Why choose a paragraph element for a paragraph?

D

dorayme

Ben C said:
Yes I think that's a perfectly good clarification: one disputes whether
some statement or other is a fact, not the fact itself.

But you don't have to identify a fact with something that "corresponds"
to a true statement. You can just say a fact is a true statement.

I suppose you could. I feel a little uncomfortable with it though. It
seems to hint that the world is somehow connected in a deep way to
language users. Now, indeed, this might prove to be a very deep and good
thing. But the pessimist in me thinks the world does not depend in any
way on statement making beings. I realise you can recast what you say in
a sort of counterfactual way, but we go into a thick forest then...

....
Some very tricky questions arise about this picture. I am happy to use
the word "fact" in conversation but I prefer not to use it in any
analysis about truth. There is nothing much more primitive than the idea
of a statement or belief being true and talk of facts adds no further
understanding in my opinion.

OK, but saying "there is nothing more primitive [...] than whether a
statement is true" is not so different to saying "the world consists of
facts rather than things" (if a fact is just a true statement).

One way of looking at the idea that the world is facts rather than
things is that it's a way of saying truth is more primitive than
existence.

mmm... interesting matter. For what it's worth I think both truth and
existence are equally primitive. I see them as being two sides of a coin
or simply two words that point to different roles in our sentences, both
needed in a team to deal with our relations with the world.

Tricky business saying what the world, as a whole is. It looks awfully
difficult a thing to pull off. Suppose, somehow intuitively the world is
facts not things, or (W put it another way) it is everything that is the
case. What about this super high level statement? Is it a super fact? Is
it a thing? Help! said:
It isn't the whole story, but it is an illuminating angle on the whole
thing. Loosely speaking it's a sort of relativity principle.

[...]
(I know this last item might surprise but it has been argued that
possibilities are, in a sense, actualities. One main push for this is to
give counterfactuals truth conditions. Counterfactuals can be true. But
*what* makes them true - what fact, if you like?)

The idea is that if there isn't something that can make them either true
or false, then they are _meaningless_. Hence the contrivance of
"possible worlds" and so on. All very silly if you ask me.

It might be or not. You certainly have the vast majority of folk on your
side in rejecting the reality of possibilities. I lean against it but
maintain some agnosticism too. There are some very real questions about
what does make counterfactuals true.

The old positivists rushed like mad young bulls at a gate not
distinguishing 'knowing the meaning' from 'knowing the truth
conditions". But in the case of counterfactuals, we are dealing with
everyday statements, not obscure religious claims. We are dealing with
as simple as "if I not gone to bed so late, I would feel better now". It
is a conundrum to say quite what the counterfactual truth is *about*, it
is not *about* the past even though that provides evidence for it (as we
say).
I suppose an obsession with facts could be what led someone to the point
where they were demanding truth conditions for every meaningful
statement and this is what you are warning against.
....
 
R

rf

Speech has paragraphs?

How are they delimited?

With very loud fullstops.

Seriously, have you never come across a woman who doesn't talk in
paragraphs? You know the type, she starts talking when you first meet her
and only stops when you wander off to the bar for another rum&coke.

Q: Why are a husbands words sometimes sharp?
A: Because he's probably trying to get them in edgewise.
 
D

dorayme

Guy Macon said:
Would that be an en-pause or an em-pause? <smile>

Not such a bad question, seriously. One can turn a speaker up but how
much CSS or default style control is there for pause control?

You know, guy, we need an enthusiastic person expert in the voice
modality aspects of web design/ website-reading issues. On Flash and
movies, there are folks here who come on to inform us, on rounded
corners there is Nick, but there is no consistent expert on this
business.

Shall we advertise for one? I would chip in a bit.

Wanted:

Civilised person to advise on threads concerning aural reception of
website pages. Must act decently and fairly, be able to rub a few words
together and not grunt ignorantly...
 
C

Chris F.A. Johnson

On 2009-03-14, asdf wrote:
....
...and as an English speaker/writer, I was brought up (rightly) that proper
nouns and names should start with a capital letter.

