[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and Grice on Cause
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 22:55:22 +0100 (BST)
________________________________
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
>The Popperian point may be more complex and it may involve a contradiction
in his scheme of things. For he wants to maintain certain irreducibilities
of -- say -- world 3 items. Yet he is (or seems -- as per McEvoy's
interpretation, which, in quite a few parts, I prefer to Popper's own views)
to be
willing to allow for causation of World 3 items onto World 1 processes
(never mind World 2 processes).>
Popper's position, from which my posts did not deviate and which does involve
any obvious contradiction, is that World 3 can causally affect World 1 but only
when mediated through World 2: so there are World 3 affects on World 1 [indeed
drastic ones] but there is no affect of World 3 on World 1 without these
affects being mediated via World 2.
As an example, we have a World 3 theory as to splitting the atom and the
detonation of atomic bombs is a drastic World 1 effect of this World 3 theory -
but the theory only has this affect via World 2 mediated behaviour which takes
the theory and constructs a World 1 bomb using the theory. The buildings of
almost any city are examples of the affect of World 3 on World 1 but these
affects are always mediated via World 2.
>Yet it seems that only World-1 items CAN CAUSE other World-1 items. Unless
we DO assume (but unwillingly) that this causation proves the reducibility
of a world-1 item (in so far as it can become a causal agent).>
In Popper's view, World 2 'items' can cause World 1 'items': or World 2 events
can affect World 1 events - via mind-body interaction. That World 2, which
emerged from World 1, can have this affect on World 1 is explained by Popper as
an example of "downward causation" ["downward causation" may also exist within
World 1 where higher levels within World 1 affect lower World 1 levels]. This
"downward causation", together with "upward causation" where physical changes
to the World 1 brain can affect the World 2 mind, is why Popper is a
dualist-interactionist in terms of mind-body.
Popper has written not only against determinism in relation to World 1 but that
"Indeterminism is not enough": even if World 1 were indeterministic, as say per
quantum indeterminism, this would not be enough to make room for genuine human
rationality or morality (which Popper wishes to defend) - for human rationality
and morality require a conscious World 2 mind and cannot be accounted for in
purely World 1 terms:- but such a World 2 mind can have no genuine impact if
World 1 is causally closed to World 2, and so if World 1 is causally closed to
World 2 then, in Popper's view, both human rationality and morality would be an
illusion.
It is implicit in the above, and made very explicit by Popper - especially in
his The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism, that for event A to have
causal affect on event B does not mean that A determines B. Though Hume muddled
causation and determinism, and his muddle was passed onto future generations of
philosophers, it is vital to clearly distinguish questions of causation and of
determinism here.
Donal
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