We humans like to think in terms of causality ... but causality seems not to be an intrinsic aspect of the universe.
Rather, causality is something we impose on the universe so as to model it for various practical purposes. We do this both consciously and unconsciously.
Causality is Not Scientific
No currently accepted scientific theory makes use of the notion of causality. Scientists may interpret some math equations involved in a scientific theory to denote causality—but unlike, say, “force” or “attraction”, causality is not really part of the formal language of modern science.
Roughly, causality consists of “predictive implication, plus assumption of a causal mechanism.”
Predictive implications are part of science: science can tell us “If X happens, then expect Y to happen with a certain probability.” But science cannot tell us whether X is the “cause” of Y, versus them both habitually being part of some overall coordinated process.
Causality and Will
Our psychological use of causality is closely related to the feeling we have of “free will.” Understanding causality as a construct leads quickly to understanding “free will” as a construct. The two constructs reinforce and help define each other.
On a psychological level, “X causes Y” often means something like “If I imagined myself in the position of X, then I could choose to have Y happen or not to have Y happen.” So our intuition for causation often depends on our intuition for will.
On the other hand, the feeling of willing X to happen, is tied in with the feeling that there is some mental action (the “willing”) which causes X to happen.
Will and causation are part of the same psychological complex. Which is a productive and helpful complex in many cases—but is also founded on a generally unjustified assumption of the “willing or causing system” being cut off from the universe.
Our Minds are Enmeshed in the Cosmos
Cosmism accepts that individual minds are embedded in the cosmos, enmeshed in complex systems of influences they cannot fully understand. This means a mind cannot really tell if a given event is causal or not, even if that event occurs within that mind.
So assumptions of causation or willing may be useful tools in some context for some purposes—but should be understood as pragmatic assumptions rather than factual observations.
Ben Goertzel is a fellow of the IEET, and founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente and Biomind, and of the non-profit Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (agiri.org).
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Are you arguing against causality here to undermine determinism or to buttress your belief in a pan-psychic cosmos? Free will debates are normally just a foundation for an ethics debate. Since you're clearly opposed to determinism in the classical sense, it leaves me wondering what your position is in relation to free will.
I know the Cosmist Manifesto is written as a practical philosophy. Is there a document to which you could point me that does the necessary intellectual heavy lifting to back up the Cosmist thought of your more reader-friendly writings?
Again, I am completely baffled by this article. It’s as if the author is trying to do philosophy without ever having read philosophy. It would be analogous to me, who knows virtually nothing about computer science, writing a “manifesto” on topics relating to computer science. Apparently, sciolism is in.
The author writes that “causality seems not to be an intrinsic aspect of the universe.” Now, there is a HUGE literature on this subject, written by experts, in which this issue is debated. Originally, the problem here was not whether or not causation EXISTS, but rather how we can come to KNOW that about it. Hume, for example, who was an empiricist, appears to have been agnostic about the metaphysical question while strongly skeptical with respect to the epistemological one (at least in his philosophical writings). Many philosophers today, in fact, take causation to be very much an integral part of the universe – it is the “cement of the universe,” as Mackie writes, it is what holds the cosmos together. Ultimately, the point is that, given the abstruseness of this issue, which remains open in certain significant respects, one should only make assertions about whether causes are real WITH THE UTMOST TENTATIVENESS. Otherwise, one risks looking like sciolist.
Second, the author writes that “no currently accepted scientific theory makes use of the notion of causality.” WHAT?!? Virtually all explanations in (e.g.) the biological sciences, from genetics to neuroscience, from molecular to evolutionary biology, are mechanistic in nature. And since mechanisms just are causes (albeit complex causes with a certain kind of internal structure), virtually all explanations in the biological sciences are causal explanations. In fact, MANY philosophers take ALL scientific explanation to be causal explanation. (For a primer, see Wesley Salmon’s 1984; Machamer, Darden and Craver’s 2000; James Woodward 2003). Take a look at the scientific literature: one finds it absolutely saturated with causal language, such as: “brings about,” “binds,” “pushes,” “opens up,” “releases,” “contracts,” and so on, and so on. These are causal terms, which means that explanations using these terms are themselves causal. In fact, as a rule, explananda phenomena are not taken to be fully UNDERSTOOD until their causes are properly identified. A glaring case is, of course, medicine: cigarettes CAUSES cancer, lead CAUSES brain damage, exercise CAUSES good health, etc.
