but there's still causality even if the cause can be explained in an innumerable amount of ways. No shit people specialized in a field will explain something in a way that pertains to there field. Nothing happens for nothing, without cause how could anything occur? Everything has cause no matter how small or big. And just because something could have multiple causes does not make 1 explanation less valid than another it just explains in a different facet why a thing happened.

>>16839562
>there's still causality
If there was, you'd be able to demonstrate it, instead of perpetually appealing to contextual/subjective conventions that amount to logically fallacious statements. It's quite clear that "causality" has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with human psychology.

>>16839562
>without cause how could anything occur?
All you're doing here is pointing to the way some events seem to follow in a sequence, then invent some mystical force that ties it together and ask "how do you explain this sequence without [insert magical mouth noise]"?

so you find it true that something can happen for no reason whatsoever? because if so then I can understand how you say it has no basis in reality. its hard to explain yes, and language can feel too small to put into words why things in our world happen, but the things that do occur I know it's for a reason. Now if only we could figure out a way to get a root cause out of every cause and effect relationship and then maybe it would be more useful to base this truth off of reality, but nevertheless causality still exist. what part of psychology are you speaking of though, the fact that humans feel the need to explain the unexplained?

how do you explain anything without language? I thought that was the whole point of what our species so great. To be able and extrapolate and pass on ideas out of seemingly thin air to other people and make them understand what you understand.

It's about how reliable a recurrency is.

Your example is not about cause/effect, more on language and context. The three people are right about the causes, but the answers take different approaches depending on what is expected of them, the police is looking for the cause as in "who did it", the pathologist needs to fill a medical report on what happened, and so on, but they don't contradict each other, they complement each other. A philosopher might join and say "he died because he was once alive" and he too would be right. It depends on what kind of field you expect the answer to land on, in other words, what answer would suffice your question.

It might interest you:
Feynman - "Why?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q

Cause and effect are about how well you are able to use the information for future predictions. Getting stabbed in the neck usually causes someone to die, unless, of course, one is lucky enough not to rupture any major artery in spite of the stabbing. That's why the police arrest people who stab each other, because it follows that the person might do it again. That's why a doctor might want to be quick to fix someone's neck, because he knows that if it continues to bleed, the person will die, he has seen it before, or know it by association (he knows how blood works from studying). It may be true that a murderer may never try anything again, but society is not ok with taking that risk. It may also be true that by some superb luck a person stabbed in the neck may survive, but a good doctor will still move trying to heal and save that person, nevertheless. You would never say to this doctor "you don't know for sure if the guy with the bleeding neck is dying, perhaps he will just survive without your help". Perhaps, but that's besides the point, you see?

>>16839598 here, continuing

However, some information is different from others. An ancient astronomer can observe the movement of a planet, take notes on the trajectory and correctly estimate where it will be after a while. That doesn't mean he knows what causes the movement.

I'm a layman and I know bleeding from the neck is dangerous, we all know that almost instinctively, but we could not explain it as precisely as a doctor could, because that doctor knows other layers of information regarding the body. I know it, but he knows it too and better, more profoundly.

A modern astronomer will predict the trajectory of a planet much like the ancient one, but the difference is that the modern one also knows about gravity, he's past Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and so he can investigate the "cause" of the movement (for example, a planet that orbits the sun is moving "because" of the sun's gravity).

>>16839590
>so you find it true that something can happen for no reason whatsoever?
This is purely circular reasoning. You can't even formulate this question without presupposing the framework of causality. Even as a hypothetical, "X happened for no reason" is only meaningful by contrast to "X happened for a reason" and vice versa. So again, all you're really doing is asserting an inability to conceive of a different model to organize your observations about how reality unfolds. But it's actually easy to do: when some state of affairs associated with only one outcome, instead of inventing some productive force magically embedded in the relevant factors, you can think in terms of constraints passively ruling out all but that outcome.

i.e. you can deduce that the outcome is justified because anything else would've been inconsistent and leave it at that.

> what part of psychology are you speaking of though, the fact that humans feel the need to explain the unexplained?
The fact that humans perceive themselves as agents who actively make things happen in the environment.

