ELIMINATIVE DETERMINISM.
Jud Evans. May 2006
|
It may be deemed useful at the outset
to
provide some definition of what is
meant
here by the terms: 'Causal Objects' or 'Causal Eventities.'
'Causal objects' sometimes referred to as: 'causal eventities' (a combination of 'event' and 'entity') are physical entities existing as space-occupants or spatially extensive corporeal corporalities that are perceived to exist as mereologically
macro or micro objects capable
of entitic
constitutional change.
Thus a billiard
ball, a human
being, a barnacle, a red rose
or a star are accepted as macro
causal objects.
The intrinsic communal multitude
of molecular
and cellular micro causal objects
of which
they are constituted are also
recognised
as causal objects in the appropriate
context
of ontological and mereological
discussion.
Eliminative Determinism, which
is competitively
anti-metaphysical, understands
the cosmos
as one immense, ever-changing,
systemic unity.
The individual alterations, actions
and interactions
which for the most part go unnoticed
by human
beings within that universal
unity are non-specific
and do not exist as abstract
causally reificational
isolatable, singular happenings.
In a like
manner to which
human beings self-referentially
reify the
perceived manner in which their
brains exist
into an insubstantial
'thing'
called 'mind,' we also reify the perceived phenomenological
'activity' of the existential objects which our
human brains identify as being of
anthropocentric interest,
or personally noteworthy, into
the nexus
of a connected series of meaningful
actions
which we label as 'events.'
For reasons of
convenience
and rapid communication connected
to our
survival as a species, we label
these non-entities
with suitable verbal and adjectivally
inspired
gerundial terms. (verbal and
adjectival nouns)
Another way of putting it would
be to say
that 'cause' and 'causality'
are identical
with the causal object. Over time we internalise and interiorise
the terms themselves as actually
existing,
but they remain orphanically
nominatum-less
- for the unparented nominatum
remains the
causal object which was observed
phenomenologically
in the first place.
Thus for
Eliminative
Determinists no action of any
kind whatsoever
exists in the cosmos, whether
it be on the
universal, the macro-entitic
or the micro-entitic
level. All that exists in the
cosmos are
individual actively causal objects.
Objects
have been re-labelled ‘causal
objects’ not
in order to create unnecessary
neologisms,
[the doctrine being parsimonious,
it is guilty
of introducing only two new terms]
but in
order that to make clear to the
reader the
he/she may better-understand
that 'causality'
is not some spectral 'property'
that mysteriously
inheres in objects, but that
it is the active
causal eventity - the crashing
billiard ball
– the growing oak tree, the crumbling
cliff,
the barking dog that actually
exists |
| 'CATENULATE ACCOUNTABILITY' |
| ELIMINATIVE DETERMINISM'S MOST BASIC CONCEPT |
The most basic concept of Eliminative Determinism
suggests that the human-centred scenario
of individual 'events' is only a minuscule
example of the constantly changing universe
as enacted by every networked reticulation
of macro and micro causal objects both historical
and contemporary.
Eliminative Determinism
argues that 'that which causes' equals 'that which exists' and 'that which exists' equates to that which is holistically cosmically
existentially present at any one spatio-temporal
moment. The individuate parts of the
cosmos
cannot cause, cannot exist and cannot
really
be understood by humans except in their
relation
to the whole.
What traditional determinism
classified as: 'cause' and 'event' do not exist. What was hitherto mistakenly
represented in such abstract categories can
now be said to be synonymously instantiated
in the material acuality of 'causal objects.'
Accordingly, it follows
that for a person to
apprehend or to witness an 'event' is actually to apprehend certain causal objects existing in the way that they exist at the
moment of the human perception
of them. Technically speaking; (not speaking
from an anthropocentrically 'moral' point
of view, no 'individual accountability' exists
- every 'event' in a nexus of the chain of
catenulate accountability. No 'cause' is involved - just 'normally existing causal objects,'.going through the motions jointly initiated
resulting from the ever-widening, fan-like,
bifurcating causal origins of today's causal objects that stretches back into the immense dark
sack of time
Such is the immensity
and complexity of the cosmos; such is the
universal ubiquity of modal change, and such
is the homogeny between 'change' and 'cause,'
and 'causal objects' all of which is governed
by the existential imperative which peremptorily
determines that 'to exist' is analogous 'to cause.’
