of "purpose", and teleological explanations. Purpose is associated with WHY. Function with HOW.
Purposes and Why are associated with God, and intelligent design.
Function and How with Evolution and natural selection.
Take your pick.

I agree with most of this, of course. I simply note that when a scientist makes the move from purpose to function, he reducing the matter at hand, and rightly so, to causal explanations. Processes and functions are, on analysis, descriptions of causal matrixes (along with taxonomies and their nominal systems). Where I draw the line is where these causal systems seize hold of the explanatory whole, for they do NOT explain content. It is true that causal processes did produce the kidney and the biological system it is part of, but when we behold the system, and its brain, it does, I argue, give rise to a valid suspicion that: discrete causal events in their full systemic embodiment exhibit "functions" that exceed what the causal model permits. In other words, it is not that events are not causal, every one, but that causality in its simple intuitive form, does not reveal what actually happens in the world. It is not a preconceived design of things I argue for, but apart from preconceiving, designing, teleology, and the rest, there is IN these simply exchanges (micro mechanical, chemical, and so forth) built into their natures a collective predisposition to do things analogous to teleology. Such a thing cannot be grasped. but is evidenced in the kidneys, brains and the material matrixes that give rise to these.

[odysseus]

Impenitent wrote
the reason the billiard ball moved is cause the other one hit it...

it was morally obliged to move as it did cause of moral facts

I've got this bridge for sale...

Things don't get interesting until complexity starts creating novel forms that suggest novel interpretations of what is happening. Billiard balls are not moral agents, but within the world of moral events, my world, e.g., where I care, hate, adore, despise, and so forth, in that world causality exhibits effects that far exceed what the principle of chance (and this term is what the above seems to argue for) allows.

[odysseus]

Advocate wrote

That inadequacy is because most answers (explanatory story) misunderstand the boundary conditions between levels of understanding ie. emergence. The mind/body problem is easily understood as a layers of metaphor, complex otherwise. 100% of our knowledge so far is of a causal, determinate, physical universe, and to deny that is the height of egoism. The only places we don't find it is where we know we don't know how things work yet. Causality IS knowledge - predictive certainty. That's also the root of logic and science.

It sounds like you are saying we are waiting for science to discover some grand theme that connects all things, if there is one. I argue that for a brain to produce a mind, it must be supposed that teleological features of this mind (my ability to put purpose to my affairs) are the product of discrete causal events, "things" and their trajectories at the chemical, molecular, atomic level, that can, in order for this to occur, only possess predispositions for this.
An account of causality is exhausted only by an account of the way causal events display possibilities, that is, predispositions. An object is predisposed to fly off in some direction and speed GIVEN that the conditions of flying off in such and such a way are possessed in the relational predispositions contained within the whole event. Simple models produce simple causal affairs. But complex ones can produce qualitatively novel events that reveal purpose, planning and the rest. That is us.
All this shows is that causality, under certain conditions, is not simple any longer, and therefore the simple model has limited application, as is true with all causal explanations. "Objects'" complex totalities exceed the sums of their parts. Even in simple models this is true. Billiard balls rolling across a table are showing properties that are hard to witness subatomically. I am saying this issue applies macroscopically as well as microscopically: Just as Newtonian physics is not sustainable microscopically (so particle physicists tell us), simple causality is not a sustainable description in complex systems, neurological systems like a human body (a kidney being part of the nervous system in a less technical definition), for the "effect" of their totality is the phenomena of meaningful planning, predelineated thinking, anticipation, teleological events, design and all the rest we want to remove from what causality is "all about".

Knowledge is justified belief. And before anyone asks what "is" is, it means this understanding will answer any related questions effectively.


Our experience of things like tables and lamps is that they have spacial reality (being that which continues to act the same way all the time, as expected). The understanding we use to represent your internal experience of those things (being patterns with a purpose) is called "mind", psychology, personality, social skills, emotions, etc. just as the ones we use to understand the physical brain are called biology, neuroscience, chemistry, etc, at various levels of analysis. They are, simply, layers of metaphor for the same physical stuff.

Same physical stuff? Well, assume it's all the same physical stuff. The principle of sufficient cause has something to say about how this stuff works. The traditional analysis of knowledge assumes P is there to be known in the first place, but this assumes P is there in the first place. Ask about P being there, and you get trapped in epistemology, because you first have to explain the basis of P's affirmation, and "affirmation" is justificatory, not ontological. I am saying P cannot make an appearance to S, the subject at all on the simple model of causality. I mean, not even as a representation. P is just a "presentation".

Yes, but not in a way that's meaningful. So long as we are embodied beings with unique perspectives and experiences, the only way we're one is to the extent we share motives and understandings.

One can hardly disagree with sharing of this nature. I added this idea almost playfully, but the idea that all things are connected as a metaphysical postulate, is by no means frivolous if conceived well: After all, our finitude is what keeps causality local. Infinity is, well, weird beyond words, but there is a certain inevitability about it. My sitting here at the computer is a construction of what we call mind. One can very reasonably ask, apart from the conditions interpretatively imposed by this human perspective, is there some unknown unknown? Of course, ever since Kant (the skeptics long before) we are constrained against putting anything at all out there. But read beyond Kant and Wittgenstein a bit, where the line is so strictly drawn and rigorously applied by analytic philosophers, one has to admit, as Kant did, that you simply cannot drop out of "existence" noumena, much as you would like to. The unknown unknown presents itself as transcendence, which is "there" in our midst.

This line of thought is dramatically played out in post Heideggerian phenomenology by the French, which I will not argue about unless you have the inclination. I find them fascinating, beginning with Kierkegaard, Husserl, Fink, Heidegger but ending in Michel Henry, Jean luc Nanci, Emanuel Levinas and others.

I mention these only because the notion of transcendence is summarily dismissed in analytic philosophy. It is not elsewhere.