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Dunamis
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Posted 03/17/08 - 01:36 PM:	#21
Death Monkey, To help you clarify your metaphysical objections to Davidson, I give you the following summation of the conclusions of Anomalous Monism, taken from here: There is one world (monism). Some events in this world are physical and some are psychological or intentional. Every single psychological or intentional event is describable in physical terms. But there can be no general laws correlating physicaland psychological/intentional events – no"psycho-physical laws" connecting reasons and actions. Are you saying that the over-riding problem you have with him is assumption #1? You don't see the value of such an assumption? Is it an assumption you would never make? If it is an assumption made, perhaps regularly, do you not feel that it should be stated?
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

astaire1
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Posted 03/18/08 - 02:16 AM:	#22
Greetings Dunamis and DeathMonkey, I'm not going to pretend that I haven't noticed you two squabbling over who is right (whose posts were appropriate responses given the context of previous posts). However, I'll risk stepping into the middle of it, since I am interested in the issue which seems to be gradually emerging from the fray. By coincidence, this morning I was reading about Davidson and was surprised to discover his contradiction to Wittgenstein's distinction of reason and cause. (I suppose this may be one of Dunamis' differences with Davidson) Now returning to the issue at hand, I tend to see the world from what appears to be DeathMonkey's viewpoint, which is why I think I may have something to learn from Dunamis on this matter. For starters, I don't see what the difference is between a process of writing poetry and a mechanism of writing poetry. I found myself wondering what 2 different answers Dunamis would put forward as examples. However, in light of the 4 points of Anomalous Monism above, I can perhaps now make a guess as to what distinction Dunamis may be referring to. I don't yet have a very rich and elaborate notion of causation, and so I tend to think of mechanism and causation as the same (or entertwined). I certainly wouldn't exclude the use of the word causation for "mental concepts". But neither would I assume that it was impossible to examine the mechanism of such causation. At the same time, I wouldn't declare that high level beliefs and mental causation (or mental concepts) can necessarily be reduced to underlying neurobiology. And yet I do tend to believe that the underlying neurobiology (and body physiology as immersed in an environment) causes all high level beliefs. So perhaps the issue is over the notion of reduction. I readily admit that (as Hoftsadter points out) it isn't appropriate to attempt to explain beliefs (or the mind) on the neurobiological level. Dunamis wrote: your personal view of causal description proves insuffient when discussing what cause is I'd like to know why it is insufficient. Is your argument also arguing against Davidson's claim that Wittgensteins reasons can also be viewed as causes? It would seem you wish to refuse a mechanistic notion of the mind. In what way is it preferable to describe brain activity as processes as opposed to mechanism ? When I think of specific brain process such as judgements, I tend to assume that there are rule based algorithms being executed which could be monitored by various brain scanning technologies. Is it assumed that mechanistic implies deterministic? If so, why is that a problem? Davidson wrote: "On the one hand, human acts are clearly part of the order of nature, causing and being caused by events outside themselves. On the other hand, there are good arguments against the view that thought, desire, and voluntary action can be brought under deterministic laws, as physical phenomena can." (320) That seems quite reasonable to me. Am I headed in the right direction here for addressing the issue at hand? The phrase "no psycho-physical laws connecting reasons and actions" seems to reject a mechanistic view of the mind and thought however the phrase "Every single psychological or intentional event is describable in physical terms" seems to admit a mechanistic view of the mind and thought. So, in that case, it would all come down to what is meant by mechanistic with regard to the mind. Davidson wrote: Any time you describe a specific intentional event, you make reference to the beliefs and desires of the agent. And every single individual intentional event no doubt can be correlated with a physiological event. But there is no general way to correlate beliefs and desires with physiological events or actions. So perhaps the mind can be viewed as clockwork in some ways but not in other ways. Indeed intentional actions are the result of an intricate complex of individual parts impinging on other parts. But these parts were not assembled by an engineer according to general practice and techniques. Instead it is a hodepodge of interconnectivity, multiplicity, and circularity. Davidson wrote: Davidson thus concludes that we can’t read people’s intentions off their behaviors, beliefs, or desires, except statistically. [...] Thus, when we explain by reasons, we inevitably sacrifice the precision of hard science. Hmm... It occurs to me that Quantum mechanics faced this same difficulty and yet managed to remain hard science and in fact become the model of precision in science. -Astaire Edited by astaire1 on 03/18/08 - 03:24 AM
Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek. When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.