Thus, contra the author’s wildly outrageous claim, most if not all currently accepted scientific theories make use of the notion of causality: causality is absolutely ubiquitous in scientific theory.
I won't discuss the other startlingly confused claims in the article, such as that concerning the relation between causation and free will. As a general guideline, people ought to refrain from making claims about subjects they know little or nothing about. Again, I would look rather silly if I were to make some strong assertion about (say) computer science, since I know almost nothing about computer science. And that is precisely why I stick to the few subjects that I do know about. We have a cognitive division of labor for a reason.
@Fritz: it is true that most scientific explanations make explicit use of causality. Indeed, Ben says: causality is something we impose on the universe so as to model it for various practical purposes.
A discussion of causality does not belong in philosophy, but in physics -- the fundamental science concerned with ultimate reality. And in physics, explanations do not usually invoke causality. The apple does not fall because the Earth is pulling it, it just does what the field equation say. We can, and it is often useful to do so, interpret the fall of the apple in causal terms, but we can also interpret it in different ways.
Your point about causality beginning in physics is accurate, but Goertzel is talking about free will, which is philosophical territory. And this article is part of his Cosmist manifesto, which Goertzel defines as a "practical philosophy." He's in the realm of philosophy now, so is answerable to Fawley's critique.
@Giulio: Think about what you just wrote (and what you just affirmmed, Kyle). "Ben says: causality is something we impose on the universe so as to model it for various practical purposes. A discussion of causality does not belong in philosophy, but in physics."
Physics is not going to tell you if causality is something we impose on the universe, which is the point in question! Whether or not causality is a mere "construct," whether or not it is "produced" rather than "discovered," is a fundamentally philosophical question -- a question about what we MEAN by the term "causation" and its corresponding concept. If, for example, one has a "mark transmission" conception of what causation is, THEN one can go to the physicist and ask: "Was a mark transmitted in this particular case of putative causation?" Or, if one has a mechanistic theory of causation, then one can go to the physicist, or chemist, or biologist, and ask: "Is there some mechanism connecting the causal releta (say, events) in this particular case?" What causation IS -- i.e., what CONSTITUTES a cause -- is a fundamentally philosophical question, not a physical one.
Indeed, you are correct that in physics explanations do not usually invoke causation. Like I said in my comment, in contrast to physics virtually all explanations in the special sciences, from biology to sociology, are fundamentally causal in nature. And while "physics chauvinism" was the standard position among philosophers and scientists for several centuries, philosophical scientists and scientific philosophers today hold a far more "egalitarian," so to speak, view of the sciences: there is nothing privileged about physics; causal explanations in biology, for example, are just as explanatory as those given in physics, even if explanations given in each domain are structurally different (causal/mechanistic rather than nomological in nature).
There is an often confused distinction between what MAKES verses what MADE a phenomenon what it is. The first is purely conceptual question, one that falls squarely within the province of philosophy, while the latter is a purely causal one. Physics may do well to help identify particular causes, but identifying particular causes presupposes some conception of what causes are in the first place. And THAT is a thoroughly philosophical question.
PS. The take-home point is this: Ben, you absolutely have to change your claim that "No currently accepted scientific theory makes use of the notion of causality." That is as false as Lightfoot's assertion that God created the cosmos on Oct. 23, 4004 BC.
@Fritz: Physics is not going to tell you if causality is something we impose on the universe, which is the point in question! - Well, it seems to me that physics is telling me just that, by showing that we don't need to resort to causality in fundamental explanations of reality. We can, of course, choose to frame our models in causal terms if this permits making them more intuitive and workable.
About "physics chauvinism": I don't deny that other sciences such as biology provide their own models of reality which, in many cases, are more useful and workable than those provided by (current) physics.
But physics is still fundamental in the sense that other sciences, given sufficient effort and computing power, can ultimately be reduced to physics. We can, in principle, derive biology from physics, but not the other way around.
@ Giulio: Consider the following possibility: physics explains phenomena within its domain without mentioning causes. Thus, "Why did the closed system become more chaotic?" Because of the LAW of entropy. The law here does all the explanatory work. I think we both agree about this issue (although it is, of course, an empirical issue how physicists explain their data; maybe a closer look will reveal more causal explanations that one might prima facie think).