>>16839598
>they don't contradict each other, they complement each other.
>It depends on what kind of field you expect the answer to land on, in other words, what answer would suffice your question.
Obviously. That's my point. It's not that they contradict each other, but that each one of them feels justified in his causal analysis, even though each level of analysis reveals the magical thinking behind how the previous one stitches together causes and effects with the glue of causality. If you slam the keyboard into the screen and then ask yourself why the screen is broken, you'll reason that your hit "caused" it and that's that. No thoughts about appropriate levels of analysis or the fine physical details of the interaction will ever cross your mind. You'll come up with this logical nonsequitur and treat it as obviously and indisputably true.

>Cause and effect are about how well you are able to use the information for future predictions.
Not really. You can make perfectly good future predictions by associating certain factors with certain outcomes without any ontological fantasies about Rube Goldberg chains of causes producing effects.

>>16839603
>An ancient astronomer can observe the movement of a planet, take notes on the trajectory and correctly estimate where it will be after a while. That doesn't mean he knows what causes the movement.
>A modern astronomer will predict the trajectory of a planet much like the ancient one, but the difference is that the modern one also knows about gravity
A modern astronomer doesn't know anything about any causes, either. He simply uses a more sophisticated description of that motion:
>What causes the planetary motion?
>>Gravity!
>What the fuck is a "gravity"?
>>A force that masses exert on each other!
>And what the fuck is a "force"?
>>Uhh... mass times acceleration?
>And what the fuck is this "acceleration"?
>>The rate of change of an object's velocity
>Ok, and what's a velocity?
>>The rate of change of an object's position
>So what causes the planetary motion?
>>It... uh... changes positions according to this formula
Yeah, nice "causality" you got there.

>>16839619
>You'll come up with this logical nonsequitur and treat it as obviously and indisputably true.
But how is it nonsequitur? If you slam the computer screen with your keyboard it will cause it to break. It follows, it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. It is the cause of the issue because if you do it again, it will break it again. We could even use other objects, like if you shove a lamp down a mixer's blade, they will break, I know this even though I have never done this very specific thing, but because we have seen things with similar materials react in a similar way. When you slam things onto each other, they tend to break. Not always, not with anything, but in general, but probably. It's a guess, it's always a guess to a certain extent, but the guess can be educated and the point of decision depends on context.

If it's sunny and weather report says it will rain, you're not sure. If there are dark clouds outside and the weather report says it will open up, you're still not sure. But if it's dark and the weather report says it wil rain, you'll probably go out with an umbrella, even though it is still possible for your initial guess and the weather report to be both wrong. You may have taken the umbrella for no reason afterall, but I would still say you've made the right decision given the circumstances. You either take the umbrella or you don't, you can't stay home until you're 100% sure it will rain or not, or else you'd never leave.

>You can make perfectly good future predictions by associating certain factors with certain outcomes without any ontological fantasies about Rube Goldberg chains of causes producing effects.
I would love to hear an example.

>>16839629
Watch the video I linked, it's precisely about that.

>A modern astronomer doesn't know anything about any causes, either. He simply uses a more sophisticated description of that motion:
And thus he achieves a more sophisticated prediction, that's the whole point of studying things

In a colloquial sense, you can say that the Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg. Investigate the iceberg, however, and you end up with the history of the entire universe. In the same sense, "objects" as we think of them don't exist either.

>>16839670
>But how is it nonsequitur? If you slam the computer screen with your keyboard it will cause it to break. It follows
If it isn't, show me how you get from the premise to the conclusion. But you already know it's a nonsequitur simply by virtue of the fact that a lower-level explanation immediately introduces a myriad new conditions that your naive account abstracts over. You can play around with those extra factors until the outcome changes, without it changing the description of the situation that supposed "caused" the outcome on the higher level, but still changing the outcome.

>If it's sunny and weather report says it will rain, you're not sure. If there are dark clouds outside and the weather report says it will open up, you're still not sure. But if it's dark and the weather report says it wil rain, you'll probably go out with an umbrella, even though it is still possible for your initial guess and the weather report to be both wrong.
Dark clouds and weather reports don't cause rain. I take the umbrella with me regardless of any "causality" that may or may not be at play, based simply on the known association.