You're calling dorayme *proper*??? Really!!!
It's a hard (but correct) habit to break. This adolescent obsession
with small letters and numerals in the middle of words I find
juvenile and purile. But *sigh* if you *must* continue this
ridiculous and passing fad, then here goes.... Hi dorayme. Happy
now?

I heard that her business failed because it was undercapitalized.

It should be "DoraYMe?".
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
Well you could recast that as two statements with easy-to-find truth
conditions: "I feel bad. I feel bad because I went to bed too late". But
I don't think that gains anything. Better to stop wanting truth
conditions.

When you say that there is a tree in your garden, you speak truly if
there is a tree in your garden and not otherwise. This is a description
of a truth condition and it looks pretty good from an intuitive point of
view, no? It feels right to think categorical statements get to be true
when the world is some actual way.

You are responding to this reasonable impulse in your recast of "if I
not gone to bed so late, I would feel better now" into two categorical
looking statements. Now, you are right that the first of your proposed
statements in your recast has easy-to-find truth conditions. But the
problem surfaces with the second.

To say that A caused B is a difficult matter and involves hidden
counterfactuals. It is not merely to say that B followed A. That would
be a nice easy truth condition. It is to say that had A not happened, B
would not have happened (other things being equal). Out of the frying
pan into the fire.

As for it being better to stop wanting truth conditions, it is a
difficult matter how to assess this. Such conditions seem to be very
much part and parcel of how we think of truth. Most statements (of
science and everyday life) do not contain the conditions within them to
be true. It is something outside them. In the case of the garden
example, it seems clear enough. But other statements look more puzzling.
 
J

Jani

But in any case, it could be said that the world of necessary truth is a
rather different game and it is about the relation of our ideas and
language <snip>

Isn't that interesting?
I am not that competent - I only heard that the universe is made of
language.
There are some things which only more than 100 people understand in
the world.
From zero to one. But I don't know now... what is the way to heaven
pathed with?
http://e.deviantart.com/emoticons/a/analprobe.gif
in another world that is not connected
in space or time with our world - in logical space!

There is no world outside of our time and space...
 
G

Gus Richter

Jani said:
Isn't that interesting?
I am not that competent - I only heard that the universe is made of
language.
There are some things which only more than 100 people understand in
the world.
From zero to one. But I don't know now... what is the way to heaven
pathed with?


The answer of course is 42.
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
....
Causes aren't the same as sufficient conditions. Maybe I always go for a
walk on Sunday and not on any other day. If it's Sunday I go for a walk.
Remove that crucial factor and I stay at home-- for example on Saturday.
But it's being Sunday isn't what _causes_ me to go for a walk.

Neither am I exactly sold on the idea of cause being equated in a simple
way with sufficient conditions but I am not quite sure what you show by
the above example. Why do you only walk on Sundays if Sundays are not
some special causal factor? Has Sunday no causal thing to do with the
matter? Is Sunday some sort of accidental/incidental factor like the
colour of your hair when you walk?

Perhaps you have time to walk on Sundays and not on any other day?
Perhaps the fact that your work leaves only Sundays free, together with
your wanting to walk when you have time, is the story. And here it is a
causal *factor*, not a mere regularity.

This leaves untouched the need to explain what causation is.
Counterfactuals home in on the crucial condition in a way that all the
talk about what actually happens does not. It isolates and points to the
joint that this bird needs to be cut at. It might not satisfyingly
explain the nature of this joint but it identifies it somehow. More
identification is an open question. And there are some intriguing and
clever 20th century lines of answer.

....
A lot of the time you can get away with frequencies of events in the
actual world-- A causes B if they tend to be found together.

What does 'getting away' with mean here though? Perhaps you mean this: a
marketeer can manipulate folk to think B if he can get them to think A.
What does he care why people who think A always think B? He just knows
they do and that is good enough for him to put his money on a campaign.

But not everything is as it seems. He is not so foolish as to completely
disregard the surrounding context. If he learns that his research was
based on B following A in conditions that now suddenly are relevantly
different, this might stop him in his tracks. Relevantly different?
Hello, what is this? If you probe this, I think you will find that there
is more than mere frequency involved in the mix. And where more than
frequency is involved, counterfactuals flower.
But
sometimes we say A caused B even when A and B are one-offs. That's when
possible worlds get dragged in.