Death Monkey
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Posted 03/18/08 - 01:04 PM:	#23
Dunamis, You failed to answer my question directly. So, I'll assume by your roundabout that you have answered it in the negative. You (as in "Death Monkey") would NOT qualify the statement, "His fear of hieghts caused him to pause" to be a causal description (what kind of description this is in your personal vocabulary heaven knows). I would say that it is not a description at all. Not without some context for me to judge what the person saying it means by "caused". Without some model for mental causation to refer to, how can I possibly assess whether the model being referred to is what I would call a "causal model" or not? For example, if I were to say "my fear of spiders caused me to jump", I would certainly be talking about what I would call a causal description. But if somebody else said it, I would have to know something about what they think of as "mental causation" before I could say. What you originally said was, [with your heretofore apparent meanings added]: D.M. wrote: And that's the key issue [for understanding how I like to talk about causalty]. Causality [in the way that I like to talk about it] is essentially a property of mechanistic deterministic models. Cause and effect [in my way of talking about them] are basically just ways of talking about mechanistic interactions. This is why [I personally prefer] a common analogy used in causal models of reality is the idea of a "clockwork" universe. Close, except that I never said that I prefer the anology of a clockwork universe. I just mentioned it as a common example, which it clearly is. I actually do not prefer that analogy at all. I am not a determinist, remember? Your admitted grounds for framing things the way that you seem to do seems to be that you have, that is you personally, have an idiosynchratic defintion of what "causal description" is, that is, it denies as a causal description any number of the use of the word "cause" that relate to and explain intentional action through belief or desire attribution. It's nothing idiosynchratic to me. I certainly did not make it up. Nor do I have any particular fondness for it myself. That is what is so frustrating about your continued insistence that I am somehow projecting my own position onto what I am saying. It isn't even my position! I am not a determinist. I don't even think that what I call "causal models" accurately describe reality in anything more than an opproximate way, under a particular range of conditions. Like I said before, I did not present this conception of "causality" out of any personal preference, and certainly not because such models somehow match up with my own position. I presented it simply because it seemed to me to be what was being asked about in the opening post. Indeed, there is a trinity of causality which haunts philosophical description: logical necessity, law-governed "mechanistic" causality, and mental predicate "causal concepts". Now that you personally would like to ignore the third category, that can't really be helped.[/uote] Who ever said that I would like to ignore it? I just did not think that this was what was being asked about. I am still not convinced that it was what was being asked about. [quote]Clearly his interests include metaphysics. Mine do not. It seems that your understanding of Davidson is somewhat impaired, since Davidson is famous for not staking out any metaphysical position, other than his general acceptance of Monism. It's not impaired. It is non-existent. I know nothing more about him than what you have told me in this thread. My statement that his interests include metaphysics was based entirely on what you have told me. If that is incorrect, then either I have misinterpreted something you said about him, or you misrepresented him. In any event, it does not really matter. Like I said, my interests do not include metaphysics. I do not consider myself to be a monist. I do not deny substance dualism (if by that, you mean claiming that it is false). I do not think that it is true or false. I think that both monism and dualism are meaningless gibberish. They both amount to mistaking the map for the territory. Put simply, my position is that as soon as somebody attempts to claim that a metaphysical model is true (or false), they are talking nonsense. And that is what it means to make metaphysical claims about the world. Saying that monism is true (or false), amounts to claiming that there is a true metaphysical model, and that it is a monistic one. This is meaningless. DM
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Dunamis
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Posted 03/21/08 - 06:39 AM:	#24
astaire1 wrote: I'd like to know why it is insufficient. Is your argument also arguing against Davidson's claim that Wittgensteins reasons can also be viewed as causes? Yes. There is, as Davidson points out, a causal conception which enframes intentional behavior explanations, a distinct category of "cause" which does not operate in the same "mechanistic" fashion which is the sole causal explanation in Death Monkey's parlance. (I actually wrote a lengthy paper, not long ago, on how Davidson's view of cause fleshes out Wittgenstein's distinction. Wittgenstein's distinction is very important for how it answers very specific questions, such as what is the nature of justification. But it is less adroit when answering how justification itself connects to events in the world. My problems with Davidson lie elsewhere.) It would seem you wish to refuse a mechanistic notion of the mind. In what way is it preferable to describe brain activity as processes as opposed to mechanism ? When explaining intentional behavior the causal concepts employed by mental predicate attributions are most effective descriptions. Whether you want to call these "processes" I don't really