>I would love to hear an example.
You just gave one yourself. Also see >>16839606, first paragraph.

>>16839541
F = ma, I see an accelerated mass, I conclude a force caused it. Even if it appears motionless in my frame of reference.

>>16839541
>for the last, it was maybe some cascade of necrotic cellular processes.
I doubt that a cellular biologist actually classifies everybody's cause of death as "all of their cells died"

>>16839672
>And thus he achieves a more sophisticated prediction, that's the whole point of studying things
Then just do that. To claim that the planets move the way they do "because of gravity" is a stupid word game that really boils down to the claim that they move way they do because they move the way they do. The contrast you tried to draw between ancient and modern astronomers really boils down to the fact that modern academic wagies have far less self-awareness about what they're doing, not to any difference in knowledge about causes.

>>16839541
Congrats OP, you discovered Humean skepticism. What you should know is that Kant resolved this problem by removing causality from the world of objects (how does A cause B) to our knowledge of objects and the modes of our knowing -- from things to laws. This is justified because the Humean skeptic takes for granted the consistency of psychological states (i.e. that we can perceive recurring sequences of events rather than random fluctuations) in order to infer that there is no basis to causal order, a position which contradicts itself. This grounds all scientific reasoning about causality which are relational (law-like).

>>16839730
I like the way philosophy pseuds never have any of their own thoughts and can't conceive of anyone else having them, either. It's always shoehorning someone's statement into framework X and criticizing it using framework Y. For example:
>This is justified because the Humean skeptic takes for granted the consistency of psychological states (i.e. that we can perceive recurring sequences of events rather than random fluctuations) in order to infer that there is no basis to causal order
This doesn't happen anywhere ITT.

>>16839742
>I like the way philosophy pseuds never have any of their own thoughts and can't conceive of anyone else having them, either.
No, it's just that your thoughts aren't original at all and have been dealt with centuries ago. Having "original thoughts" isn't even possible without actually reading widely and grasping the issue in all of its facets before commenting. You are rehashing practically word for word the critiques of Hume. That you want to re-invent the wheel isn't my problem.

>>16839746
Nothing in your post refutes my statements or supports the fantasy of causality. You regurgitate some Kantian criticism against some Humean skeptic who is apparently in the room with us right now and making some assumptions that aren't stated or implied in any of my posts. Talking to yourself about the mistakes of imaginary characters is a concerning symptom.

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>>16839746
>commenting
Oh. I see what's going on here. Should've paid attention to this detail before dignifying you with a response longer than the mandatory gb2r.

>>16839757
It seems I need to spoonfeed you.

Your post:
>You can't demonstrate that something "makes" something else happen. You can't even explain what it means for anything to "cause" something. All you can do is observe a recurring sequence of events and fill the logical gaps between them with this mysterious "causality".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_conjunction
>Hume proposed that the origin of our knowledge of necessary connections arises out of observation of the constant conjunction of certain impressions across many instances, so that causation is merely constant conjunction—after observing the constant conjunction between two events A and B for a duration of time, we become convinced that A causes B. However, this position raises problems, as it seems that certain kinds of constant conjunction are merely accidental and cannot be equated with causation. For example, we might observe sunrise following the crowing of rooster for a long period of time, but it would still be irrational to then believe the crowing causes the sunrise.

It seems the "philosophy pseuds" are quite literally centuries ahead you. What does that say about you?

>>16839761
I agree, you should definitely pay more attention generally, but this time to actual knowledge.

>>16839774
Your post contains at least 3 failures of basic reading comprehension. Try writing a better "comment".

>>16839730
>the Humean skeptic takes for granted the consistency of psychological states (i.e. that we can perceive recurring sequences of events rather than random fluctuations) in order to infer that there is no basis to causal order, a position which contradicts itself.
Shit-tier and patently false argument. Causality isn't necessary for the consistency of psychological states, nor is it necessary for sequences of events to reliably recur, nor is it necessary to make any inferences about anything.

