Causation, Mind, and Psionics

[Anomalocaris]

Chuck, my intuition is more reliable than your certainty.

Wooters, if what you conceive to be your intuition fail to reveal to you that you are an poseur, ignoramus, and perveyor of piffle whose empty sail can - paraphrasing a description of another champion of piffle - be filled with any pass wiff of crank and cant, then that is absolutely reliable evidence that your so called intuition is no intuition at all but the wishful thinking of a moron.

[MindForgedManacle]

If one is incapable of accurately measuring a quantum system, how does one conclude that such an unmeasurable system is deterministic?

I would presume on how accurate measurements are. The problem (if I understand it) isn't the system per se, but that measuring it alters the system so you can't get an accurate picture of the system as a whole. It's more an epistemic issue I think than.

...Or I could be wrong? I defer to our resident physicist

[Anomalocaris]

If one is incapable of accurately measuring a quantum system, how does one conclude that such an unmeasurable system is deterministic?

I would presume on how accurate measurements are. The problem (if I understand it) isn't the system per se, but that measuring it alters the system so you can't get an accurate picture of the system as a whole. It's more an epistemic issue I think than.

...Or I could be wrong? I defer to our resident physicist

Your notion is contrary to the copenhagen interpretation, which remains a major interpretation of the meaning of quantum mechanics.

Copenhagen interpretation states that quantum properties are fundamentally non-deterministic. It is the act of measurement which gives the property the appearence of being deterministic.

[MindForgedManacle]

You make a claim which I think no physicist would be prepared to do more than merely suggest as one of the possible alternatives.

I'm going to sound confrontational, but are you trolling? Did you ignore or misss all of my "I think"s and "I believe"s, and lastly my "Or I could be wrong" and deferring to one of the users here who is a physicist?

I've not claimed any certainty or more that bare knowledge on the topic. Don't straw man.

[Anomalocaris]

You make a claim which I think no physicist would be prepared to do more than merely suggest as one of the possible alternatives.

I'm going to sound confrontational, but are you trolling? Did you ignore or misss all of my "I think"s and "I believe"s, and lastly my "Or I could be wrong" and deferring to one of the users here who is a physicist?

I've not claimed any certainty or more that bare knowledge on the topic. Don't straw man.

Hedging the claim does not change the fact you made the claim. A claim can be strong, or weak on its own merits, irrespective of whether the claimant professes to have adaquate knowledge or skill to substantiate his claim.

[genkaus]

[MindForgedManacle]

Hedging the claim does not change the fact you made the claim. A claim can be strong, or weak on its own merits, irrespective of whether the claimant professes to have adaquate knowledge or skill to substantiate his claim.

Your original statement was that I made a claim no physicist would make, aside from saying that it's a possible one. Now you're saying I was just hedging... Convenient backstep.

[Neo-Scholastic]

This difference isn't about quantum mechanics vs Newtonian mechanics or determinism vs probability. The uncertainty here refers to the gap in our knowledge.

I did mention that the idea deals primarily with epistimology, or as you say gaps in our knowledge. I'm looking beyond that focus, to see if the idea could be extended in the metaphysics of causation. The cause-effect relationship seems easily taken for granted without much reflection on why causes are linked with effects. On this forum proofs that begin with the proposition "everything has a cause" presuppose that causation is a fully resolved problem. I do not think that is the case.

...the probabilistic theory of causation refers exclusively to 'efficient causes' - not the rest.

I completely agree. I did not mean that probablistic cause entailed the other forms or cause as well. Instead, I think it supplants deterministic cause-effect relations in such a way that in operates in conjunction with other types of cause, which I'll clarify next.

Our usage of the terms has changed since his times. ...'material cause', we refer to as 'composition'...'formal cause' became structure, 'final cause' became function ...and his 'efficient cause' became just 'cause'.