care. "Process" is Death Monkey's word, the one he likes to use when he want to talk about non-mechanistic things in as much a mechanistic fashion as possible. I see this as rhetorical smudging. Like Davidson, I agree that all brain activity can be described mechanistically, but a mechanistic description does not always render clear all relevant information. One might want to talk about the "mechanism" of writing poetry, that is the third-person processes of this lobe firiing up in this way, and that neuron cluster firing in that way, but if I want to learn how to write a poem, this is not how one would go about doing it. When I think of specific brain process such as judgements, I tend to assume that there are rule based algorithms being executed which could be monitored by various brain scanning technologies. Is it assumed that mechanistic implies deterministic? If so, why is that a problem? Well, there are two problems. One is, if Davidson is right, there can be no law-like relation between brain states and beliefs. Two is, if you want to personally learn how to make judgments, staring at a brain monitor, or running through algorithms, isn't going to get you there. I have no problem though, with the idea that computers may one day exhibit behavior so similar to human "thought" that it will be ridiculous to deny that they think or even that they are human. But I suspect that when that happens it is very likely that they too which display the very indeterminancy that characterizes mental predicate attributions, even though we will be able to watch every circuit firing. That seems quite reasonable to me. Am I headed in the right direction here for addressing the issue at hand? It seems so to me. The phrase "no psycho-physical laws connecting reasons and actions" seems to reject a mechanistic view of the mind and thought however the phrase "Every single psychological or intentional event is describable in physical terms" seems to admit a mechanistic view of the mind and thought. Davidson's view is of a conceptual dualism (as opposed to a metaphysical dualism of Substance). There are two kinds of causal concepts which are employed in describing events in the world. One is "mechanistic" causation. The second class of concepts are such as those that help explain intentional behavior. Intentional behavior, at any time, might be described by the first mechanistic (but the most salient parts of the behavior, its reasons, and therefore its causal focus in the shared world, might be lost). So, in that case, it would all come down to what is meant by mechanistic with regard to the mind. Well, if the word "mechanistic" is going to be used far beyond its ordinary meaning, then there would have to be a justification for such a use, (for instance it shows us something very important), and cannot be just a predilection. So perhaps the mind can be viewed as clockwork in some ways but not in other ways. That is all that I have been saying. Whereas Death Monkey has been saying that all processes are essentially mechanistic processes, or, if they are not mechanistic processes, they cannot (in his predilection of use) be called "causal". The whole point is that there are two classes of causation going on here. Edited by Dunamis on 03/21/08 - 06:43 AM
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Dunamis
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 03/21/08 - 07:17 AM:	#25
Death Monkey wrote: For example, if I were to say "my fear of spiders caused me to jump", I would certainly be talking about what I would call a causal description. But if somebody else said it, I would have to know something about what they think of as "mental causation" before I could say. This makes no sense. It's nothing idiosynchratic to me. I certainly did not make it up. Nor do I have any particular fondness for it myself. That is what is so frustrating about your continued insistence that I am somehow projecting my own position onto what I am saying. Then your insistence upon your personal use of the phrase "causal description", which others might very well disagree with is incoherent: D.M. wrote: In other words, they do not fit into what I mean by "causal description". That they could fit into what somebody else means by "causal description" is completely beside the point. I never claimed that everybody means the same thing by "causality" that I do. Like I said before, I did not present this conception of "causality" out of any personal preference, and certainly not because such models somehow match up with my own position. I presented it simply because it seemed to me to be what was being asked about in the opening post. Sure. Then your response was, in my view, insufficient. I wrote:It seems that your understanding of Davidson is somewhat impaired, since Davidson is famous for not staking out any metaphysical position, other than his general acceptance of Monism. You wrote: It's not impaired. It is non-existent. I know nothing more about him than what you have told me in this thread. My statement that his interests include metaphysics was based entirely on what you have told me. If that is incorrect, then either I have misinterpreted something you said about him, or you misrepresented him. Then you are not reading closely at all. In any event, it does not really matter. Like I said, my interests do not include metaphysics. I do not consider myself to be a monist. I do not deny substance dualism (if by that, you mean claiming that it is false). I do not think that it is true or false. I think that both monism and dualism are meaningless gibberish. They both amount to mistaking the map for the territory. I wonder if your phrase "meaningless gibberish" is more meaningless gibberish than either monism or dualism is, for people seem to actually compose arguments on each, wereas you to appear to retreat into a slogan about maps and territories which you seem to regularly violate. As