>>16839824
>Causality isn't necessary for the consistency of psychological states,
It establishes that consistency. The Humean position that there is only a series of conjunctions of A and B and that causality can't be established between A and B assumes in its premises the consistency of psychological states that could apprehend A and B in sequence, all in order to deny our conclusions from them. If our thoughts were inconsistent and disconnected, we could never establish even theoretically any relation between A and B that could be subjected to scrutiny. Skepticism in reality upholds the consistency of our thoughts and hence the complete validity of the forms of our knowledge when you tease apart the dogmatic grounding of its arguments. Therefore, the laws we establish in thought regarding causality are grounded in the consistency of our knowledge and not in a substantial knowledge of objects.

The form of causality is 100% necessary for all of the sciences, as it orders our perceptions in rules and allows us to establish natural laws. And the arguments against it hold no real water.

>>16839541
>All you can do is observe a recurring sequence of events and fill the logical gaps between them with this mysterious "causality".
So far it's been a rather successful approach.

>>16839541
but like most people like this don't really care OP.

what about it now/.

>>16839847
I understand your trivial argument. It's just hinges on the false premise that you can't frame the temporal coherence of perceptions in anything other than causal terms.

>>16839742
>>16839746
aren't thier philosphiers about philophers.

people who personally responded to the philosophers in thier times.

what if you are not channeling kant , but isntaid a midwit who vallues kants opinion.

>>16839887
No one "is a philosopher in thier time". People are whackos or schizos in their time. History decides which ones become philosophers.
Critics of these troubled souls are called jannies and are often consumed with thoughts of leaving their penises somewhere they are not.

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>>16839541
My favorite take on this is "cut one into one" in Dogen's commentary on the Mumonkan, the cause and effect are discontinuous but occur in one action

>>16839919
>the cause and effect are discontinuous but occur in one action
Explain.

>>16839928
There's no continuity between cause and effect, they happen at the same time. While correct this view can become yet another obstacle to seeing events as they really are, so Dogen is pretty ambivalent about it

>>16839562
>Everything has cause no matter how small or big.
Reality might be acausal.

>>16839685
>your naive account abstracts over.
There is always some level of abstraction. You get to choose where to cut the line

>Dark clouds and weather reports don't cause rain.
They cause you to take the umbrella, it's not about the rain. The point is, you don't take the umbrella "because it will rain" but "because you think it will rain". Weather reports are based on huge amounts data, so they are somewhat reliable, even if not perfect. It's example on how you have to make a jump at a certain point.

>>16839695
My friend, but if you take it that way, everything is a word play. I can say planets do move around because of gravity, for the reasone that the word "because" or "cause" are merely ways of noticing the causal link between two things. Otherwise I could say "planets" don't exist, it's just a word for balls in space swirling around a star. Pluto was a planet, now it isn't, even though it is relatively the same. It's a convention, it's a limit of language, it's a boat we use to get across a river.

>>16839574
nothing wrong with that, the same is true for all language. how are we supposed to communicate with each other without appealing to human psychology? don't tell me you're one of those retards who thinks logic is the 'language' of the universe kek

>>16840072
>>16840082
Since you're obviously never going to progress beyond reiterating the same trivial "common sense" opinion, while any criticism of it keeps going over your head, we can call it a day. Wading through your rhetorical slop is mind-numbing. Might as well let the thread die.

>>16839541
Kantian "philosophy" is not /sci/ence. Begone, commie.

>>16839541
Yes anon, I also played enter the matrix as a child an remember that quote.

>>16839541
Causality is already a complete contradiction literally resting on uncaused agency, by definition by the way. There is no solution to the paradox that doesn't completely undermine it. It is a ghost.
Other anons trying to play shell games and injecting concepts of predictability are just hopelessly holding on to archaic modes of thought.
This has also been known for thousands of years. So the retarded nigger talking about Kant is topkek.