But now _you_ have to explain to me what THIS FACT about physical explanation has to do with whether or not causes are real. For example, physical explanations don't mention, say, zebras, but that doesn't mean that zebras don't exist. What mode of explanation a given discipline of science employs and whether or not causes exist are two completely separate issues. Again, it is a philosophical matter WHAT ONE MEANS by "causation" -- one could take causes to be mere regularities in the world (a kind of eliminativist position), or one could take causes to involve the transmission of "marks" (a technical term), or one could take causes to be ... etc. All of these _philosophical_ positions are independent of how physics typically, or always, explains its particular explananda.
As for your claim about the unity of science: it is an extremely contentious issue whether or not biology, say, can be reduced to physics. _Many_ people who work on this issue would STRONGLY disagree that there is any "sufficient effort and computer power" to successfully reduce biology to physics. This does not mean that these thinkers are emergentists, or anything else philosophically suspect; they're just anti-reductionists. Indeed, consider the fact that most transhumanists are "functionalists" about the mind: mental states just are functional states, linked to each other and their input/output states via computational relations. THIS is why a mind could be (given the right technology) uploaded to a computer, or why a computer could possibly have a mind in precisely the sense that we take ourselves to have minds.
But what does this mean? It means that mental states are substrate independent; and THIS means that no amount of studying the substrate (neurons, silicon chips, alien brain matter, etc.) could possibly -- that is, _in principle_ -- tell us anything about mental states. Try learning something about a computer program by studying the hardware, for example; such an approach would be a waste of time. Thus, functionalists are anti-reductionistic and, as a consequence, psychology is an "autonomous" discipline, i.e., it exists independent of physics. And from this it follows that the sciences are not unified by reduction -- not even in principle!! Transhumanists are anti-reductionists in precisely this sense.
Again, my main concern at this point is that Ben changes his empirically false claim that "No currently accepted scientific theory makes use of the notion of causality." I mean, that would the least he could do to improve his cosmist manifesto.
@Fritz: It means that mental states are substrate independent; and THIS means that no amount of studying the substrate (neurons, silicon chips, alien brain matter, etc.) could possibly -- that is, _in principle_ -- tell us anything about mental states.
I disagree. Mental states are substrate independent in the sense that they can, in principle, be ported to another substrate and still be basically equivalent, and subjectively equivalent, to the original mental states. But this does NOT mean that no amount of studying the substrate could possibly tell us anything about mental states.
Simple example: you can translate a computer program from Java to C++, and the translated program still does the same things. In this sense, the program is language independent. But this does not mean that you cannot learn its operations by studying the original Java code.
@Fritz: also, I agree that learning something about a computer program by studying the hardware would be a waste of time, but only because there is a much more efficient way to do it (studying the code). In this sense, I also agree that reducing biology to basic physics is inefficient, because we can do biology much more efficiently by resorting to the empirical models proper of biology.
But in principle you can learn something about a computer program by studying the hardware. And you can learn about biology by reducing it to basic physics. It would just not be an efficient way to proceed.
@Giulio: First, let me say that I am not particularly knowledgeable about computer science, so I must be careful not to overstep my bounds. Nonetheless, having said that, you write:
"Simple example: you can translate a computer program from Java to C++, and the translated program still does the same things. In this sense, the program is language independent."
Language independence is NOT substrate independence. Indeed, you conclude with...
"But this does not mean that you cannot learn its operations by studying the original Java code."
CODE, indeed. I am not disputing that one PROGRAM can be translated into another PROGRAM. What I am disputing is whether you could learn anything about computer SOFTWARE from computer HARDWARE. Functionalists take the mind to be, quite literally, the software of the brain (the "wet-ware"); thus, you can IMPLEMENT the program (call it) [MIND] on a different substrate, such as silicon or whatever (as long as the substrate instantiates the right kind of functional relations). This means that mental states CANNOT IN PRINCIPLE be reduced to their substrate, precisely because their substrate could in principle by ANYTHING -- the substrate could even by some mysterious immaterial substance about which physics could not possibly have anything to say. All that functionalists care about are the functional states of a system, because functional states are identified with mental states. (Note: computationalism is a KIND OF functionalism, by definition. It just spells out the "relations between states" in terms of computations, rather than some other non-computational type of relation.)