to the gibberishness of monism, I see good reason to talk about the world as if there were one world. It is of an ethical consequence [I thought you were concerned with ethics?] that when two or more people are discussing things they value, there is something, one thing, which they share, and that is "one world". This oneness, far from being a distant and metaphysical abstraction, works as a material corrective, the mutual limit that both persons, or more, share. It is the thing that beliefs bump into, and have to adjust to. And it is the thing that makes all communication and translation possible. This monism is a ballast. Far from being gibberish, it is the very thing that keeps us from passing into gibberish. Put simply, my position is that as soon as somebody attempts to claim that a metaphysical model is true (or false), they are talking nonsense. Statements can be made true or false, "metaphysical models" are not statements. The way that metaphysical statements work is that they express the rational conditions for our agreement. The way that Davidsonian monism works is that by understanding that a shared world causes our beliefs, we can understand that communication is always possible, and how it is possible. This might be a senseless act for you, attempting to explain such a thing, but this is a great deal of how philosophy works, it clears out conceptual ground so that things, phenomena, events can be explained and interpreted in new and meaningful ways. I certainly agree though, if the point is that no metaphysical claim can be true in any ultimate sense. Metaphysics are tools, like anything else. And that is what it means to make metaphysical claims about the world. Saying that monism is true (or false), amounts to claiming that there is a true metaphysical model, and that it is a monistic one. This is meaningless. I have never heard Davidson make such a claim, that he has discovered a "true metaphysical model". His very definition of truth I think prevents such a claim; in such essays as "The Folly of Trying to Define the Truth" or "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" he undercuts many such claims. But if believing that we live in one world, or that events in that world cause our beliefs is a "metaphysics" perhaps he is guilty of being too metaphysical, in your eyes. He rather, to me, simply claims that this way of looking at the world makes the most sense. He offers his reasons, many of them highly rational in character, for instance Tarski's defintion of a true sentence, but really in reading all the Davidson that I have, he is only concerned with the consequences of assumptions. For him, assuming that we live in one, mutual world, has clarifying consequences. If it made more sense that we lived in three worlds, or a million worlds, I'm sure he would have no problem with that either, as nor would I. As it stands I don't think that assuming that we love in One World, that when you are referring to something in the world it is something that, in principle, I too can refer to it as well, is as you say "meaningless". In fact, this is something that we assume regularly anytime we attempt to communicate or translate someone's intentional behavior. Stating it, rather than just blindly assuming it, does not make such an assumption "meaningless", it puts its nature under examination. And it is good, sometimes, to put the nature of our assumptions under examination. Edited by Dunamis on 03/21/08 - 07:23 AM
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Death Monkey
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Posted 03/21/08 - 09:05 AM:	#26
Dunamis, For example, if I were to say "my fear of spiders caused me to jump", I would certainly be talking about what I would call a causal description. But if somebody else said it, I would have to know something about what they think of as "mental causation" before I could say. This makes no sense. Why not? We have already established that what some people may think of as a "causal description" is not what I would call a "causal description". The word "cause" can be used in many different ways, so without knowing specifically how the person is using the word, I would not know whether they are talking about what I would call a "causal description" or not. I would have to ask for more information to clarify. It's nothing idiosynchratic to me. I certainly did not make it up. Nor do I have any particular fondness for it myself. That is what is so frustrating about your continued insistence that I am somehow projecting my own position onto what I am saying. Then your insistence upon your personal use of the phrase "causal description", which others might very well disagree with is incoherent: I never said anything about it being my personal use of the phrase. I just said that it is the usage I have been talking about throughout this discussion. Like I said before, I did not present this conception of "causality" out of any personal preference, and certainly not because such models somehow match up with my own position. I presented it simply because it seemed to me to be what was being asked about in the opening post. Sure. Then your response was, in my view, insufficient. OK. I do not think that it is true or false. I think that both monism and dualism are meaningless gibberish. They both amount to mistaking the map for the territory. I wonder if your phrase "meaningless gibberish" is more meaningless gibberish than either monism or dualism is, for people seem to actually compose arguments on each, wereas you to appear to retreat into a slogan about maps and territories which you seem to regularly violate. I do not believe that I have violated it even a single time in this thread. And in each case where you have accused me of doing so, I pointed out that you were misinterpreting what I said. Nor am I merely retreating into a slogan. I am merely stating my opinion