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Further Thoughts on Causation
Professor Anonymous Aug. 4, 1997
It occurs to me that causation or cause-effect is such a difficult
subject because there simply never is a simple A-causes-B relationship.
Events are compound to begin with. All space-time events are relative
to some inertial event frame and thus involve a multiplicity of defining
characteristics to begin with. The minimal event of a single photon alone
in free space is an illusion. At very minimum I would expect any event to
involve some interaction with some other event. I believe even a minimalist
defininition of event will to some degree be self-referential and also
involve the concept of causality even if only indirectly.
It seems to me that, for the above reasons, any attempt to use
pure 'philosophy' alone ( i.e. words and mind alone ) will fail to achieve
any useful solution to the 'causation problem' if indeed there is a
problem to begin with. Furthermore, any attempt to provide a compact
and precise definition will also fail. The more one attempts to rigidify
the concept, the more likely it is to blur. There may yet perhaps be
a way of formalizing the concept by using mathematics and new terminology,
but I suspect that in doing so one will exclude other aspects and
meanings, and issues within broader domains.
There is, however, much that is still of interest if we keep our
limitations in mind and our desire for stone-cold-clarity in check.
I will be discussing cause and effect from mainly a physical point of
view but will not exclude metaphysical factors outright.
ok, here goes -
Fundamental Principles of Change
-1) The Principle of Implication ( Logical Syllogism )
0) The Principle of Change
1) The Principle of Multiplicity
2) The Principle of Branching
3) The Principle of Instantiation
4) The Principle of Indeterminism
5) The Principle of Diminishing Returns
6) The Principle of Conservation of Mass-Energy Exchange
7) The Principle of Exclusion
8) The Principle of Irreversibility
9) The Principle of Symmetry
10) The Principle of Necessity and Sufficiency
11) The Observer Principle
12) The Recursion Principle
13) The Principle of the Butterfly Effect
-1) The Principle of Implication ( Logical Syllogism )
This principle and all higher order negative principles
belong in the domain of philosophy proper and will not be expanded
in this paper.
0) The Principle of Change -
All things change eventually. Every event comes forth and
goes in time. This is the essence of event - change. No change -
no event. In this sense an event is not really a physical thing.
It is more the defining change within some set of physical things
or the change within the properties or state of some system.
1) The Principle of Multiplicity -
There is never one single cause for some effect or event.
Corallary to this is that there is no one prime cause to any event;
Every event has multiple causes and each cause is in itself the
effect of some multiple of causes. Cause and effect are relative
terms according to some contextual time stream.
Downstream from the event in question is also an expanding
multiplicity of effects for which it is a contributing cause.
Thus we have about any event we choose to consider, a sort of
conceptual hour-glass shape or branching tree of descendant
actualities and emergent possiblities.
2) The Principle of Branching -
This is really simply put as the Principle of Connectivity.
Every event is connected causally with certain prior events via
a progressively branching probable cause tree. It is also connected
to certain following events by a progressively branching tree
composed of possible effects.
The whole web of connection flows in time from cause to effect.
This converging and branching tree ultimately is bounded by the
relatavistic light-cone which defines the extreme extent of possiblity
of connection. Anything outside the light-cone of some event can
be neither a contributing cause nor a deriviative effect.
The sharpness of the cone is a function of how simply we
define the extent of the event in question. Even with sub-atomic
particles, there is a certain fuzziness to this web of connection.
3) The Principle of Instantiation -
Every event-web is an instance or subset of all possible
threads of connectivity. A causal thread is a subset of said event-web
and represents a thread of connections from one event to another
further up or down in the two-fold hierarchy. The point is that
any actualized path is but a small subset of all possible paths,
and any actualized event web is but a small subset of all possible
ways an event could have happened. This principle could be called
the reality principle because it says an event which really happened
might have happened otherwise; yet still it happened the way it did.
4) The Principle of Indeterminism -
For any event we can't even surmise what all the possible
connections might be. Since the tree of possibility branches outward
in the past and future, the more remote the connection, the
greater the uncertainty as to what were the contributing or
derivative factors. Also causes contribute to events in varying
degree and kind. Hence there is an added uncertainty which is
irreducible. An event-web may be punctuated by deterministic threads
which preclude and proclude other threads ( see Principle of
Exclusion ). It may also be punctuated by quantum uncertanties which
defy reasoning by deterministic syllogism.
5) The Principle of Diminishing Returns
In general the degree of contribution to or reception by any
event in the event web is inverseley proportional to its connective
distance from the signature event - signature event being the one
at the heart of the 'hour-glass'. NOTE: every event in the
hour-glass also has its own hour-glass web of connectivity!