There is a notion that A could cause B even though nothing like A or B
ever existed before or will ever exist again. And to cash the sense of
this, one is rather helplessly drawn to the truth of the counterfactual.
Had not A happened in this situation, B would not have happened. Perhaps
you mean this? OK. But there is also the same germ of purity in the idea
of A type things always being followed by B type things but on only one
single occasion in the history of the universe has A ever actually
caused B! All the other cases were mere true categorical frequency data.
What is the difference? The difference is that in *just that one* causal
case, had A not happened, B would not have. Any other interpretation
empties the difference between mere frequency and cause.

Hume gave up because he could not see further than the frequencies.
Those he argued against were not happy with the frequencies but offered
only spooky obscurities alternatives.
 
J

Jani

You heard wrong.

I don't know - the periodical system... you have 8 groups.
There must be some waves which are tuned in a specific syntax.
There is no world outside of our time and space...

[Citation Needed]

Wow - I am really prowd that I did not disturb your conversation too
much.
I am not used to that. But it may change quickly.

Only I want to add: Thomas More's Utopia...
There you have utopos ... *no place*
I only remembered that.
But you can join an utopia within space and time.
I think I should stop using an AntiVirus Software on some of my
computers.
Just to support the global network.
I am really fascinated about conficker
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
Perhaps it's not the best example. That is one sense of "cause", but
another sense involves the idea that there is something connecting the
two things together in a physical way.
It is not such a bad example if we tease out what it is that are the
causal factors. I only very briefly got going on it. The crucial thing
about the Sunday factor is this. Being Sunday is a cause for you
*thinking* it is Sunday. And you thinking it is Sunday is very much the
sort of almost physical cause you are wanting to focus on. If you are
like me and think mental states are really brain states, then that
particular brain state had quite a bit to do with you putting on more
than slippers to run the dog around the block, it was a physical causal
factor in you putting on your walking shoes on etc.

Suppose you had one of those watches which show the day of the week, set
it to GMT, and took it back to Mars with you. Its little mechanism rolls
around to Sunday and off I go for a walk back here on Earth. You
wouldn't say the action of its mechanism was what made me go for a walk
50 million miles away, although it is a sufficient condition.

But it is not for at least the reason - sort of similar to the one you
mention below - that had my watch said different you would still have
gone for a walk. This does not bear on how counterfactuals in causal
situations are to be thought about. This last bit is an open question. I
am thinking you cannot be rid of them by these sorts of examples.

Your logic can still be rescued (possible worlds in which the watch is
broken and reads Sunday when it's really Saturday will give the game
away) but I still think it's contrived.


But what is that need? In ordinary language, sometimes we use "cause" to
mean something like sufficient conditions (especially the weaker
"because"), sometimes we use it like I am to mean there's a mechanism
linking two events that touch each other in space and time. Either sense
can be inferred from the other.
Well, what are two really good examples that shows we have two different
meanings to "cause". I am sort of disputing this but I might be wrong?
In the examples so far, I detect that these two things are bound up
together.
If you want to choose one meaning over the other there has to be a
reason. It's understandable that in physics the second meaning is
usually preferred.

In logic for various reasons, which may be bogus, the first meaning is
often preferred. I don't think it's a better definition on its merits.


I mean get away without having to worry about counterfactuals.


But you can always dig up the flowering counterfactuals and claim
they're rooted in chains of events connected by mechanisms.

If you didn't think there was something connecting A and B then you'd
have no basis for saying "if A hadn't happened, B wouldn't have".

You can always translate the counterfactual form into the mechanical
form and back again. I think there's little to choose between them
unless it's on the basis of some deeper agenda.

The only agenda I am interested in here is sheer curiosity.

We both agree, I think, that if A really caused B in a particular
context, B would not have happened if A had not happened. I am saying
this is part of the meaning of saying that A caused B. But I am also
saying it is an open question what more there is. In my mind this is the
same as asking what in *the* or *any* world makes it true?

You want to emphasise the actual connection between A and B which makes
A be the cause of B. But that is what we all want to do. The differing
accounts of this turn on the analysis of the counterfactual, not the
claim that it is present or absent in the meaning. You want to say that
what makes it true that A causes B is the actual physical causal
connection. I am happy to agree to this. But what does it mean and what
does it involve?