For humans to seek to
anthropocentrically single out attribute
individual 'cause' to any causal object is
to differentiate and isolate that object
as being an 'individually culpable eventity'
which is somehow antithetically separated
from the overall, shared, mutual or 'joint
causal responsibility' or 'catenulate accountability'
of all the causal objects in the cosmos,
both historical and contemporaneous, that
exist in accordance with scientific generalisation
based on empirical observations or Laws of
Nature or hypotheses confirmed by scientific
experiments.
We ascribe such abstract
terms to objects in order to mask and blur
our ontological incomprehension - so that
we can deal with the changing modalic causal
objects that surround us.' 'Change' does
not exist of course - only that which changes
exists. The way or manner or mode in which
something exists does not in itself exist.
There is no such primitive, philosophically
uncouth ontological duality or juju which
exists – at a ballet, only the dancing dancers
populate the stage during the performance.
The 'dancing' itself does not exist.
The bowing female humans in the tu-tu dresses
smile, whilst fey youths thrust forward their
bulges and wave when the curtain drops. But
the dancing, the bowing, the bulging, the
waving and the smiling do not exist. Only
the pirouetting smiling, bulging pretty ones
exist - the ‘dancing’ no more exists than
Scotch mist.
The advantage of the
ontology of Eliminative Determinism over
naive consciousness or folk causality, with
its unquestioning and prejudiced intuition-based
mindset, becomes obvious to anybody with
an existing preference for materialism. Like
its theoretical bedfellow, Eliminative Materialism, Eliminative Determinism is customised rather
than intertheoretically simulated and grounded
in the conventions of traditional deterministic
abstraction.
That is not to say that
any new ontology just falls from the sky
ready-made, but itself has its roots in the
invaluable contributions of those determinists
who have gone before and established the
apodicticity of scientific, analytic, empirical
method over the unquestioning and prejudiced
naive consciousness of the free-willers I
believe that the dynamical neural networks
of the human brain perceive the patterns
of interaction of the changing objects within
the world which it finds itself and reifies
the changes it observes and describes them
with such useful ontological fictional vignettes
as: causes, effects, superventions, events,
circumstances, incidents, happenings, occurrences,
occasions' etc.
I am still engaged
in knocking the raw edges off my eliminative
determinist ontology which seeks to deny
the existence of causative transcendentalism
and fictional entities. I have been moved
to eliminate the dualist compact between
the mentalistic abstraction of transcendentalism,
with its religious dualistic origins and
associations, and the traditional, dualistic,
deterministic notions of ‘causality’ with
which the old forms of determinism are unhappily
burdened.
| THE TRANSMISSION OF MOMENTUM |
To 'exchange' a kiss with one's
lover is impossible. You kiss her and she
kisses you - the notion of ontological exchange
is a primitive myth. Each of the singletons
experiences the combined pressure of the
other's lips upon their own - but the pressure
and the physiological changes to the bodies
of each individual are unique and inviolate,
even in the ultimate stages of love-making.
Your heart-beat may increase and her cheeks
may take on a rosy glow - but these physiological
changes are unique to the individual. What
exists are the two lovers existing in excitingly
new existential modalities, which they themselves
have separately initiated in response to
the autonomous reorganisation of their mereological
community of cells and molecules.
And so it is the same
with Hume's billiard balls - the modalic
change following impact is a unique, separate,
intrinsic, auto-generated, existential response-reconfiguration
of the molecular, relativistic spatial positionality
of each individual ball to the general laws
of nature - and NOT specifically to the individual
oncoming ball which impinged upon its spatial
positionality.
It matter's not if some
physicist insists that the change to the
speed of the oncoming ball can be calculated
to be in a directly mathematical measurable
relationship to changed existential modality
of the stationary ball - no ‘exchange of
momentum’ has taken place.
The autopoietic entitic
extantal re-organisation of the stationary
ball into a moving ball is an adaptive spatial
relocation in accordance with the exact nature
of the laws of nature in strict conformity
with the internal changes it has undergone
as a part of the vast, ubiquitous, omnipresent
'catenulate systemic accountability' of the
material cosmos.
