Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Sweeping Causality Under the Rug

Funny how Hume keeps popping into my awareness like a bad case of Baader-Meinhof. 

Of course, he would say it's just a coincidence, like everything else. The sun came up and it's light outside, but who knows why, and tomorrow may be different. The relationship between, say, heat and light, "is not causal, it is merely an association of ideas in our minds." But 

The fallacy of Hume's argument is obvious: in explaining what produced the notion of causality in our mind, he is effectively trying to ascertain the cause of causality. In other words, he must have taken causality for granted to have been prompted to explain its cause in our mind (Bina & Ziarani).

And if that passage caused us to understand it, poof, no Hume, and my Baader-Meinhof has been cured. But what is the cause of causality? There's a footnote:

We find the notion of causality in us because it is a universal reality that is necessarily present in our deepest being.

That's true. To say "human" is to say "a being who looks for causes in things." Causality

is a more fundamental reality than logic: the latter is merely the reflection of the former on the plane of the human mind. To accept an effect without a cause, then, is as absurd as to accept an inconsistent thesis. He who does not accept causality should best remain silent, for he would find himself in refutation of himself as soon as he expresses an opinion. 

Granted, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. And unless we flip the rug and look at the other side, we can't see the connections between this and that. 

On our (phenomenal) side of the rug things might appear spatially separated, but look underneath and you see the connecting threads. Just as an effect without a cause is absurd, so too is a rug with a top and no bottom.

More generally, on our side of the rug things are more or less discontinuous. It's pretty much the first thing noticed by consciousness:

When we look around us, what do we see? Firstly, existence; secondly, differences; thirdly, movements, modifications, transformations; fourthly, disappearances (Schuon).

I think you could boil this down to forms, changes, and adiós, outta here. Now, adiós literally means "go with God," but that's just a coincidence. 

It seems to me that discontinuity is a left-brain specialty. In a way, it superimposes a discontinuity on the underlying continuity, because obviously, looked at another way, there are no literal boundaries between things, for All is One and Can I Buy Some Pot From You? 

This is an argument that goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics: many or one? Change or permanence? Beatles or Stones?

You could bring the debate right up to the present, as in "wave or particle?" Turns out it's always both, like a wavicle or something. But it dovetails nicely with our own Ultimate Category, which is to say, personal substance-in-relation. which is like particles-in-waves. Or perhaps ice cubes in water: different but the same.

It makes me think this is a debate between right and left hemispheres, but I'm still waiting for The Matter with Things in the mail, so we'll see. 

I want to say that science describes one side of the rug, but there are two sides to every story, not to mention multiple storeys in a vertical cosmos, and each storey with multiple mansions. 

Let's sober up for a moment and let Schuon explain what we're talking about. When we get into these deep waters, he's our designated diver:

Modern science, which is rationalist as to its subject and material as to its object, can describe our situation physically and approximately, but it can tell us nothing about our extra-spatial situation in the total and real Universe. 

Yes, literally NOTHING, unless you flip the rug and examine the other side, or better, consider both sides at once, as complementarities that necessitate or at least imply one another. In other words, there is a bit more slack on the underside, whereas necessity rules the topside. Only in God are freedom and necessity one, but God knows how.

Every truth is a tension between contradictory evidences that claim our simultaneous allegiance. 
Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how. 
This reminds me of a little tweet by Eve Keneinan that got stuck in my head, something to the effect that many distinctions that are intuitively obvious may be difficult explain -- for example, what I just said: it is intuitively obvious that many if not most of the really important things are more seen than proved. There are so many aphorisms that touch on this, that I'll limit myself to three:
Proofs for the existence of God abound for those who do not need them.
God is not an invention, but a finding.
There is evidence that disappears along with those who deserve to perceive it.

Now, I see a rug, and again, the rug has two sides, which reminds me of this: 

The natural and supernatural are not overlapping planes, but intertwined threads. 
Which is why denial of the wonderside always ends in catastrophe, for 
Any straight line leads straight to hell.

Unless you're a Humean being who think progressivism has no effects.

10 comments:

julie said...

You could bring the debate right up to the present, as in "wave or particle?"

Reminds me of an excellent demonstration at a scale normal people can understand. My daughter was watching that this weekend, and one of the really interesting things about it is seeing how the sand acts just like a fluid. When something heavy is dropped in, it splashes and makes waves - even though the individual particles are not actually part of the same mass.

ted said...

A follow up, this documentary on Mattias Desmet and his idea on mass formation, talks about how the artists fell into the same narrative when they should have been the ones to break away from it! And he mentions Clapton and Van Morrison too.

julie said...

Speaking of rugs, JWM started an interesting little comment thread over at American Digest yesterday.

Gagdad Bob said...

There's a good song by that name by Ian Tyson.

julie said...

Nice - rather ties the room together.

Randy said...

To what extent does Descartes share the blame for this mess with his demand for absolute certainty?

Van Harvey said...

Randy, Descartes problem had less to do with his supposed pursuit of certainty, than with making his doubts the arbiter (and ruler) of reality. Many moons ago I took a dive into his cogito with Unknown Conspiracies – You don’t think, therefore, they are:

"...you’ll see that not only is the Cartesian method of critical doubt in opposition to reality, but it attempts to raise the whims of the doubter over reality and give those doubts and assertions the standing of truth. Examine it for yourself… it is… critical that you do, because these days most of the ideas you are presented with to try on for size, have been cut from that inverted cloth. A deductive thinking process, begun in an a..."

, I also had a ... few other things to say (ahem).

I had... a few more things to say on that.

Van Harvey said...

I also don't doubt that the blogger comment window... deserves its typos and missed things. Grr.

Randy said...

Van,

Your observations immediately brought to mind the idea of cancer cells. Once doubt is elevated to the "standing of truth", what's to prevent the cancer of doubt from devouring the cells of healthy belief?

Van Harvey said...

Randy, yep, philosophical and spiritual is an apt comparison.

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