Some folk think we need worlds outside ours, other folk think that this
world will do fine and locate possibilities in this world, sometimes in
complicated ways via universals whose existence they then analyse in
terms of their instances in this world. It gets complicated! You
witnessed the sight of me trying to locate spooky paragraphs in nice
clean empirical presented paragraph instances! <g>

What is the difference between A causing B and B merely happening after
or with B? You are wanting that there be something physical. But when
you give examples, the physical connection resolves into these
happenings. The possible worlds model gives a theory of what this more
is. So do other theories.

You could treat cause as a primitive intuitive notion, like 'true',
'exists'. Perhaps that is what you have been getting at all along. If
you do the latter, you might have to talk a lot (people do!) but it
would then be wrong to be *curious* about what a causal connection is.
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
[...] ....
We both agree, I think, that if A really caused B in a particular
context, B would not have happened if A had not happened.
Yes.

I am saying this is part of the meaning of saying that A caused B. But
I am also saying it is an open question what more there is.

But which version is "more" and which is "less"? Mine has more spooky
obscurities, yours has more whole universes.
I don't mean to sound shy here, but I am not actually committed to the
theory of the reality of possible worlds. Last time I looked at this
stuff seriously, there was only one person in the whole world who
believed it and he was a brave and very classy philosopher; also, he was
the one who proposed it!

I am just mentioning it as a proposed solution to what makes
counterfactuals true, and ipso facto, what is one explanation of the
nature of causal connections. According to the theory, the causal
connection consists in the existence of (a) world(s) that is/are just
like ours in every relevant respect except for A not happening. The
parentheses in the last are to cut some slack for how "relevant" is
defined. In *none* of these worlds, does B happen.

Interestingly, btw, necessary truths are simply those that are true in
all the possible worlds. The worlds are not in a connected space or time
but in logical space. It is a huge lump to swallow.

There are other theories that locate counterfactual truth-makers in our
own world via a theory of universals and combinations of instances of
universals and stuff like this. And no doubt other theories altogether,
I have not searched the literature thoroughly lately.

....
I say A causes B, you ask why, I say I don't know probably some chemical
reaction in the brain or something. You could then say: rubbish, you
don't know anything about how the brain works. All you really mean is if
A hadn't happened B wouldn't have etc.

I guess that we can *try* to cut through all this to bare bones: is
there a stage at which we say here is an A and here is a B and they are
as clear as could be, and there is nothing hidden, there are no further
links in the chain, here we have the smallest link and one causes the
other! It might appear at this point that there are at least three
options:

1. Find the truth-makers for counterfactuals in other worlds.

2. Find them them in actual things - that are better understood than
'causes' - in this world.

or

3. Say we have a primitive concept, Houston. If A had not happened then
B would not happened simply because it was *caused* by B. This primitive
fact, if you like, is what makes the counterfactual true. That *is* the
truth-maker.
 
J

Jani

I have no idea what the above words mean.
I noticed that you failed to provide a citation. Do you have one?
I have no idea what the above words mean.

Sorry, I just wrote more than on hour on my answer - but it seems as
if I pressed "discard" on Google Groups instead of "send". Maybe next
time.
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
But why does anything have to make them true, and what exactly is meant
by their "nature" here?

In ordinary language there is no problem with the meaning of the word
"cause". It doesn't have, or need, a single particular definition and
causal statements don't need truth conditions. It has a family of uses
including mechanical connections, concomitances of events, motives, etc.

You are right, in common use, the word 'cause' is well understood. I
would not be wanting a *definition* for any reason, even for us talking
about the idea now. But some clarity about what can be said to be causes
is a different matter.

To be clear, we need to distinguish all sorts of things. Your Sunday
walk example was a beauty. How can Sunday really be a cause of your
walking? Well, I tried to indicate how that could be by telling a story
about you *thinking it Sunday* was a clearly understood cause for your
walking and you thinking it was Sunday would have been caused in turn by
the fact that it was Sunday. Sure, there may be many links in this chain
and ultimately we get to links we cannot analyse too much further and
then our common understanding kicks in.