What exists are two
balls extant in new existential modalities
which they themselves have separately adopted
in response to the autonomous reorganisation
of their mereological community of molecules
as engineered and brought about and enacted
by those causal objects of the catenulate
past which have determined their contemporaneous
behavioural occurrence.
| 'But hold on a minute!' says the sceptic, 'if ball-A had not struck ball-B - ball-B
would still be standing in the
middle of
the table?' |
The answer is that we are not discussing
the manner in which billiard balls at rest
exist – even though when they are
‘still’ – they are in fact undergoing more
molecular changes than all of the grains
of sand on all of the beaches of the world.
We are investigating the way billiard balls
exist and undergo self-change when they are
struck. How? The macro causal object which
is the billiard ball changes as the micro
causal objects which constitute its inner
and outer corporeality modify themselves
This modification of matter is what 'energy'
actually is, but we should keep as our watchword
the fact that the process we call 'the modification
of matter' does not exist either.
Only that which is modified [changes]
exists
- and by that we mean the billiard
ball and
the uncountable causal objects of which
it
is made.
Like Eliminative Materialism, Eliminative
Determinism denies the existence of
'mind'
and 'consciousness,' which are characterised
as vestigial hangovers from mankind's
most
primitive aporiatic religious past.
It characterises
the folk psychology which sprang from
early
cultism as folktales which sought to
explain
the way in which the self-referential
human
brain reifies the compendium of retrieved
experiential pathways and templates
we call
'memory' and re-registers and inventorially
internalises it as 'mind' or 'self'
or 'I.'
Mentalistic dualism, or the imagined
experiential
self-referential 'conversations' with
some
inner dialogic superordinate is a presumed
fact of every human's experience
- but presumptions and assumptions concerning
'facts' don't exist - only that which is
factual exists. The imagined self-voyeuristic
access and interrogation of the intimacies
of our own brain was seized upon by early
transcendentalists and formalised as an archaic
hereditary explicandum for a putative spirituality.
From the earliest period of our culture shamans
extended the notions of spiritualised rocks,
trees, wells and mountains to that of spiritualised
human heads tenanted or occupied by 'souls'
or 'minds.’
This act of making lumps
of animal tissue spiritual by ritualistically
infusing the brain-meat with spiritual content
[spiritualisation] by ancient hoodoos was
in order to explain away the general ignorance
surrounding the self-referencing neurological
network of the human brain, which we perceive
as un tête à tête de l'un avec notre propre
tête. Literally - A head to head with our own
head. In other words if the dualists are
to be believed - we talk to our own heads
- or to the meaty-bits inside our own heads
to be more precise.
Simple folk long ago
were uneducated regarding the brain's constant
internalisation and reflexive introjection
of aspects of the world (especially aspects
of persons) within itself. There was at that
time no concept of the manner or process
of the encephalon's constantly up-dating
characterisation of the external world and
how it becomes imprinted by a seemingly uninterrupted
reconfiguration of the synapsal connections
of the brain's neuronal net for future access.
A analogous sort of misunderstanding
can be found in the doctrines of traditional
determinism today, where the spiritual attribution
of 'causality' is extended to every object
in the cosmos. Entities from cricket bats
to surgical knives have become the assignees
of attributed 'causal possession' on a scale
which is redolent of 'poltergeists' which
are claimed to mysteriously cause other objects
to move, cut, rattle, crumble, be thrown
about, collapse, be pushed and pulled and
subjected to all manner of ghostly bumps
in the night and other interferences and
inexplicable ontological goings-on. It is
the purpose of Eliminative Determinism to
exorcise these fantômes dans la machine causale
and to try to do for 'causality' what the
marital and professorial partnership of the
Churchlands have done so brilliantly for
the myth of 'mind.' [1]
| CAUSAL PROCESS AND CAUSAL TRANSMISSION. |
At this stage, by way of illustrative example,
I would like to re-introduce Hume’s example
of the billiard balls. It would seem obvious
that causal object is not only the ball which
bangs into the stationary, but is also the
'responsibility' or 'fault' of the ball that
is jarred by the moving ball. It can be seen
quite clearly that the impact is as much
the 'fault' of the ball ahead for 'being
[existing] in the way.' It can also be seen
that the ball which is hit gets OUT of the
way with the same amount of 'uncaring disinterestedness' that it manifested when it got IN the way
- i. e., nil!
