A few follow up questions: one, when you say "complete cause" do you mean that Y and only Y can cause X and only X, or is it o.k. to say that Y can cause X and/or Z? Is it o.k. to say that X can be caused by A and/or B?

Second, you concentrate mainly on logic. Is necessity only for tautologies or does it have its place in empirical reasoning as well, and if so, what is the difference (if any) between the two?

Thirdly, you mention determinism. With the rise of quantum physics strict determinism seems to be dead. (for now). What does this do to causality? Does it have to be abandoned or just modified?

Great! It seems that this is a case of so called "ordinary language" being deceptive. It is true that I was looking for more than enumeration of temporal order. However, the way you define causality seems to border on the fallacy of affirming the consequent, isn't causality more than saying that if A was after B than B "implies" A? It seems that when you leave out succession there is still something left... I see now that it is this "something" that I was curious about. Doesn't the idea of causality inherently mean some sort of connection between events in addition to time? Understanding that we are talking about science here, and not lay-speak, doesn't even the strictest logician mean to assert a connection between events that is deeper than mere succession, and if so, what is this connection?

Death Monkey wrote:


So in other words, when I say "mechanistic" I do not necessarily mean that the mechanism is empirically analyzable, or even that it necessarily conforms to some sort of natural laws. I just mean that the causal model posits that a sequence of events are the result of a system performing some sort of process. In the case of mental event descriptions, this is still true. The system is the mind, and the processes are your mental processes. Simply formulating a model of consciousness in this way (in terms of mental processes), is a fundamentally mechanistic way of formulating it.

1. Material cause: “that from which, <as a constituent> present in it, a thing comes to be … e.g., the bronze and silver, and their genera, are causes of the statue and the bowl.”
2. Formal cause: “the form, i.e., the pattern … the form is the account of the essence … and the parts of the account.”
3. Efficient cause: “the source of the primary principle of change or stability,” e.g., the man who gives advice, the father (of the child). “The producer is a cause of the product, and the initiator of the change is a cause of what is changed.”
4. Final cause: “something’s end (telos)—i.e., what it is for—is its cause, as health is <the cause> of walking.”

]Of course, many models of the mind are not deterministic, but they they are not strictly-speaking causal either.

But just as we can talk about causality in an approximate sense in non-deterministic scientific models, likewise people who believe in some sort of non-deterministic "libertarian free will" (just as an example), can still talk about causality in an approximate sense as well.

So then you are not constrained to causality just being defined in the context of "a set of analyzable structures whose workings ensure a process to occur". The mechanism need not be analyzable, and its workings need not absolutely ensure a process to occur.

Ah. Your physicalism is showing through. YOU may think that mental events are only to be described as a system performing a process, but thankfully this is not the only meaning of the causes of mental events, nor really is it a realistic reduction of what cause means in the history of philosophy, hence Aristotle's four famous causes:

Well, then you are going to open your defintion of deteministic, you are saying the something can be "mechansitic" without being "deterministic"?

I look forwards to your distinction. Aside from "quantum machanics" which has a very specific reference, I can think of no other sensible oxymoronic combination. Most of the time when people say "non-mechanistic" they mean "non-deterministic" and visa versa.

Then in such cases we are not really talking about the mechanistic, non-deterministic "libertarian free-will" are we?

Then it is not properly called a "mechanism", unless one just likes to dress up things so that they sound like machines.

In thinking about it for a moment, it seems that I should also address this point more thoroughly. It is your metaphysical assumption that science describes the very Substance (in the Scholastic sense of the word) of reality, rather than forming one of a possible variety of descriptions. This is a fair assumption, but it has to be qualified as a metaphysical move.

Now by qualifying something as "folk psychology" as in "folk medicine" as opposed to "real medicine" one has made a rhetorical move.

Most of the Real Psychology (is psychology a science?) relies rather heavily on the causal conceptions of beliefs, fears, desires. In fact, I don't know any that don't.

As to your insistance on the implicit nature of a "mechanism" buried at the heart of all mental predicate attributions,

because this was meant as general philosophical answer to a wide question, rather than your assertion of your own philosophical position, (as I take it), I don't know how you can say this. Yes, you might assume that there is a "mechanism" beneath all the other non-mechanistic descriptions, but other descriptions are available and argued which do NOT make this assumptions.

For instance, Davidson's Anomalous Monism strictly argues against the law-like nature of the relationships between beliefs, inserting instead the notion of "causal concepts". Now causal concepts are rationally related, but they are not always defined as belonging to a "system" (sometimes so, sometimes not, depending on the school of thought). You might think that there is a system process that underlies the causal nature of beliefs, fears, desires, but if such a "process" does not conform to laws, there is great doubt about how "mechanistic" it is. And even the status of "process" comes into doubt (it has very slippery connotations, and is a word that is used to fudge categories, seeming to imply certain things without having to thorough defend or define them)

I think to say that causation is "essentially" mechanistic, is wrong, if one is describing how causation has been treated throughout philosophy, and even to this day.

The problem is that when you said that causation was essentially mechanistic, I suppose you should have said "causal models" are essentially mechanistic. There is a huge difference.

In mental events certainly there is the sense of a series of events, with one being the cause of the other, without what you call a "causal model" or a mechanistic implication.

The "dynamics of the mind" (to use one metaphor) is not the same thing as "the clockwork of the mind" now is it?

I have never heard the libertarian free will as described as "mechanistic". Perhaps you can cite an example.