And when we characterise this common basic understanding, we understand
that at the very least we are saying that had it not been for the A in
the circumstances concerned, there would not have been a B. This
counterfactual is simply something that must be true if A really does
cause B. It is not a definition in the sense that we somehow understand
this counterfactual *better* than we understand the causal connection.
As I said, in the analysis I have suspected you lean towards, the
primitive notion of cause *is* the whole content and explanation of the
truth of the counterfactual.

....
There has to be a very good reason to say _anything_ is the
"nature" of causation.

Does there have to be a very good reason for philosophical speculation?
Hume looked at the mater and complained against essentialists that he
saw nothing but regularities. Most of just know he was wrong, no matter
how valiant the efforts of empiricists. Sure, no one admits to spooky.
But there is more than mere regularity! What more? That is philosophy.
According to the theory, the causal connection consists in the
existence of (a) world(s) that is/are just like ours in every relevant
respect except for A not happening. The parentheses in the last are to
cut some slack for how "relevant" is defined.

I suspect the complete specification of relevance is exactly equivalent
to the complete specification of all the little rods and pulleys in the
"only-one-world" picture.
In *none* of these worlds, does B happen.
....
[...]
I say A causes B, you ask why, I say I don't know probably some chemical
reaction in the brain or something. You could then say: rubbish, you
don't know anything about how the brain works. All you really mean is if
A hadn't happened B wouldn't have etc.

I guess that we can *try* to cut through all this to bare bones: is
there a stage at which we say here is an A and here is a B and they are
as clear as could be, and there is nothing hidden, there are no further
links in the chain, here we have the smallest link and one causes the
other! It might appear at this point that there are at least three
options:

1. Find the truth-makers for counterfactuals in other worlds.

2. Find them them in actual things - that are better understood than
'causes' - in this world.

or

3. Say we have a primitive concept, Houston. If A had not happened then
B would not happened simply because it was *caused* by B. This primitive
fact, if you like, is what makes the counterfactual true. That *is* the
truth-maker.

I would lean towards 3, but not that cause is a particularly primitive
concept-- it's just a concept like any other.

Well, not sure what you mean by it being a concept just like any other.
There is not all that much puzzling about the concept of 'a tree'. Or if
there is, the puzzles are quite different in kind or raise quite
different issues. There are some special puzzles about causation and
deep ones too. The whole nature of science can get dragged into the ring
on this one. How do laws really govern things? There is no
interuniversepolice to ensure apples fall to earth when they become
detached from apple trees.

1 and 2 are both contrivances really.

Any elaborate theory can be seen as a contrivance if you think it
untrue.

But if there is a good reason for
contrivances (which I'm skeptical about, but don't rule out completely)
then why choose 2 over 1? The real answer must lie in whatever the
reason was for choosing a contrivance in the first place.

With respect, this is a very biassed way of putting it. If you think 1.
is true, you are not likely to think of it as a contrivance! Same goes
for 2. And if you think 3. you are unlikely to be troubled enough by it
to see it as spooky. If you thought that, you would not be so
comfortable with 3. in the first place.
 
J

John Hosking

[Rest of .sig snipped]
Please trim signatures. I know GoogleGroups doesn't do that
automatically for you, so you need to remember to do it manually.
That's reason #236 not to use GG.
Sorry, I just wrote more than on hour on my answer - but it seems as
if I pressed "discard" on Google Groups instead of "send". Maybe next
time.

Reason #237 not to use GoogleGroups.
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
Yes, but that leads me in the opposite direction. When I clarify the
ordinary meaning of "cause" it makes the other things look more and more
like contrivances.

It depends on what we are meaning by "clarify". For me, no clarification
is needed to use the word "cause" in ordinary conversation including
some mildly scientific endeavours and talking about science (this last
as in reading and chatting about the latest in New Scientist or what
someone has discovered in the chemistry or physics dept.).

The only clarification I am talking about is the one that digs at what
is in the world that *is* the connection between the A and the B when
the A causes the B. The only interest a scientist or a normal
conversationalist might have in this is to see whether there are some
further little As and Bs between *the* A and B.