Now I have deliberately
introduced the words 'responsibility'
and
'fault' here and used personification
intentionally
in order to save time [why have useful
abstractions
if one is not prepared to employ them?]
for
the concepts of 'blame' and 'absolvement'
are a part of the muzzy logic of ‘causality’
in the human mind.
The new determinism
has
no place for abstract reifications,
which it regards as intertheoretical
attempts
to retain the invisible threads of
the non-existent
abstract properties of such useful
fictions
as: momentum, energy, speed and mass.
The
traditional view is that the rate at
which
momentum is transferred from one object
to
the other equals the force between
the objects.
How hard they push on each other. Eliminative
Determinism refutes the claim that
there
exists any ‘force’ called 'momentum'
and
insists that only a moving causal object
can exist.
It is a feature
of causal
objects that they automatically adjust
their
existential modality in accordance
with the
unique physical arrangement of the
molecular
constituents of their autopoietic organisation
in relation to their contemporary physical
environment . For a stationary billiard
ball
the impingement of another billiard
ball
is just another feature of that cosmic
physical
environment with its 'built-in imperative
for change and entitic equilibrium.
There is no valid
reason
why we should identity the the 'cause'
of
the change which takes place in the
stationary
ball which is hit, being attributed
to the
ball that hit it other than it represents
a humanly perceived current link in
a chain
of entitic occurrences that go back
into
eternity. To identify the oncoming
ball as
the causal object responsible might
make
sense to a human being struggling to
understand
and nail-down the perceived reality
of his
environment, but it makes no sense
ontologically
from a scientifically rigorous eliminative
determinist analysis. The change in
the ball
which is struck does not take place
nor is
any of it transferred to the oncoming
ball
[which changes its own existential
modality]
but is a self-generated autopoietic
reaction
and reorganisation of its own plasticity
in accordance with the laws of nature.
More importantly
the
collision of the two balls takes place
for
such an historically uncountable number
of
reasons that it makes no sense scientifically
[though it does in the context of mans
experience
and cognitive mapping of such direct
observational
participation.
The notion of such
a
metaphysical ‘force’ or movement' existing
is seen to be a reification of a putative
non-existential action which in some
way
is thought of as being dualistically
or descriptionally
'separate' from the causal object itself.
Moving causal objects do not 'have'
a 'speed'
or 'momentum' - they are slowly moving
or
speeding entities. What exists is not
the
abstractions 'speed' or 'momentum'
but human
beings existing in neurophysiological
modalities
of attributing such non-existent abstract
qualities to the objects they observe
phenomenologically.
Phenomena are states or processes known
through
the senses rather than by intuition
or reasoning,
and if reasoning were to be applied
in the
case of a moving object such as a billiard-ball,
it would become apparent that it was
not
the state of moving which exists -
but the
physical billiard ball.
Every object in
the cosmos
exists as changing dynamical causal
object.
Objects HAVE to exist this way - otherwise
they would not exist in the first place.
What then exists
on the
billiard or snooker table are collections
of ergodic causal objects with which
the
contestants seek to occupy and reoccupy
the
spatial positions occupied by other
balls,
each succeeding another either directly
or
randomly indirectly involving transient
existential
modes. The salient existential characteristics
of the individual balls is that they
are
essentially similar to other members
of the
set and undergo intrinsic physical
change
in analogous modes which are anticipated
by the players.
