Causation, Mind, and Psionics
September 9, 2013 at 8:55 pm
(This post was last modified: September 9, 2013 at 8:56 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Lately, I have revisited my beliefs about cause. I came across the idea of 'probabilistic cause' wherein cause is examined as probable rather than deterministic outcomes. Most of what I have read seems focuses on epistemology, but I think it has far reaching implications.
Relationships of efficient cause are known only by induction. These causal inferences do not qualify as certain knowledge in the way knowledge gained by deduction is. This uncertainty allows you to consider some, if not all, examples of efficient cause as correlations that vary in strength. For example, in other threads I acknowledge a strong correlation between brain functions and mental states, without accepting a deterministic cause-effect relationship.
As a metaphysical concept, probabalistic causation seems more in line with modern quantum physics, as compared to mechanistic 18th century physics. Based on macroscopic experience you tend to think in terms of solid objects moving smoothly through space. But you know that time-space is pixelated and particles pop in and out of existence from the quantum vacuum. Motion is occurs when a particle cease to exist in one location and randomly appears at another within a field of probability. Despite this new scientific knowledge, the most prominent contemporary philosophers seem not to have reexamined the foundations of their theories about motion and change.
For a long time I have strongly intuited that the Aristotelian causes (final, formal, efficient, and material) still had relevance. As a methodological convention of scientific inquiry, excluding formal and final causes has proven enormously successful. This convention clearly does not give a full picture of reality. Anyone can see this from the fact that mathematics produces knowledge with form as its only consideration, to the exclusion of efficient and material cause.
Probabalistic [efficient] cause presents an opportunity to reintroduce final and formal causes into our understanding of reality. Both allow you to account for mental properties generally dismissed or unexplained by the scientism of materialistic monism.
Today even committed skeptics acknowledge that some rigorously performed psi experiments produce statistically significant results. The thoughts from a 'sender' to a 'receiver' can increase the hit rate of the receivers from 25% to 32%. Apart from fraud, no purely materialistic theory can account for these results. You could say that the sender's intention to send and the receiver's intention to receive qualify as an example of final cause.
Meanwhile, formal cause finds a place by accounting for the character of the probability field that defines objects, by either promoting or thwarting the likelihood of physical events. This solves the mind-body interaction problem of dualism. Brain activity is a highly chaotic system. If mind can manipulate chance, in the same way psi experiments have shown, a very small 'push' at the quantum level (Penrose, etc.) would affect how the
physical body behaves. In this process, mental properties, including free will, are preserved.
Relationships of efficient cause are known only by induction. These causal inferences do not qualify as certain knowledge in the way knowledge gained by deduction is. This uncertainty allows you to consider some, if not all, examples of efficient cause as correlations that vary in strength. For example, in other threads I acknowledge a strong correlation between brain functions and mental states, without accepting a deterministic cause-effect relationship.
As a metaphysical concept, probabalistic causation seems more in line with modern quantum physics, as compared to mechanistic 18th century physics. Based on macroscopic experience you tend to think in terms of solid objects moving smoothly through space. But you know that time-space is pixelated and particles pop in and out of existence from the quantum vacuum. Motion is occurs when a particle cease to exist in one location and randomly appears at another within a field of probability. Despite this new scientific knowledge, the most prominent contemporary philosophers seem not to have reexamined the foundations of their theories about motion and change.
For a long time I have strongly intuited that the Aristotelian causes (final, formal, efficient, and material) still had relevance. As a methodological convention of scientific inquiry, excluding formal and final causes has proven enormously successful. This convention clearly does not give a full picture of reality. Anyone can see this from the fact that mathematics produces knowledge with form as its only consideration, to the exclusion of efficient and material cause.
Probabalistic [efficient] cause presents an opportunity to reintroduce final and formal causes into our understanding of reality. Both allow you to account for mental properties generally dismissed or unexplained by the scientism of materialistic monism.
Today even committed skeptics acknowledge that some rigorously performed psi experiments produce statistically significant results. The thoughts from a 'sender' to a 'receiver' can increase the hit rate of the receivers from 25% to 32%. Apart from fraud, no purely materialistic theory can account for these results. You could say that the sender's intention to send and the receiver's intention to receive qualify as an example of final cause.
Meanwhile, formal cause finds a place by accounting for the character of the probability field that defines objects, by either promoting or thwarting the likelihood of physical events. This solves the mind-body interaction problem of dualism. Brain activity is a highly chaotic system. If mind can manipulate chance, in the same way psi experiments have shown, a very small 'push' at the quantum level (Penrose, etc.) would affect how the
physical body behaves. In this process, mental properties, including free will, are preserved.
