Causality, Hume, and Quantum Mechanics
It is my intention, in the course of this essay, to take the work of David Hume and reapply it to causality using quantum mechanical theory.
When I refer to causality, I am referring to the belief that events have a relationship of action "A" causing action "B" where "A" is considered to be the final cause of "B." I also refer to the belief that we can know and understand these causal relationships and thusly know how the system works.
This is a concept that I do not agree with. This "mechanistic causality," I feel, is a category of the mind.
I wish to make it clear, before I begin, that I am not questioning the idea that cause/effect interactions do occur in reality. I am, however,
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Instead of saying, "I dropped the egg, it broke because of that action," one would say or think, "The event of the egg breaking is an event preceded by an acceleration downward toward the floor. That event is preceded by a slip of my hand, or some external force. The event of the slip is preceded by a distracting thought and/or a moistening of my hand from contact with a wet surface, or by neither event. The event of the distracting thought being preceded by a memory of meeting an attractive person and/or having too much coffee, or by neither event. The event of the moist hand being preceded by failing to wipe the counter properly and/or inadequate drying of my hands, or by neither event." To be thorough, each of these strings of events would have to be traced back through each branch and go back until one finally reaches the beginning of each string of events, the beginning of the universe, if there is one.
But even this examination of events is not sufficient to describe all that goes on in this event. Each portion of the "causal mechanism" is divisible within itself into internal causes.
Take the slip of the hand as an example. Some internal firing of neurons resulted in the slip of the hand. To be thorough, we
Clarify what is causing what by discussing if the effect would have occurred without the cause and if something else
There is issues with causation though and is questioned whether it is in need of reform.
Sometimes cause and effect can be easy to understand, like if you have dominos lined up and you push the first one and the others start to fall after you push that first one, that is a cause and effect situation. You pushing the first one is the cause and the others falling is the effect. But there is sometimes they can be long situations and hard to understand. For example, when I wrestle almost every single move I make or every move I make there I an effect to it, like if I see a kid barely moves his leg and I take a shot and land it, the cause is him barely moving his leg and the result of that is me taking a shot and landing it. Another long situation
Causal Completeness is the concept that a physical event has a physical explanation. Every physical effect has an immediate and sufficient physical cause (Papineau 2008, p53-54). If you believe in this then every movement and thought can be traced back to a physical event. For instance, you decided to open the door. The door is being opened by your hand which is a physical event. The action of your hand moving is also a physical event. What causes your hand to move can be led back to another physical
The Law of Causation states that nothing can happen without being caused. The cause must be Adequate to the effect and it must precede or coincide with the effect. For example, a butterfly flapping its wings cannot cause a hurricane, or pulling the trigger on a gun will cause it to fire. Causality can be applied anywhere in the known universe and it will always be correct, or will it? When thinking about causation, it seems that we apply this to life every day and don’t even realize it. For example, finding someone lying on the ground yelling out in pain from a fractured leg immediately raises the question, what happened? The leg didn’t decide to fracture itself, something had to have caused the leg to fracture. No matter where this law is applied, ultimately it will bring you to the beginning, which really isn’t the beginning at all, it’s merely the end of our known knowledge of the universe. This couldn’t possibly be the beginning because the law of causation does not allow it.
This premise is true as it is the basic fundamental understanding of cause and effect as everything has a cause behind it,
Therefore, there was some event En-1 that caused En and some event En-2 that caused En-1…
We, human beings, visibly and invisibly live in the cycle of cause and effect. This relationship exists in our lifetime.
Think about the math and science we learn growing up explaining the causes and products of things in this world everything has a cause, everything has a mixture, some formula you know , so how can we just happen by
Cause and effect isn’t just a writing strategy nevertheless it is a strategy for life. Everything in the world has a cause and effect, such as if you put your hand in a fire you are liable to get burned. Throughout your whole life this structure will apply when you’re in school, work and even in your personal. With school if you don’t study for a test 75% of the time you might even fail. With work if you don’t do your job correctly there will be repercussions. While in life well there are multiply causes and numerous effects it just depend if the wind blows in your favor. Trust me, I’ve had my share of outcomes, but now with this better understanding of the reading strategy of Cause & Effect. I can say that the expression
Although many people believe that the only way to confidently make causal inferences in the psychology world is through true experiments, I believe that observational and other quasi experiments can be just as effective for making cause and effect conclusions. One of the cardinal rules in psychology, of course, is that correlation does not equal causation. While this is true, I strongly believe that when certain conditions are met, we can infer causation even with nonexperimental data. I have learned about many of these conditions in my Advanced Research Methods textbook and completely agree with the author’s opinion on this topic. Basically, causality has a probabilistic meaning rather than a deterministic one. When making causality
E) David Hume would have vehemently objected to my answer on part C). Hume’s word view was largely based on the belief that, to understand events in the universe, we must look to their cause. This casual link is, therefore, disrupted under the conditions witnessed in the aforementioned experiment, as we can see a cause but the result side of the chain is unknown.
When we say that X caused Y, we think we have said something about the universe. We think we have seen an example of a law of nature (e.g. the water in the bucket froze because it was cold exemplifies the law water freezes at 0oC). Science investigates these laws. Hume said that causation was "all in the mind". We see one thing after another and when we've seen instances of a regularity enough, we develop the feeling that one thing must be followed by the other.
First, counterfactuals centre on the notion that alterations to the cause make a difference to it’s effect. In this way, the relationship between the cause, and the effect can be said to be causal so long as if I change the cause, the effect will be different. Thus, if I were to throw a ball at a window, and it broke, then I could call the relationship between the throwing of the ball and the window’s breaking to be causal, so long as had I not thrown the ball, a different effect (in this case, the window not breaking) would have occurred.
After our finding corresponding CAUSES for every things that we experience here at far away realms of time and space, we made the law of 'causality' an important paradigm of human reality. There would be a 'cause' behind every effect that we experience here on earth.