What then 'causes'
one
ball to hit another? For the eliminative
determinist it is not the classical
deterministic
catenulate chain of causal events which
bifurcate
back endlessly into the past. Nor is
it the
product of causal sequences which proliferate
like eventive fractals, as seen as
it were,
from the rear-view mirror of a time
machine
as it zooms from the past to the present.
| THE MYTH OF 'FIRST CAUSE' OR
'PRIMAL MOVER'
|
The eliminative determinist points to the
fact that what exists in the cosmos now has
always existed, though in uncountable different
forms and versions, for that which is material
can never be totally eliminated. If the cosmos
had NOT always existed, and had it really
been the product of a lone creatio ex nihilo
formative event which had brought it 'into
being,' then the so-called 'first cause'
could never have eventuated, because scientific
Eliminative Determinism admits of no first
cause. Why do I make this claim? Because
if the determinist paradigm is correct, there
can be no exceptions to the physical paradigms
of causal objects; the event of the 'first
cause' must itself have had some primary
moving causal object too. If God created
the cosmos - then he must have had a God
that created him too; and a concatenation
of supreme beings must have stretched backwards
into eternity.
If one causal object
is almost identical to another, they belong
to an ergodic ensemble. In an ergodic population
such as we find on the billiard table, any
singleton is typical of the entire group.
The conspicuous physical characteristics
of one individual may be essentially almost
identical with any other member of the group.
I say 'almost' because absolute sameness
is physically impossible - every causal object
in the universe differs from every other
- for if one object were to be absolutely
the same as another - it would BE that other.
The production of biological causal objects
is allopoietic, because the offsprings of
all causal objects are materially distinct
from the parent causal objects and occupy
different temporally spatial positions. The
reproduction of causal objects is not self-production.
| ENERGY – WHERE ART THOU? |
| So let us look at kinetic energy |
|
Kinetic energy is defined as the energy a
body has by virtue of its motion. The kinetic
energy is the work done by an external force
to bring the body from rest to a particular
state of motion. Mathematically, it is defined
as one-half the product of a body's mass
and the square of its speed. Kinetic energy
is the energy of motion. An object which
has motion - whether it be vertical or horizontal
motion - has kinetic energy. There are many
forms of kinetic energy - vibrational (the
energy due to vibrational motion), rotational
(the energy due to rotational motion), and
translational (the energy due to motion from
one location to another).
KE = ½ ‘ m ‘ v 2 [2] |
Now let us examine 'Energy' to try to establish
if it too actually exists? How Is Energy
Stored? Some devices that store different
forms of energy are listed below.
1) Gravitational Potential Energy – any raised
object.
2) Strain Potential Energy - a wound-up clock-spring.
3) Chemical Potential Energy - a charged
car battery.
4) Electrical Potential Energy - an electrical
capacitor.
5) Thermal Energy - a fully heated
up hot water tank. |
|
'Energy is a fundamental quantity that every
physical system possesses; it allows us to
predict how much work the system could be
made to do, or how much heat it can produce
or absorb. In the past, energy was discussed
in terms of easily observable effects it
has on the properties of objects or changes
in state of various systems. Basically, if
something changes, some sort of energy was
involved in that change... ' [3]
|
The above sounds quite medieval does
it not?
Replace the word quantity' with the
word
'property' and it is as if we have
been transported
back to the days of medieval scholasticism.
Where do we find this mysterious energy
that
lurks in every object?
‘Infinitely rigid balls would not compress
at all. As the balls meet, their
motions
would have to be reversed instantaneously
or the balls would have to "overlap".
This requires an infinite force
and an infinite
rate of momentum transfer, except
for one
fact. Infinitely rigid does not
mean infinitely
strong, only impossible to compress.
For
an infinite force to exist, both
objects
must be able to endure an infinite
force.
When an object is too rigid,
this causing
a force greater than it can endure,
the object
shatters. Unless the rigid objects
were truly
infinitely strong, they would
break. If they
were both infinitely strong,
they would bounce
off each other as other objects
do. The motions
would be the same, but the time
actually
in contact would be too short
to measure.
If one were much stronger than
the other,
you would have an "armour
piercing shell"
striking a tank. The shell gives
much less
than the tank armour. If the
shell has enough
momentum, the armour gives enough
to allow
the shell to penetrate.’ [4] |
If we were to look
inside
the human body to find the place where
energy
is located where would we look? Is
it stored
in the same location as 'mind' perhaps?
The
claim appears to be that energy is
some mysterious
quantity - so let us proceed to define
exactly
what is a 'fundamental quantity,' and
where
it is to be found in the human body?