I simplify everything here. In fact the same sort of digging can be done
if we recast all this stuff in terms of laws and explanations and
instances. The point is that we might be curious enough when we have
reached the most basic causal connection to wonder what quite it is.

As I said, you can stop there and say it is as primitive a notion as
possible. And do not mistake me, I say this knowing that it is thought
to be sort of this by some people whose business it is to think about
these things. It is no accusation of a lack of curiosity!

But if you do not take this route - and even if you do, you might be
surprised how fandangled it can get to set it up to avoid all manner of
objections - then inevitably, you need to deal with complex things like
possible worlds or combinations of universals instanced in this world or
something not exactly vanilla ice-cream.

Does recasting causal statements as counterfactuals _really_ shed any
more light on them?

First, the recasting is not something merely artificial. It is part of
the very meaning of "A causes B" that one is forced to agree that B
would not have happened in the circumstances had A not happened. This is
*before* any theory enters into it.
Does it clarify what they "really" mean, get at their nature, "cut the
chicken" in a specially accurate way?

We need to distinguish questions about meaning from questions about
reference. As I said, there is no big problem about meaning. We attend
to meaning to clear the way to the substantial questions about reference.
If so, then why, and what is the criterion for clarity? Do we just feel
it has the ring of clarity to it?

The criterion for clarity depends on whether we speak of a community of
thinkers or just one person. In the case of one person, the criterion is
simply personal curiosity been sated. In the case of a community of
thinkers, it is more complex and has to do with there being a clear way
emerging to that gets consensus.
[...]
Sure, there may be many links in this chain and ultimately we get to
links we cannot analyse too much further and then our common
understanding kicks in.

And when we characterise this common basic understanding, we understand
that at the very least we are saying that had it not been for the A in
the circumstances concerned, there would not have been a B. This
counterfactual is simply something that must be true if A really does
cause B. It is not a definition in the sense that we somehow understand
this counterfactual *better* than we understand the causal connection.

There's some ambiguity about the scope of "not" in that sentence. Do you
mean that we _do_ understand the counterfactual better than the causal
connection?

I don't think we do.

Again, we need to distinguish between meaning and reference. As far as
meaning is concerned both "A caused B" and the corresponding
counterfactual are as clear as each other in many ways. And no wonder!
They are bound up with each other meaning-wise.

As far as reference is concerned, it displays nicely the two ways you
can go. You can pick the first as displaying the nature of the reality,
it is just an intuitively understood feature of our world, there is
nothing to dig at. You can pick the second to give you a clue to go
other ways, namely a possible worlds way.
....

[The possible worlds is 1. The combinatorial this world way is 2.]
But how can 1 or 2 be true? We've mostly agreed I think neither is a
privileged or better definition of causation than any other. So what are
they? Just philosophical speculations.

I have not agreed at all that the different theories are as good as each
other. Only that there are equivalent ways to express the meaning of
causal statements. But it is not *meaning* that is the real interesting
thing here.
If either is true then what is it saying? That the mind works in a
certain way? That the mind should work in a certain way?

What has human mind to do with it? The theory of possible worlds - as
for example, Lewis has it - says what he says it says. And ditto with
the other theories. I am sure you are not asking me to lay out all what
these theories say in detail right here.

So I am not sure what you are getting at beyond throwing a few tomatoes
at philosophical speculation. Perhaps you are right to do this! Perhaps
it does deserve some contempt! <g>
 
D

dorayme

Ben C said:
....

It depends on what we are meaning by "clarify". For me, no clarification
is needed to use the word "cause" in ordinary conversation including
some mildly scientific endeavours and talking about science (this last
as in reading and chatting about the latest in New Scientist or what
someone has discovered in the chemistry or physics dept.).

I _was_ thinking of clarifying the ordinary use of the word. No
clarification is needed ordinarily, but it might be in order to get out
of a philosophical muddle.

[...]
The only interest a scientist or a normal conversationalist might have
in this is to see whether there are some further little As and Bs
between *the* A and B.
....

There is a real question to wonder what it is in physics (where we would
be talking about forces and things). But if we're asking what it is in
some logical sense, isn't that just exactly the same as asking what it
means? I don't see the difference.