I have virtually every cognitive scientist, philosopher of mind, and so on, on my side here. I am not making a new point, only recapitulating a very old point that is accepted by virtually everyone. Computationalism is an anti-reductionistic thesis, which poses a problem for your account of physics-reductionism. Either you are a strong reductionist and reject computationalism, or you reject reductionism and are a computationalist. And that's an exclusive "or."
Here is a good paper on the subject: <http://www.springerlink.com/content/g2121805q31774r7>, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a profusion of stellar articles written by top philosophers and cognitive scientists on the issue. Pinker is also a good resource, in my opinion.
2 + 2 x 2 = 8… Causality is dubious to say the least
2 + (2 x 2) = 6… Causality appears to be essential and is real, (at the level of mind)
Which now makes we wonder just how pure physics really is? Can we guarantee any physicist is doing his sums correctly, (and eliminating his philosophical tendencies?)
If you want to create a computer algorithm which produces a correct and "consistent" output or final cause, (and this covers just about all software commands, even fractals?) then the commands must follow a "philosophical/causal" path along the string. Unless some strange metaphysical phenomena actually jumbles all these about when we are not watching, and yet still produces the output and result we wish every time – which we cannot eliminate as impossible, but yet is highly improbable.
Of course in my mind, I guess that it would be extremely difficult to reduce all of my volition's and trace an ultimate first cause for each one, as for this I would first need to know the formal cause in each case. Again it is highly unlikely that I would know of my volition before there was any change in circumstance to bring it about. Yet causality must be credited with playing a major role in my volition's and circumstance, no matter what material or efficient cause complicates the results and understanding of these volitions.
Freewill : the freedom to choose "yes" or "no", limited to current conditions and circumstance.
I can see how Freewill may be closely associated with this notion of causality, yet I cannot see where there is any clear connection to/for the case of causality? For example, I see freewill as merely a biological function, which is either the "sanction" (do nothing to prevent volition), or "veto" (do nothing to act or reject volition), in each case. It has been suggested that this appearance of freewill for humans is merely a successful evolutionary trait for survival, which permits us a short time to "veto" any formal, (conscious) idea that presents itself. However, it has also been suggested that sub-conscious volitions act out despite this appearance of freewill.
Either way we are still "conscious" and "consciously reflective" in this notion or this time permitted to choose to "sanction" or "veto". So once again, on a philosophical level freewill must also be very real, (at the level of mind).
Absolutely NOBODY thinks mathematics itself involves causation. It just doesn't have the right kind of relata. For help, start with this article: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics>. There are also see "Causation and Manipulability," "Probabilitic Causation," and so on.
1 "What I am disputing is whether you could learn anything about computer SOFTWARE from computer HARDWARE."
Taking into account the fact that you cannot have computer software running on anything but computer hardware, and that it is by interacting WITH the hardware that you interact with the software, that it is ON the hardware that you store the software, that it is THROUGH the hardware that you write the software and that it is completely obvious that the structure of the hardware is directly correlated with the structure of the software running on it, I find your claim strange, to say the least. As far as I can see, the hardware is the material manifestation of the software. There is absolutely no evidence that software exists independently from the hardware it physically manifests in.
2 "This means that mental states CANNOT IN PRINCIPLE be reduced to their substrate, precisely because their substrate could in principle by ANYTHING"
If functionalism is correct then mental states are directly correlated to the STRUCTURE of the substrate. By studying a substrate that manifests mental states, such as a a human brain, the point is to figure out the COMPUTATIONAL STRUCTURE that brings about the mental states, in order to transfer that STRUCTURE into a different SUBSTRATE. The ultimate goal of that being that we can have silly discussions like these at gazillion times faster speed, among other things.
3 "All that functionalists care about are the functional states of a system, because functional states are identified with mental states."
Indeed, and the point of studying the substrate, as I already said, is to figure out the STRUCTURE of the SYSTEM, structure being composed of functional states, or something like that.
Now, since I don't have a degree in absolutely anything, I guess according to you, Fritz, I shouldn't even be joining the discussion. I love philosophy as a tool for figuring out how to live my life but after reading what you have written, I feel increasingly more certain that becoming an 'expert' that makes statements like 'We have a cognitive division of labor for a reason', where you obviously imply that that is a good reason and that things should stay that way, is the last thing I wan't to dedicate my subjective experience to. I hate making ad-hominem attacks but since you already called pretty much everyone here a sciolist, which is just a fancy word for stupid, I choose to call you a narrow mind.