here. If you want some sort of detailed explanation, I am happy to provide it. I just did not see any point in digressing into that completely different topic here. The point I was trying to make is simply that I reject notions like "monism" and "dualism" entirely. Why I do so is completely aside from the point I was trying to make. As to the gibberishness of monism, I see good reason to talk about the world as if there were one world. It is of an ethical consequence [I thought you were concerned with ethics?] that when two or more people are discussing things they value, there is something, one thing, which they share, and that is "one world". That is another issue entirely. I have no problem with metaphysical models when they are used metaphorically, or when they are just used as a convenient way of talking about / thinking about things. What I consider to be incoherent is the attempt to take such models literally. Put simply, my position is that as soon as somebody attempts to claim that a metaphysical model is true (or false), they are talking nonsense. Statements can be made true or false, "metaphysical models" are not statements. Exactly my point. A statement can be a statement about a model, or a statement about reality. It can even be a statement about a relationship between reality and a model. But one must be clear on exactly which of the above the statement is. When one makes metaphysical claims, he is confusing a statement about a model for a statement about reality. For example, I would say that if somebody makes the claim "determinism is true", they are making an incoherent statement. Determinism can be true in a model. It is only even well-defined for models. Saying that it is true about reality is nonsensical. The way that metaphysical statements work is that they express the rational conditions for our agreement. The way that Davidsonian monism works is that by understanding that a shared world causes our beliefs, we can understand that communication is always possible, and how it is possible. This might be a senseless act for you, attempting to explain such a thing, but this is a great deal of how philosophy works, it clears out conceptual ground so that things, phenomena, events can be explained and interpreted in new and meaningful ways. I certainly agree though, if the point is that no metaphysical claim can be true in any ultimate sense. Metaphysics are tools, like anything else. I have no problem with that. Like I said, I am not saying that metaphysical models are all incoherent, nor that they are not useful. I just have a problem with attempts to try to take them literally. I have never heard Davidson make such a claim, that he has discovered a "true metaphysical model". His very definition of truth I think prevents such a claim; in such essays as "The Folly of Trying to Define the Truth" or "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" he undercuts many such claims. But if believing that we live in one world, or that events in that world cause our beliefs is a "metaphysics" perhaps he is guilty of being too metaphysical, in your eyes. He rather, to me, simply claims that this way of looking at the world makes the most sense. He offers his reasons, many of them highly rational in character, for instance Tarski's defintion of a true sentence, but really in reading all the Davidson that I have, he is only concerned with the consequences of assumptions. For him, assuming that we live in one, mutual world, has clarifying consequences. If it made more sense that we lived in three worlds, or a million worlds, I'm sure he would have no problem with that either, as nor would I. It sounds like he is using the word "monism" a bit differently than the way I normally hear it used. That is fine by me, since the way I normally hear it used is, as I have explained, not very coherent. Like I said, I am not familiar with his work. As it stands I don't think that assuming that we love in One World, that when you are referring to something in the world it is something that, in principle, I too can refer to it as well, is as you say "meaningless". Neither do I. It is, in fact, what I would consider to be one of the basic assumptions of most epistemologies. DM
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Dunamis
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Posted 03/21/08 - 09:29 AM:	#27
Death Monkey wrote: Why not? We have already established that what some people may think of as a "causal description" is not what I would call a "causal description". Because you have yet to present the "causal model" which explains how your fear caused your behavior, a "causal model" which supposedly, for you, defines something being a "causal description". I never said anything about it being my personal use of the phrase. I just said that it is the usage I have been talking about throughout this discussion. Then your use of italics in the following was ill advised, and your specific emphasis on what "I...mean" by the phrase. D.M. wrote: In other words, they do not fit into what I mean by "causal description". That they could fit into what somebody else means by "causal description" is completely beside the point. I never claimed that everybody means the same thing by "causality" that I do. Nor am I merely retreating into a slogan. I am merely stating my opinion here. If you want some sort of detailed explanation, I am happy to provide it. I just did not see any point in digressing into that completely different topic here. I find your regular reduction, which I believe you have used in more than one thread, "The mechanism is the process" to be confusing the map for the territory. Do you not see this as a problem? The point I was trying to make is simply that I reject notions like "monism" and "dualism" entirely. Why I do so is completely aside from the point I was trying to make. And the point that I am making is that your