>>16840091
Actually humean. Sorry empiricism hurts your feelings though anon

>>16839541
The cause of death was cessation of brain activity.
Cessation of brain activity was caused by lack of blood in the brain.
Lack of blood in the brain was caused by blood leaking out of the artery
The cause of blood leaking out of artery was the rupturing of the artery
The cause of the artery rupture was an external cut
The cause of the external cut was a stabbing via a knife
The cause of the stabbing was the behavior of another human
The cause of the behavior of the other human was ....

OP sucks cock btw.

>>16839730
OP isn't a skeptic. Skeptics are open to being proven wrong. OP is not open to being wrong. This puts him closer to cultish behavior. What is this cult? The cult of anti knowledge. It comes in many forms. Anti science, anti history, anti government. Why people do this is unclear to me.

>>16839774
you're making a category error: Hume makes an argument about knowledge and you try to apply it to existence

it does not follow from anything that there are such things as "causes" and "effects" in reality
there may not even be an arrow of time, or at least nothing in physics implies there should be one

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>>16839730
Sounds like cope to me, sorry Kant.

>>16839928
quantum physicists all hate this one trick!
but seriously, the Schrodinger equation describes the evolution of a quantum system, but has nothing to say about time
quantum state transitions seem to for better or worse be (may Einstein (pbuh) forgive me for even saying this) instantaneous, in the sense that a meaningful way to describe a duration "between" states does not exist and that direction of the so-called arrow of time is indifferent - any transition can run both ways

>>16839730
in other words Kant admits that causality cannot be irl and resorts to saying
>it was real in my mind
which is, as the other anon put it, hilarious cope

>>16840273
>OP isn't a skeptic. Skeptics are open to being proven wrong.
Show me your attempt to prove me wrong.
>inb4 it's just you screeching your opinion in an attempt to override the one you disagree with

>>16840304
It's not about whether you are or aren't wrong. It's about whether you're open to being wrong. Which your response proves you aren't.

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>>16840283
>in other words Kant admits that causality cannot be irl and resorts to saying
>>it was real in my mind
I'm by no means a Kant expert, but isn't the entire basis of his philosophy to acknowledge that raw, objective reality is fundamentally inaccessible? He shifts focus to determining what organizing principles are necessary for a rational mind to experience a coherent reality at all.

So this poster's argument seems to be that you don't get to deny causality when your very ability to question it depends on it being true at least for the reality your mind synthesizes. Of course, he can't actually substantiate this without circular reasoning like:
>Well, if there's no causality, then everything just happens without a cause
>That means everything happens arbitrarily
>How do you know you're exempt from arbitrariness and not just thinking gibberish?
But this is retarded because step 2 is only necessarily true under the framework of causality.

>>16840306
You can't make a compelling point, fail to even show a glimmer of comprehension of what the OP is about, but still insist on spouting your opinions. Of course you will feel the justified dismissal of your idiocy is irrational or dogmatic or whatever. You lack the competence to judge objectively.

>>16840268
This post will be ignored because it BTFOs the entire premise of this thread.
>Forty-third post best post

>>16840318
80 IQ shart from a brownoid who obviously can't even read.

>>16840307
>How do you know you're exempt from arbitrariness and not just thinking gibberish?
is not a retarded question at all
even if you take the much more lax condition of logical consistency, one thing following from another according to axioms of some logical system, well, most people don't do that with their minds most times
to say that something in the immediate environment of the thinker "caused" a thought is also kinda silly
say I hear Dworak played by Art Tatum and I am reminded of my grandparents - does this happen "because" my grandparents existed? "because" of Art Tatum? "because" of Youtube? "because" of something unrelated I did last evening which affects my mental state now? coincidence? happenstance? algorithm?
then you have the really weighty questions - the ones about the world outside of our minds
what "causes" pi? how about the fine structure constant?

>>16840334
>is not a retarded question at all
Quote the part where I said this is a retarded question. I am going to simulate your level of reading comprehension now by not reading the rest of your post.

Philosophy Chads have always known this. Welcome to the winning team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occasionalism

>>16840335
I was heaping faint praise on you, you insensitive so and so

>>16840440
You just used the post as an excuse to pivot to your own thing.