Philosophy Now Forum

If you think of a cause. Now think that there is a something, some atom, some concept of an element, that has a finite number of combinations with other elements, to produce a finite but very large range of situations. This atomic element is an element of cause, and putting such elements together gives "causal power", which is directed cause, a kind of structure that arises out of combining any number of such elements into sets of elements of cause.

The quantity of elements, I call the "causal power", whereas the quantity plus the definitive identity of all the elements, I call the "causal structure".

Now we're done with the foundational teaching. I've come to realize, and I hope at least some of you will understand what I mean, that if you permute these elements into possible sets of elements of cause, you get a series of causal structures (by the above definition), but a very interesting feature arises out of these permutations. Because if these elements of cause had a reference into reality, into time and place and physical reality, you would eventually be able to land at a series of causal structures that form a process in time detailing how things go from one set of circumstance (one causal structure) to another, and in so doing, you would be able to eventually, by all likelihood, to land at cycles, and the more you permute, the more dependent cycles you should be able to find.

By cycle, I mean a process where you start and end in a way that can happen all over again, and by dependable, I mean that whatever signifies the occurrence of the cycle, becomes more dependable, and that the occurrence of the cycle can be predicted often enough that it has relevance. These cycles will essentially give invaluable knowledge into the absolute most foundational parts of the universe, both at a physical and a metaphysical level. The kind of insights you'd get could potentially have enormous benefits to the wealth of knowledge of humankind.

Particularly, these cycles are becoming a central theme to my Need Science project, and study of objects of need, as causal structures are basically identical to objects of need, and the study of needs becomes the study of the life-cycles and compositions of "cause".

Hope this touched your interest Please give feedback on what you think of it.

No comments?

/cry + /slash_wrists

Even in the simple structures of atoms you talk about, I cannot see a structure ever coming back exactly to the same state. Thus I cannot believe in your cycles, let alone their importance! Can you explain further?

A reference to reality is a matter of human objectification and not atomic constitution. I generally look pretty much the same from day to day, and for this reason I'm thought of as an object, but with references to reality (am I not real?). I have within me certain cycles, the most typical the one of eating. Every time I eat, I consume my food and my food goes through a process of being used that is similar in certain aspects every time, so similar that I can reduce the whole idea down to a simple word that does not really touch the details but still has consequences in the real world: eating. No eating, no life, no sustainability. When you eat, you go through a cycle, a process, until your process returns to the original state of hunger where you need to eat again.

Patterns like these can be found throughout the world, also at the more smaller level, but the smaller the level the more technical insight and creativity is needed to spot them and bring them into relevance to our macro-objects of need.

This is basically the ship of Theseus. The story goes that Theseus had a ship of which, over time, he replaced every component. A plank wears out, he puts a new one in. Is it the same ship? Then another gets replaced, and another until none of the original planks remain. This was updated, I forget when and by whom, by the twist that Theseus kept all the original components and rebuilt them into the original ship. Which now is the ship of Theses? Our identity is not dependent on the atoms that make us, they all get replaced every seven years according to the popular account, so; what are we?

uwot wrote:This is basically the ship of Theseus. The story goes that Theseus had a ship of which, over time, he replaced every component. A plank wears out, he puts a new one in. Is it the same ship? Then another gets replaced, and another until none of the original planks remain. This was updated, I forget when and by whom, by the twist that Theseus kept all the original components and rebuilt them into the original ship. Which now is the ship of Theses? Our identity is not dependent on the atoms that make us, they all get replaced every seven years according to the popular account, so; what are we?

You mean our cells. Our atoms last indefinitely.

If you say so, Vegetariantaxidermy, but what are our cells made of? I have heard that our brain cells don't get replaced, which if true, is interesting.

The fundamental is the fine structure constant, why is the fine structure constant at the value it is, is a very interesting question too. Elements work and have different properties mostly because of it. It's a puzzler.

In physics, the fine-structure constant, commonly denoted α, is a fundamental physical constant, namely the coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles. Being a dimensionless quantity, it has the same numerical value in all systems of units. Arnold Sommerfeld introduced the fine-structure constant in 1916.

The currently accepted value of α is 7.29735257×10−3.[1]...[]


[]...Anthropic explanation

The anthropic principle is a controversial argument of why the fine-structure constant has the value it does: stable matter, and therefore life and intelligent beings, could not exist if its value were much different. For instance, were α to change by 4%, stellar fusion would not produce carbon, so that carbon-based life would be impossible. If α were > 0.1, stellar fusion would be impossible and no place in the universe would be warm enough for life as we know it.[44]

uwot wrote:This is basically the ship of Theseus.

Not really, because the dilemma is not part of the original idea, as identity as a thing in itself is not under scrutiny. It is assumed human beings recognize things because of characteristics that we cannot ourselves distinguish from one another given a certain perspective we have (a limit of focus), and words, or concepts in general, are ways for us to maintain a certain roughly shared perspective.

As long as one does not wander off in ones mind by mixing in ideas that serve no purpose to the situation, one will remain on the same level and be able to return to the original object found in our shared objective reality by recognizing it anew.

The "ship of Theseus" is in this way actually quite an absurd problem, because its solution is so simple: the question of being must refer to a context in which a person interacts with the object of that being, and permuting the different ways in which the person can interact with the object will render different results, but maintaining the same interaction that is such that the human being does not experience an excluding feature in the primary qualifiers of the object ---> the human being will experience the same object in the same way. The object might differ in secondary qualifiers, such as colour, smell, and so forth (that said, colour and smell can also be primary qualifiers, just an example), this difference is excluded from the recognition of the object, that is, from the way in which we decide what the object is. We could of course say at this point that being is not the same as object, but that creates a paradox since human beings always perceive and interact with beings as objects, and as such there is not really any room for the notion of a being in objective reality except as the extension of diversity in objectivity.

Asking the question lurking in that story can be a way of asking how deep the rabbit hole goes for permutations, and whether we know enough about the diversity of the reality of the being in question. It is not, however, ever gonna offer any insight on the matter. Stories like those introduce people to ideas, but does not offer tools to satisfyingly solve the problems that might arise from them, making them in the end rather silly except when you've never thought in that direction before.