To make up for my incivility, I offer you here two articles that I believe you and everyone else should find very interesting. It is obvious that you need some new food for thought.
"Can Matter Be Explained in Terms of Consciousness"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12852531/Can-Matter-Be-Explained-in-Terms-of-Consciousness
"Room for a view on the metaphysical subject of personal identity, Daniel Kolak"
http://ifile.it/ftjzpdl
Lastly, I cannot fathom how someone living in 2010 can consider himself really knowledgeable about anything useful, especially with such assertiveness as you have shown, if he doesn't have at least a basic understanding of computer science.
Again, your argument is aimed at me; it is aimed at a number of interrelated theses that virtually every single cognitive scientist, psychologist and philosopher of mind today hold.
I can't go through every ridiculous claim you make, but (as mentioned before) the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has many stellar articles on multiple realizability (which entails the "ontological neutrality" thesis that renders studying the hardware IN PRINCIPLE irrelevant to understanding the software), and many other philosophy of mind-related issues that have come up in this discussion.
You could also check out David Marr's famous paper in which he makes the functionalist (or computationalist) distinction between the computational and implementational levels, the latter of which is explanatorily irrelevant to the former. (He also adds a third algorithmic level that most scientists today collapse into the computational level. Thus, there are only two levels of explanations, not three: the brain and the mind, or the hardware and the software.)
Concerning computer science, the only assertions that I have made are BORROWED FROM computer scientists themselves, specifically those scientists who are conversant with both cognitive science and philosophy (again, see Steven Pinker). This is completely different from making some original claim about a computer science topic. Surely you would have no problem with me asserting that the Big Bang occurred some 13.7 billion years ago, even though I'm not a cosmologist. Claiming that computationalism is an anti-reductionistic thesis (i.e., studying the hardware won't help you understand the software that's implemented on it) is no different from claiming that the Big Bang happened some time ago, though I'm not an expert in either computer science or cosmology. I don't see what's narrow-minded about that.
@Fritz: I agree that studying the hardware is IN PRINCIPLE irrelevant to understanding the software.
But this does not mean that you cannot understand the software by studying the hardware. Studying the hardware is a possible strategy to understand the software, and studying the brain is a possible strategy to understand the mind.
In both bases, studying the code is a much faster and better strategy... if the code is available. For computer programs, it can be. For the mind, at the moment it is not. We are slowly uncovering parts of the code, by different means from neurology to psychology to AI, and direct examination of the brain is one of the things we are doing to unwrap the code. I am confident we will succeed, but we are not there yet.
"A is not necessary for B" does not mean "A cannot result in B". A long drive is not necessary to go from NYC to LA (you can fly instead), but this does not mean that you cannot drive from NYC to LA.
@Guilio: You're argument is not with me, it's with (as already mentioned) virtually every cognitive scientist, theoretical psychologist, philosopher of mind, and so on. You continue to assert something that is unambiguously false. And if there's one thing I absolutely hate arguing about, it's the demonstrable facts. So, below are some quotes from the SEP. Again, see also many of Pinker's books (he is a computationalist), as well as David Marr's famous paper (which just made explicit the INDEPENDENT levels of explanation that functionalism posits) and -- if one is philosophically inclined -- check out the work of Jerry Fodor. Or just do a Google Scholar search for "functionalism." Ugh.
"Stated in canonical form, Putnam's original multiple realizability argument draws an anti-identity theory conclusion from two premises:
1. (the multiple realizability thesis) All mental kinds are multiply realizable by distinct physical kinds.
2. If a given mental kind is multiply realizable by distinct physical kinds, then it cannot be identical to any specific physical kind.
3. (the anti-identity thesis conclusion) No mental kind is identical to any specific physical kind.
In this simple form, this is a deductively valid argument.
Fodor (1974) extended Putnam's initial argument by arguing that reductionism imposes too strong a constraint on acceptable theories in special sciences like psychology. According to Fodor, reductionism is the conjunction of "token physicalism" with the claim that there are natural kind predicates in an ideally completed physics corresponding to each natural kind term in any ideally completed special science. He characterized "token physicalism" in turn as the claim that all events that science talks about are physical events—a weaker thesis than reductionism or type-type physicalism. Consider the following string of numerals:
1 1 2.