6) The Principle of Conservation of Mass-Energy Exchange
Given an hour-glass-event arbitrarily demarcated above and
below the center of change, the sum total mass-energy exchanges
within the total light-cone of said event will be conserved
i.e. the exchanges above will balance the mass-energy exchanges
below. This is precisely true for deterministic branching and
and in the long haul true for indeterministic branching also.
This principle along with the principle of diminishing
returns forms the basis for causal accounting of all change.
Events thus ebb and flow according to their substance and energy.
Substantial connectivity threads breed object persistence,
while energetic threads increase the branching and rate of change.
The total structure, however, remains in balance. It might be
worthwhile to speculate as to the integrated extent of event-cones.
There will be quantum limits and chaos uncertanties which form
natural limits to any such cones. Are all created equal within
this context? I suspect not!
7) The Principle of Exclusion
Some events exclude the interaction of others that might
have influence. Deterministic event threads are a prime example.
Consider the problem of who shot JR. One might define the bullet
leaving the gun as the signature event of a possible event-web.
Up until the the trigger was pulled, there might be an endless
web of possible and probable causes from the emotional content
of the shooter to the actions of bystanders, and even the weather.
Once the trigger initiates a leveraged exchange of movements and
energies within the gun, however, a certain inevitability ( but
not absolute certainty ) narrows down the number of connecting
threads. We are most comfortable when discussing cause and effect
if we have such a narrow set of determined branchings. Actually
however the reality is never simple, and there is allways a
multiplicity of causal connectivity which defies total analysis.
When scientists talk of closed systems or controlled experiments,
they are hoping for situations thus reduced to deterministic scope
or narrowing of the event-cones to the exclusion of all otherwise
possible causes and effects. Note that I said 'hope for'. In fact
one might say that the Principle of Exclusion is the closest one
ever gets to describing what is meant by a closed system.
8) The Principle of Irreversibility
There is a flow called the arrow of time. The flow within
a pair of signature event-cones is convergent from past to present
and divergent from present to future. In general one cannot
reverse the flow or reverse the set of connecting threads. There
are exceptions to this but even they reside within the context of
a larger set of event cones where parity is preserved. This might
also be called the Principle of Conservation of Parity. One
can turn a glove inside out but the handed-ness of the glove will
change. Also any real gloves undergoing such a transformation
will have indeterministic uncertainty losses which eventually
degrade or expand its event cones.
In case one hasn't noticed, recursion is an integral part of
this discussion. My essay called "Fractal Man" highlights this
as principle itself integral to all event realities.
9) The Principle of Symmetry
"as above so below" should be our motto here. There is
obvious symmetry between the converging and divergent halves of
an event web, but there is also a symmetry within causal threads
too. A significant thread carries either lots of mass or lots of
energy type influence and will reflect itself through the apex of
the two event-cones revealing itself downstream in time as a
major influence. Interplay between the massive and energetic
threads determine the overall character of events. Less influential
threads color and alter the pattern.
10) The Principle of Necessity and Sufficiency -
Within the context of not being able to precisely define any
given event-web, it may still be possible to talk of necessary
causes and sufficient causes. There may be a set of causes which
if not active in the case, fail to produce the event. There
may yet be other influences which factor in and color the event
but which do not change the essential character of what picques
our interest. There may yet be again a set of causal influences
sufficient to produce or reproduce the essential event in question
but only in its broad details, allowing for a whole set of
indiscriminate causal threads which even if deterministicaly
operative still offer no real import to the discovery in question.
11) The Observer Principle -
Any observer of real event-cones is part of his own event-cone.
To make any real observation, there must be an overlap between cones.
That is, the observer becomes interwined with the event cone of
observation and affects it as well as is affected by it. More
simply put - The observer and event are but subsets of some larger
event web.
12) The Recursion Principle -
The words 'cause','event', and 'effect' can only be defined
recursively. The operative lever is the word 'effect', upon which
'cause' and 'effect' are contextually defined. The preceding
principles demand that the relationships are recursive.
There is a real-er more subtle form of recursion operative
also. This is due to the fact that causal threads which have a
narrow spatial scope can induce feedback. Effects can be causal
agents for an event which repeats in time. There can also be
synergistic effects between close causal threads inducing avalanche
effects.
13) The Principle of the Butterfly Effect
Chaos Theory teaches us that events can be spawned which
have no set of prime deterministic causal threads. Convergence
into simple order can manifest almost serindipitously. Conversely
a tiny simple low-mass, low-energy thread might be the last straw
which topples an empire or instigates the birth of a whole new
immensely powerful event-web.
Well, such is life.
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