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From: jim@ism780b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Now and Then
Message-ID: <58@ism780b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Aug-84 00:17:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780b.58
Posted: Thu Aug 23 00:17:30 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 02:14:23 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:decwrl:-311300:ism780b:27500037:000:3375
Nf-From: ism780b!jim    Aug 14 22:00:00 1984

>The concept of proof depends upon the concepts of cause and effect, among
>other things.  Even the ideas "anything" and "functioning" depend upon
>the idea of cause and effect.  All of these concepts depend on or are
>rooted in the concepts of identity and identification.  Here's why:

I don't think the *concept* of proof depends upon cause and effect,
as deduction or mathematical induction involve no causes,
but certainly *empirical* proof involves cause and effect.
"functioning" means acting which involves change, which implies a time arrow,
and so it involves cause and effect, but "anything" and identity
do not depend upon cause and effect, although the identification
of *empirical* objects requires it.  But the null set can be identified
without recourse to cause.

>To be is to be something in particular, to have a specific identity, or
>having specific characteristics.  What does it mean to have specific
>characteristics or a specific identity?  It means that in a particular
>context, the entity's existence is manifested in a particular way.  An
>entity IS what it can DO (in a given context).

Things (e.g., concepts) can be identified without having manifest existence.

For empirical entities, you might be able to say that a thing is identified by
what it has *done*.  The basis of induction is to assume that what an entity
has done can be projected into what it can do, but this is merely a modus
operandi which has paid off heavily in the past; it has no inherent validity,
as shown by Hume.

>So what's causality?  The law of identity applied to action.  Things do
>what they do, in any given context, BECAUSE they are what they are.
>"What they are" includes or consists of "what they can do".
>This is true irrespective of our ability to identify what they are.

This totally begs the question.  Clearly we use our expectation of
cause and effect to make accurate predictions.  What you have offered
is merely a definition of identity, as being equivalent to the set of
effects.  It isn't even interesting at that level, because it says nothing
about the delineation and persistence of an entity.  If you replace
the head of an axe, is it still the same axe?  What if you then replace
the handle?  What if you build a new axe from the old head and handle?
So much for identification.

The interesting observation is that humans are involved in recording
relationships observed in the past, for the purpose of predicting the future.
Sufficient consistency of relationship gets labeled causation.  It is this
*measure* of behavior which is cause and effect.  You may choose to believe
that entities have inherent relationships equal to their observed ones,
but you have no basis for doing so.  Suppose that you could get outside
of the time-space continuum and look down at it, and you discovered that
some super-being was creating a "tapestry" and all our known observations
were contained in a small particularly well-crafted portion, but the rest
looked quiet different and was quite a bit more sloppy.  What's wrong with
this as a possible model of the universe?  Answer:  Nothing, but it is
not as handy as simpler ones, so we slice away complexity with Occam's razor
until we are left with the simplest kernel which is consistent with all
past observation.  That is the fundamental game of science and philosophy.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)