By popular demand (1 person) I'm bringing back the p.q.o.t.w (philospophical question of the week, which I have decided to pronounce pa-quo-taw). We have the beginnings of a lively debate already started in the comments section of the last post. Dr Modaresi made a rather controversial and to me confusing statement (I'm just realizing that "Dr Modaresi" is a term that will be unambiguous only for 3 more years). Here is part of his argument:
If a glass window shatters after I throw my shoes at it, what is the cause and what is the effect? If you are like an average person, you would probably say that the force of the shoes caused the glass to break: Cause precedes the effect. Wrong! The opposite is, in fact, the truth. The shattering of the glass causes the shoes to be thrown. I know you will object to this line of reasoning, but that is the limitation of the biological basis of our minds and not the nature of reality. It will all make sense once you realize the anti-intuitive fact that events occur as inevitable interactions of physical variables according to the laws of physics. A glass is broken at a given time is necessitated by the laws of physics, the same way that seasons change, rain and snow falls as a result of interactions among heat, moisture, temp differentials, etc. The same is true about other facts we observe, such as seasons changing. Therefore, the occurrence of rain and snow in winter, which is inevitabel, causes the precedeing meterological changes to take place. Hence, cause follows the effect. Humans do not see it this way and reason backward because our minds are limited.Think about it.
My Uncle asked:
Would that logic work if the shoes were accidently thrown at the glass? Is it the intent of the thrower to break the glass that designates the breaking of the glass as the cause?
Dr Modaresi replied:
Intention of the thrower, the shoe, as well as all the other events and occurrences that preceded the event of glass breaking, such as the thrower being born, being there, and having shoes to throw, all were the effect, not the cause. They were there and caused by the glass breaking at that moment in time in that place in the universe. See what I mean?
I want to address Dr Modaresi and also ask a general question about causality. First, these sentences: "It will all make sense once you realize the anti-intuitive fact that events occur as inevitable interactions of physical variables according to the laws of physics. A glass is broken at a given time is necessitated by the laws of physics, the same way that seasons change, rain and snow falls as a result of interactions among heat, moisture, temp differentials, etc."
First off, I don't think that the fact that the laws of physics govern the way events play out is non-intuitive. Secondly, I don't see how that fact is evidence for reversing the ordinary notion of causation. You haven't given any support for the linkage of those two ideas. The most I think you can conclude is that, since we live in an entirely deterministic system, dinstinctions between the system running forward or backward are not very important. I believe Steven Hawking says in A brief history of time something about most or all physical processes being "time symmetric", meaning that laws governing the interactions of particles in the universe hold true even if you reverse the direction of time (e.g. an explosion becoming an implosion would perfectly follow the equations of physics if you flipped the direction of time). So, I can see the arbitrary nature of claiming that the act of throwing the shoe shattered the glass, but I don't see a compelling argument for what you stated.
The broader topic of causality I wanted to bring up is the compatibility of determinism and free will. I think that all events can be described as the effect of an unbroken chain of prior causes; this includes things as seemingly intangible as a parent's love for his/her child. That means that if I were omnipotent (knowing all the laws of the universe & knowing the position and velocity of every particle in it) that I could predict exactly how/what/when/why someone would love his/her child. This doesn't make the love any less real or meaningful, just as learning that hunger is caused by the hypothalamus being signaled by dropping glycogen levels in my liver doesn't make the experience of hunger any less real. But it does pose a problem for free will. Certainly it feels like I'm making free decisions. But when I start pinning down the causes for things (like why I eat bagels so much), there don't appear to be any non-caused items in the equation. I eat bagels for many reasons, you can describe them on a physiological, psychological, or atomic level, each equally valid. But I think that even the events that go on in my head prior to walking into the kitchen and eating a buttered everything bagel with garlic bits sprinkled on it (aka "health grub") could be entirely explained by good enough science.
The movie Groundhog's Day is great for this discussion. In it, Bill Murray lives the same day over and over again. He is able to memorize what everyone in the town does because they act in precisely the same way each day (with the exception that their behavior can be modified by interactions with him). If there is such a thing as free will, then some days people should act differently for no other reason than free will. If the same circumstances cause the people to act in exactly the same way every day then I don't see how free will is a meaningful notion; we're all just meat-automatons. You can kind of start to see how the sensation of volition could be nothing more than the brain telling itself the story of its own experiences (or more precisely, one area of the brain telling another area of the brain).
Well, I have more to say, but it's getting late. That will have to do for now. Think about that and let's discuss it, my fellow meat-automatons,
Gabriel