This string contains two types of numerals (1 and 2), but three tokens of the two types (two tokens of the numeral type 1 and one token of the numeral type 2). Mental states admit of a similar ambiguity. When you and I both entertain the belief that Fodor advocates a Language of Thought, one type of mental state is entertained, but two tokens of that type (your belief state and my belief state). Type-type physicalism insists that types of mental states are identical to types of physical states; this view runs afoul of multiple realizability. But token physicalism only insists that each token occurrence of each type of mental state is identical to some token occurrence of a physical state type—not necessarily an occurrence of a token of the same physical state type on each occasion.
Fodor gave reductionists the best-developed theory of reduction at the time: Ernest Nagel's (1961) "derivability" account of intertheoretic reduction. Nagel's account "connects" disparate elements of the reduced and reducing theories' vocabularies via "bridge laws" (not Nagel's term!) and claims a reduction when the laws of the reduced theory are derived from the laws of the reducing and the bridge laws. According to Fodor (1974), if reductionism is to establish physicalism, these cross-theoretic bridge laws must assert (contingent) identities of reduced and reducing kinds. But given multiple realizability, the only way this can obtain is if the physical science constituent of a psychophysical bridge law is a disjunction of all the terms denoting possible physical realizations of the mental kind. Given the extent and variety of actual (not to say possible) physical realizations, it is overwhelmingly likely that the disjunctive component will not be a kind-predicate of any specific physical science. It is also overwhelmingly likely that the disjunctive component will not appear in any genuine law of a specific physical science. Multiple realizability thus demonstrates that the additional requirement of reductionism (beyond token physicalism) is empirically untenable."
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Psychologist Zenon Pylyshyn (1984) appeals to multiple realizability to ground a methodological criticism of reductionism.
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So if there is a generalization at the higher level of description available for capturing (and in the pedestrian example there surely is), an exclusively reductionist approach to psychological explanation will miss it. Thus because of multiple realizability, reductionism violates a tenet of scientific methodology: seek to capture all capturable generalizations.
Philosophical indifference to neuroscientific detail became "principled" with the rise and prominence of functionalism in the 1970s. The functionalists' favorite argument was based on multiple realizability: a given mental state or event can be realized in a wide variety of physical types (Putnam, 1967; Fodor, 1974). So a detailed understanding of one type of realizing physical system (e.g., brains) will not shed light on the fundamental nature of mind. A psychological state-type is autonomous from any single type of its possible realizing physical mechanisms. (See the entry on "Multiple Realizability" in this Encyclopedia, linked below.) Instead of neuroscience, scientifically-minded philosophers influenced by functionalism sought evidence and inspiration from cognitive psychology and "program-writing" artificial intelligence. These disciplines abstract away from underlying physical mechanisms and emphasize the "information-bearing" properties and capacities of representations (Haugeland, 1985). At this same time neuroscience was delving directly into cognition, especially learning and memory. For example, Eric Kandel (1976) proposed presynaptic mechanisms governing transmitter release rate as a cell-biological explanation of simple forms of associative learning. With Robert Hawkins (1984) he demonstrated how cognitivist aspects of associative learning (e.g., blocking, second-order conditioning, overshadowing) could be explained cell-biologically by sequences and combinations of these basic forms implemented in higher neural anatomies. Working on the post-synaptic side, neuroscientists began unraveling the cellular mechanisms of long term potentiation (LTP) (Bliss and Lomo, 1973). Physiological psychologists quickly noted its explanatory potential for various forms of learning and memory.[1] Yet few "materialist" philosophers paid any attention. Why should they? Most were convinced functionalists. They believed that the "engineering level" details might be important to the clinician, but were irrelevant to the theorist of mind.
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Again, I only cite the SEP because it is a highly accessible resource. I would HIGHLY encourage everyone who is both (a) a computationalist about the mind, and (b) thinks that learning about the hardware can help one understand the software, to take a look at the massive and extremely rich primary literature out there.
Ugh. Not impressed, and indeed rather disappointed.
@Fritz: I think my last statement, which I paste below, summarizes it all. Your logic seems faulty.
"A is not necessary for B" does not mean "A cannot result in B". A long drive is not necessary to go from NYC to LA (you can fly instead), but this does not mean that you cannot drive from NYC to LA.
Evidently we are not understanding each other. Should we leave things here?
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On a psychological level, “X causes Y” often means something like “If I imagined myself in the position of X, then I could choose to have Y happen or not to have Y happen.” So our intuition for causation often depends on our intuition for will.
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