rejection is closer to gibberish than either of those two positions. That is another issue entirely. I have no problem with metaphysical models when they are used metaphorically, or when they are just used as a convenient way of talking about / thinking about things. What I consider to be incoherent is the attempt to take such models literally. Which is exactly the way that Davidson talks about them, as far as I can tell. me:Statements can be made true or false, "metaphysical models" are not statements. you: Exactly my point. So your claim that some person or other is presenting a "metaphysical model" and also is claiming it to be true seems widely inappropriate, since I do not know of any such position taken. A statement can be a statement about a model, or a statement about reality. It can even be a statement about a relationship between reality and a model. But one must be clear on exactly which of the above the statement is. When one makes metaphysical claims, he is confusing a statement about a model for a statement about reality. So, in your mind regarding the statement, "The causal interactions in the world cause our beliefs", is this "about the model" or "about the world" or "about the relationship of the model to the world". Just what about such a belief is offensive, crossing over into your metaphysical gibberish position? For example, I would say that if somebody makes the claim "determinism is true", they are making an incoherent statement. Determinism can be true in a model. It is only even well-defined for models. Saying that it is true about reality is nonsensical. You seem to be railing against a kind of statements that is not being made here. I have no problem with that. Like I said, I am not saying that metaphysical models are all incoherent, nor that they are not useful. I just have a problem with attempts to try to take them literally. What happens if you take "literally" the proposition, "events in the world cause our beliefs"? And what happens if you take it "metaphorically"? It sounds like he is using the word "monism" a bit differently than the way I normally hear it used. That is fine by me, since the way I normally hear it used is, as I have explained, not very coherent. Like I said, I am not familiar with his work. Hmmm. Then in your book one can make statements that hold a monist position, such as "There is one world" and hold them to be true, but one cannot say something like "Monism is true"; is that the whole of your resistence to Davidson? Neither do I. It is, in fact, what I would consider to be one of the basic assumptions of most epistemologies. And you do not see such an assumption to be metaphysical? And hence its statement "gibberish"?
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Simple Occam
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Posted 03/21/08 - 10:50 AM:	#28
Dun & Death: If I can jump in with an observation. You 2 seem to be battling over the relationship between differnt kinds of explanations, causal and rational, and the diferent kinds of causes asociated with each. The former has to do with efficient casusation in nature, whether it's mechanistic/deterministic or not. The latter is the kind of explanation that applies (as far as we know today) only to a special kind of efficient-cause mechanism: human beings. My lust for the lovely intern may have "caused" me to break my marriage vows, but it was still a rational choice on my part. I have a reason for doing something and I did it. It might not have been the BEST reason and now I may regret it. But the moral aspect of rational explanations, cannot be overlooked. This kind of expanation is are meaningful only in the context of language-using subjects who have a range of possible behaviors available and then choose an option based on some rationale. This does not happen outside the nexus of efficient casues, which describe HOW things work. Indeed, those causes are quite relevant: my biological makeup, social context, developmental history, drugs I'm taking, and so on. But, even given all that, you can't explain the behavior simply as the interaction of efficient causes. Reason is the cause.

Dunamis
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Posted 03/21/08 - 10:59 AM:	#29
Simple Occam wrote: Dun & Death: If I can jump in with an observation. You 2 seem to be battling over the relationship between differnt kinds of explanations, causal and rational, and the diferent kinds of causes asociated with each. The former has to do with efficient casusation in nature, whether it's mechanistic/deterministic or not. The latter is the kind of explanation that applies (as far as we know today) only to a special kind of efficient-cause mechanism: human beings. My lust for the lovely intern may have "caused" me to break my marriage vows, but it was still a rational choice on my part. I have a reason for doing something and I did it. It might not have been the BEST reason and now I may regret it. But the moral aspect of rational explanations, cannot be overlooked. This kind of expanation is are meaningful only in the context of language-using subjects who have a range of possible behaviors available and then choose an option based on some rationale. This does not happen outside the nexus of efficient casues, which describe HOW things work. Indeed, those causes are quite relevant: my biological makeup, social context, developmental history, drugs I'm taking, and so on. But, even given all that, you can't explain the behavior simply as the interaction of efficient causes. Reason is the cause. It has been, from the beginning, my point that indeed these are two kinds of explanation, (so by and large I would agree with your statement), but also that each kind of explanation is a "causal description". Not only this, but no one of the two kinds of causal explanation has precedence or priority over the other. Rather, they are inter-related.