Yes, right, no need for clarification of phrases like 'was the cause
of', 'caused', etc. for ordinary purposes because we are not suddenly
landed on English speaking shores and having to learn English. And yes,
to get out of some muddles, not necessarily philosophical, we gain by
looking at clarifying meanings.

But there is a big issue at stake here and it is one we are seeing from
very different sides of some fence or other. And it has to do with the
distinction I seem to be forever making between meaning and reference.
You have queried this distinction's exact import a few times below and
so I might spend some time on it here.

Consider the question how two things can be said to be one? If such was
true, there is only one thing all along and one thing being itself is
not exactly news to anyone! Yet identity statements are in fact often
news and substantial information at that. Think maths. Think scientific
discoveries. Think ordinary life.

1. The man visiting the blonde women in the flat above you is your
husband!", announces the private detective to his startled client, the
man's wife.

So some analysis of this needs to be made to remove the paradoxical air.
To the rescue is a distinction between the meaning of a phrase and its
reference. "The man visiting the blond woman in the flat above you" has
a meaning independent of the actual reference. The very same words might
be used by other detectives in other places. The meaning is something
portable. Same goes for the phrase "Your husband". Here are *two*
different meanings.

But the reference, in this case, is unique. There is one man, one
featherless biped, one object that both terms refer to. Both "The man
visiting the blonde women in the flat above you" and "your husband"
refer to or point to the very same and one thing in the world. Or so we
can suppose if the detective is correct.

Meaning is one thing. What a name or description or process refers to is
quite a different thing altogether. One is about words and language use,
the other is something about the world outside of language.

We can talk *about* reference without referring and that is talking
about the meaning of the word "reference". But when we actually use
words to make a reference than the reference is typically something
non-linguistic. The reference is the adulterer, the bloke - it weighs
something!

Now, we can talk a lot about the meaning of causal phrases and
sentences. But all this talk is just one thing. There is another most
important thing about causal phrases (as with many names and
descriptions and phrases): what in the world is being referred to.

Here are pretty well two sentences that mean much the same.

2. The cause of the car exploding was a bomb

3. The bomb caused the car to explode.

The phrases, the descriptions, the relations all have a meaning English
speakers understand well enough to use and get other language users
nodding their head. "The cause" and "the bomb" and the relational
"caused" have a meaning, a sense, a connotation. Different philosophers
have different analyses of this. Some locate the meaning in ideas in
people's heads, others in public language practices, others in spooky
objects - concepts - able to be contemplated by human minds. But, let us
not get into detail, basically this is *all* about the meaning of words.

But *the cause* itself, *the bomb* itself, the relation of "causing" is
all about the non-linguistic world. And we are discussing this
non-linguistic world. In order to discuss it, we need to be clear about
meaning, sure. And, yes, this latter can take up our time and resources.

In the case of A causing B, Hume saw nothing more in the relation than
the appreciation that type A things are followed by type B events plus
an expectation that this will be so in the future.

Some of us do not believe this, nor believe it is some spooky
essentialist thing instead. There are a range of views and I have
described a few of them in summary.
[...]
First, the recasting is not something merely artificial. It is part of
the very meaning of "A causes B" that one is forced to agree that B
would not have happened in the circumstances had A not happened.

I agree that one is forced to agree that. I could quibble (my bomb blew
up the car, but it would have blown up anyway because there happened to
be another bomb put there by someone else...) but I'm satisfied one
can wriggle out of such quibbles.

Don't be worried to air these so called quibbles, they sometimes reveal
cracks and strengths. It is instructive to look at the case of the two
bombs and how one has to "wriggle out". It might need counterfactuals to
do so.

If they both went off at exactly the same time, then the claim that your
bomb blew it up is either false or only part of the truth. What you are
worried about, perhaps, is that your bomb might not really be the cause
considering it was not needed! But that could be said of the second bomb
too. What, were neither needed? How come the car blew up then?

The question turns on counterfactuals: had the second bomb not gone up,
the first would still have demolished the car; and vice versa. The cause
of the car blowing up was both bombs. But either one would have done the
job. To even begin to understand this situation, one needs to understand
counterfactuals. So *yes*, very much so to your question just below
here. It is at the very heart of our meaning.
The important question is: is that really part of the very meaning of "A
causes B"?