And your generalization was a mistake, subsuming positions which are not "mechanistic", which is what I was trying to point out.

The problem is that you are trying to equate "mechanistic" with any sort of a series of events. It just doesn't mean that.

Now YOU see no problem, because YOU like to see things defined in a mechanistic way. But this just isn't what the word means. A Libertarian Free Will is not in any description I have seen, "mechanistic" (unless one just likes to insert their favorite word).

One can adopt such a level of description, but it is not what "process" means, that is, it is not identical to "the mechanism". You want to translate everything into such a description, but here, noticably missing is your translation of "the process of writing a poem" into such a description. You are forcing terms.

What exactly is the mechanism of the process of writing poetry?

Migtht as well say "a dynamism" as well then. Notice how the meaning changes.

Because you have adopted one such metaphysical assumption in an unreflectant fashion.

Modeling is one form of theorizing. Sometimes the models are literal, sometimes metaphorical.

Ah. The only REAL Psychology!

Of course you have. You just prove unable to reflect upon the position you assume is natural. Your equation of mechanistic description with the stuff of the universe is a position.

Your claim that mechanistic description is implicit in any causal description, is a position.

You are not familiar with Davidson's Anomalous Monism? I am quite surprised (only because of the degree of your familiarity with the subject). Then we are at an extreme deficit. Davidson's Anomalous Monism is at the heart of my protes of your position (which you assume is not a position at all).

The problem is that you are talking about causation in terms of mental predicates, but are not familiar with all the positions. By reducing all positions to your position, and then claiming that you are not forwarding a position is something I am trying to bring to light. A mechanistic description does not lie at bottom of all causal descriptions, plain and simple. Hence, "causation" is not "essentially" mechanistic.

The problem is that when you said that causation was essentially mechanistic, I suppose you should have said "causal models" are essentially mechanistic. There is a huge difference.


This is really ridiculous. Here you are saying that because priorly you already had said that the concept of causality only really applies to causal models, you were justified in claiming that causality is essentially mechanistic.

This is the very claim that I am telling you is unjustified AND a position. Now whether you priorly stated this, or you stated it a thousand years ago, its standing remains a mistake (or at the very, very most, a position to be defended, and not just something to be assumed).

And I think that you don't know what you mean be "mechanistic", or rather, like it to mean many things at once. When you would like mechanistic to mean "the clockwork of the mind" everyone understands you. When you would like mechanistic to mean any process whatsoever, as in such phrases "the dynamics of the mind" or "the process of writing a poem" your word "mechanistic" is a fish completely out of its water.

And the problem (for you) is that the "concept of causality" extends far beyond either "causal models" (if these models are to be taken literally and not as loose metaphors of relations), or determinism. It is you that has confined the concept of causality to these domains.

No Libertarian Freewillist I have ever heard has described Freewill in terms of its mechanism.

The reason for this is that "mechanism" implies things that are not endemic to that concept of Freewill.

Now you might like to stick the word in everywhere, state that it lies beneath every description, (and even claim that your claim isn't a "position" but a fact of how things are), but you would be wrong.

Actually there is great reason to debate the semantics of this word, because the word implies, in particular in your position, an underlying and fundamental relation between concepts and facts.

That you think that there is a clockwork of the mind (what you call a "causal model") that is assumed in for instance any mental predicate attribution that employs causal concepts, is the very thing that operates in your abuse of the meanings of the word "mechanistic".

And I am telling you that "what more there is" falls into two categories, causal law descriptions (physical events) and "causal concept" descriptions (mental events). And it is the trinity of these relations (not duality), logical necessity, physical causation, and mental predicate causation which has in many ways framed philosophical debate. That you want to reduce the three to the two, or the three to the one is a position you have taken, and does not exhaust the meanings of causal conception.

Because you have moved from "mechanistic" to "process" (as if these words are synonymous, and they are not), as if to include all such phenomena.

As I have told you, you would like the process of erosion to mean the mechanism of erosion. These are two different descriptions, calling attention to two different levels of events (which may or may not overlap). A paper on the process of erosion would look different than a paper on the mechanism of erosion. Now if we take something even more complicated, the process of writing a poem, we can see that the distinction between the two words becomes more clear.

Then start owning up to what you are doing. Stop denying that you are taking a position, when you are taking a position.

So you think that when one asks a poet: What is the process of writing a poem? This is a strictly equivalent question to: What is the mechanism for writing a poem? Do you even speak English? These are very, very different questions. They might come up with very different answers.

YOU might say that the mechanism is the process, but that is because you want all descriptions to be a description of mechanisms. The thing is, the world is not talked about in the way that YOU want to talked about. The process of writing a poem is not the mechanism of writing poem.

Davidson actually holds onto the very same metaphysical position you do, that physical descriptions are the stuff of reality.

His interest is primarily exactly that of yours (barring the ethics, though there are ethical consequences of his theories).

That he holds the same un-reflected metaphysical position as you is in my mind a weakness of his position. But given the assumptions that both of your share, his take on the causal descriptions of mental events undermines your claim that all causal descriptions are "mechanistic". Perhaps you would like to familiarize yourself with his argument.

Really? Then what did you mean when you said: "descriptions which are not mechanistic are not what I would call "causal descriptions".

1. There is one world (monism).
2. Some events in this world are physical and some are psychological or intentional.
3. Every single psychological or intentional event is describable in physical terms.
4. But there can be no general laws correlating physicaland psychological/intentional events – no"psycho-physical laws" connecting reasons and actions.

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).

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.

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.

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.


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.