You are correct in as much as the Aritotelian nomenclature needs updating. I stuck with those terms because a little research and any forum reader will learn their meaning. That said, I do not think the terms you chose fully capture the original concepts.

Material cause traditonally means indefinite primal matter - below quarks, below strings, all the way down at the bottom. I think, the best modern equivelent is "stuff", but that doesn't capture the idea of its infinite potency.

Formal cause seems best translated as essence, because a thing can change its structure and still retain its formal cause, like when an acorn becomes a fully grown oak tree. Formal cause, or essence is that which preserves its identity as a distinct entity throughout its existence.

Final cause is a bit more difficult to pin down. My understanding is that final cause serves as the motivating principle for all change. We know that things in the universe change, but why is there change at all and not perfect stasis? If I had to choose, I would call it 'intention' even with the connotation of consciousness.

...about psionic experiments and their relation to mind-body dualism...it is still a reach to go from there to dualism. One criticism of the experiment is the psi-assumption...

Psi is just a name for the phenomena not the explanation of it. It referes to facts that cannot be explained within a standard naturalistic paradigm. It seems to me the only assumption being made is that the results must have a physical explanation. It may be telepathy, or it could be something else. The point of serious psychical research, like the kind to which I point, is not about proving the existence of a specific means, like telepathy, but to narrow in on the source of the small but significant lab results, in the hopes that it may shed light on what is actually happening during unusual anecdotal events.

But, even if it were established as telepathy, your argument that "no purely materialistic theory can account for these results" would still be incorrect. ..subconscious perception, i.e. relying on perceptions before or after the ganzfeld effect to make the judgments. ...limited sensory perception. ...weak electro-magnetic fields.

Most of these variables have been eliminated to conform to objections by skeptics. For example, many of the experiments put the 'receiver' in a Faraday cage.

I do not say that dualism is a natural conclusion of my points. Instead it eliminates one of the most persistent objections to it. That objection is the interaction problem: how can an immaterial mind interact causally with material brain.

[Angrboda]

Material cause traditonally means indefinite primal matter - below quarks, below strings, all the way down at the bottom. I think, the best modern equivelent is "stuff", but that doesn't capture the idea of its infinite potency.

I'm not knowledgable about the physics, so insert the appropriate qualifiers, but from what I understand, given our current understanding, the notion of something beneath it all essentially implies a local hidden variable theory, which consensus suggests is highly implausible. Resting any framework on an understanding that implies it seems rather ill-conceived. (Apologies if my understanding of the matter is incorrect or out-of-date.)

[bennyboy]

For the record, I once for kicks did a "psychic" experiment with a friend. It was simple-- we sat on opposite sides of his bedroom, not looking at each other. I would try to visualize a number from 1-100 and "send" it to him. He would then try to match my number.

At the first number, I was very disappointed to find that he got the wrong number. When we tried the second number, he guessed the first. When we did the third number, he guessed the second. We did this for 6 consecutive 1-100 numbers in a row-- with him in every case guessing the previous number, rather than the current one.

Now, this wasn't very scientific for many reasons. First of all, I didn't write it down-- so only I know for sure that he guessed all the numbers I was thinking; he can only choose to believe that I'm not BSing him.

Also, we had very many shared interests, as we were close friends: known birthdays, locker combinations, etc. We also had a shared interest in programming, so the numbers could have been from some project we had shared at some point. But even giving all of this, I thought that result was pretty amazing. It gave me the goosebumps.

Okay, /anecdote. But it was enough to make me wonder, for sure.

---

But, even if it were established as telepathy, your argument that "no purely materialistic theory can account for these results" would still be incorrect.

First of all, I agree. It does not follow that telepathy, if proven, proves dualism. Although I can think of one case in which it might-- that the subjects are separated far enough in space that their "communication" (i.e. slight skewing of guessed objects or whatever) would break the c barrier. But even that has issues with a kind of entanglement: How could you run an experiment in which the two subjects are not somehow brought into a physical relationship first?