Lots of statements imply other things. If I tell you a cube has six
faces and eight corners, you are forced to agree that it has 12 edges.
But is having 12 edges part of the very meaning of "cube" any more or
less than its having 6 faces and 8 corners?

I might not even know it has 12 edges without counting them, so how
could that have been what I meant?

OK, in your cube case there are logically necessary entailments that are
not part of the meaning as commonly understood and it takes quite a bit
to get to them. The causal case is different. If you said to any
reasonable English speaker, do you mean that had A not been the case,
neither would B have been in that particular situation? The assent is
quicker and also the counterfactual is more readily forthcoming in
various forms when any one is challenged to explain what they mean.

....
Analytic statements about "causation" may be used to define it-- if
someone didn't know what "cause" meant, you might use counterfactuals in
the explanation but wouldn't have to-- or they may be used in an attempt
to make statements about it even when we know what it is.
I would like to see how someone can understand causal statements without
readily understanding some simple counterfactuals.

So what are such statements really saying? If you say "bachelors are
unmarried" aren't you just saying that's what "bachelor" means (or
that's what "unmarried" means)?

No, you are saying that bachelors are unmarried. Not trying to be funny
here, you are not defining anything. You are saying something true. How
you know it is true and what sort of truth it is, is a different
question.
You could say, no, this is a statement
about the true nature of bachelors in the world, but it isn't really
because it isn't telling us anything we didn't know already.

In a sense it is a statement about the very meaning of being a bachelor,
but only if we understand that as just a statement of what "bachelor"
means.

Does showing that causation statements can be recast as counterfactuals
tells us something about causation, even if we already knew what
causation was?
No, it does not tell us anything about the world itself, it is about
meaning. The reference is the business of science and, some would say,
philosophy, to explore.

....
You say you're not talking about the meaning of the word, but what else
is there here? What is "philosophical speculation"? How is it related to
philosophical illusion and philosophical mistake?

What more there is here is the nature of the world in respect to
causation. The reference. Now scientists will talk about particular
mechanisms and go into details. Philosophers, according to this line -
which I sense you mistrust - will do as best as they can to answer
questions left over that the scientists cannot answer. For example, what
is common to A causes B for all the many different values that fill
these variables?

i. Hume said "basically nothing more than the values go in pairs as
observed from the past".

ii. Essentialists say in each case, there is a spooky metaphysical gluey
sort of thing that they all share connecting them.

iii. Possible world theorists say that in all cases there exists - yes
exists - sets of worlds that are similar to our world in various ways in
all of which worlds that differ from our world in that the A does not
happen, the B does not happen either.

and there are other theories.

....
Why the requirement for reference at all?

It hints to me at a "correspondence theory of truth" and a picture of
language in which the constituents of a statement are required to refer
to things in the world. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of when
I said all this might have a point if there were a deeper agenda of some
kind. If so, then that's the thing to examine.

Well, I would be very surprised if true sentences did not correspond to
or represent aspects of the world. You are right to raise this and I
will admit that hardly any part of philosophy is unconnected with all
the other parts.

[The possible worlds is 1. The combinatorial this world way is 2.]
But how can 1 or 2 be true? We've mostly agreed I think neither is a
privileged or better definition of causation than any other. So what are
they? Just philosophical speculations.

I have not agreed at all that the different theories are as good as each
other. Only that there are equivalent ways to express the meaning of
causal statements. But it is not *meaning* that is the real interesting
thing here.

So what is it then? What else is there?
What has human mind to do with it? The theory of possible worlds - as
for example, Lewis has it - says what he says it says.

What does he say it says? From what I remember he just gets carried away
with the formalization without justifying it too much.

Well, this looks wrong to me. What you call formalization, if you are
thinking of the analysis of counterfactuality, never mind causality for
now, never mind necessary statements, is fleshing out details and
overcoming intricate objections to a clear program and question. What
makes a counterfactual true? It is not the truth of the antecedent, nor
of the consequent. So what is it outside human minds that makes it true?
And his answer is the worlds that exist outside human minds. He believed
in them, they were not idle speculations for him. Might seem curious to
some folk. But intelligent folk do believe in things others find
extraordinary.
 

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