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

Death Monkey
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Posted 03/22/08 - 04:17 AM:	#30
Dunamis, For example, if I were to say "my fear of spiders caused me to jump", I would certainly be talking about what I would call a causal description. But if somebody else said it, I would have to know something about what they think of as "mental causation" before I could say. This makes no sense. Why not? We have already established that what some people may think of as a "causal description" is not what I would call a "causal description". Because you have yet to present the "causal model" which explains how your fear caused your behavior, a "causal model" which supposedly, for you, defines something being a "causal description". I don't understand your objection. I know I did not present the causal model. I don't see why it would be necessary for me to do so, since I was just giving an example anyway. That wasn't even central to my point. My point was that without knowing what a person means by "cause", I cannot immediately tell whether he is talking about what I would consider to be a causal model. I find your regular reduction, which I believe you have used in more than one thread, "The mechanism is the process" to be confusing the map for the territory. Do you not see this as a problem? No, I do not. I think that this just amounts to you and I meaning slightly different things my these terms. That is another issue entirely. I have no problem with metaphysical models when they are used metaphorically, or when they are just used as a convenient way of talking about / thinking about things. What I consider to be incoherent is the attempt to take such models literally. Which is exactly the way that Davidson talks about them, as far as I can tell. OK. I'm not sure why you seem to want to argue with me about what Davidson's position is, when I already told you that I am not at all familiar with his work. So your claim that some person or other is presenting a "metaphysical model" and also is claiming it to be true seems widely inappropriate, since I do not know of any such position taken. You mean you've never heard people say things like "dualism is true", or "multiple ontological substances exist", or "determinism is true", or " completely undetectable things/properties exist"? I hear these sorts of things all the time. So, in your mind regarding the statement, "The causal interactions in the world cause our beliefs", is this "about the model" or "about the world" or "about the relationship of the model to the world". Just what about such a belief is offensive, crossing over into your metaphysical gibberish position? It depends on the context, of course. For example, I would say that if somebody makes the claim "determinism is true", they are making an incoherent statement. Determinism can be true in a model. It is only even well-defined for models. Saying that it is true about reality is nonsensical. You seem to be railing against a kind of statements that is not being made here. I didn't say they were being made here. And I would hardly call it "railing". I only even mentioned it becuase you asked. I was not even going to go into this issue here. It is off topic. I have no problem with that. Like I said, I am not saying that metaphysical models are all incoherent, nor that they are not useful. I just have a problem with attempts to try to take them literally. What happens if you take "literally" the proposition, "events in the world cause our beliefs"? And what happens if you take it "metaphorically"? In the former case you are making a statement that is only well-defined for models, but attempting to directly apply it to reality. In the latter case you are making a statement about a particular model (which would need to be specified by the context), and then presenting this model as a useful or accurate model of reality, with the understanding that the parts of that model that do not directly correspond to predictions about observations, are only being taken metaphorically. For example, I can present any of the interpretations of the standard model of quantum mechanics, or I could just use the interpretation-free mathematical formulation. There is nothing wrong with using one of the interpretations in an explanation of some phenomenon, as long as I do not try to claim that the interpretation is literally true. The extra stuff is just a metaphor. But that does not mean it is not useful. The Many Worlds interpretation is quite useful for understanding things like quantum computing, while the Copenhagen interpretation is more useful for understand things like atomic physics and nuclear decay. Hmmm. Then in your book one can make statements that hold a monist position, such as "There is one world" and hold them to be true, but one cannot say something like "Monism is true"; is that the whole of your resistence to Davidson? I guess that depends on what the person means by "there is one world". Neither do I. It is, in fact, what I would consider to be one of the basic assumptions of most epistemologies. And you do not see such an assumption to be metaphysical? And hence its statement "gibberish"? Not in the context you have presented, no. DM
Pseudoscience makes Baby Jesus cry.

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