'In the language of measurement,
quantities
are quantifiable aspects of the
world, such
as time, distance, velocity,
mass, and weight,
and units measure them. Quantities
are sometimes
also referred to as dimensions
although the
term is only strictly true of
time and space
measurements; see dimensional
analysis
. [5] |
So let us recapitulate.
We are told that 'momentum' is 'movement'
and 'movement' is 'energy and 'energy
' is
a 'quantity' and a quantity' is quantifiable
aspects of the world, such as time,
distance,
velocity, mass, and weight. But this
does
not answer the question as the WHERE
this
'energy' is to be found. What can guess
what
the answer to this question will be
from
the men in white coats - 'In the object!'
Why on earth do they not simply admit
that
'energy' IS the heavy hanging lump
of metal
- the wound metal spring - the battery
-
the capacitor and the plastic water
tank
object which ARE the energetic or ''Causal objects' that the ontological taboo forbids them
to identify?
|
I am reminded here of a Russian story of
the Soviet period, where an inventor
who
has a wonderful idea that will
treble the
output of a certain factory visits
office
after office to try to have his
idea acknowledged.
Each time he is referred to another
office...
and then ... another office...
until... Yes...
you have guessed it... he is
referred back
to the first office he visited
.[ref. 6]
|
It is beginning
to feel
a little like that with this quest
to find
the whereabouts of kinetic energy isn't
it?
We are told that muscular activity
accounts
for most of the body's energy consumption.
Muscles store energy for their own
use in
the form of glycogen, which represents
about
1% of their mass. This can be rapidly
converted
to glucose when more energy is necessary.
Are we not entitled to wonder at this
stage
if these abstractions are no more than
moonshine,
and that what ACTUALLY exists is the
moving
billiard ball, the distant mountain,
the
heavy or weighty anvil and the glucose/glycogen
that presumably could be extracted
from the
human musculature - placed in a bottle
and
re-labelled with its correct name 'ENERGY.'
Do we not find ourselves
in
the position of the little boy in the
crowd
when the naked emperor rode by? Do
we now
not suddenly realise that the abstractions
we play with are no more than anthropocentric,
ontological fairy-tales that we humans
tell
ourselves and each other, because we
are
unwilling to face the fact that souls,
spirits,
causes, distance, weight, speed, movement,
heat, mind and the invisible clothes
of the
naked ontological emperor are figments
of
our imagination and although it is
very counter-intuitive
to admit - THEY DO NOT EXIST!
Well up to now this has no doubt
all
been good fun, for as David Hume remarked:
 |
'No conclusions can be more agreeable to
scepticism than such as make
discoveries
concerning the weakness and narrow
limits
of human reason and capacity.' [7] |
What we need to remember is that though the
ontological will-o'-the-wisps we have identified
do not by any stretch of the imagination
exist and are fictions - they are 'useful'
if not vitally important fictions, for if
we had not invented them we would find it
difficult to speak of the nature of the brain
or provide some cogent account of what happens
when two billiard balls bump into each other.
How difficult would it be to talk scientifically
in the absence of abstraction? Well, we will
leave that to a future paper.
We are told that when
Hume's famous billiard balls strike each
other they 'exchange momentum' and demonstrate
'changed states of motion' after the impact.
This is a misunderstanding. No 'exchange
of momentum' takes place for 'momentum' does
not exist to be exchanged or retained in
this folkloric vignette.
What exists in the real
world of Eliminative Determinism are the
entitively changing moving balls. No differentiative
'exchange' has taken place - the balls have
changed or generated their own existential
modalities - they have not received any of
the 'properties' of the other balls, because
the 'properties' do not exist to be retained,
transferred or received, and are nothing
more than a construct contrived by humans
- an excogitation whereby objects or individuals
can be distinguished by their form or behaviour
from others in the eyes of humans. But the
forms or the behaviour of the billiard balls
do not exist, what exists are the billiard
balls and the attributional humans. The humans
exist in existential modalities of assigning
homocentric notions of form and behaviour
to the balls. The billiard balls exist in
the everchanging modalities of causal objects
- oblivious to the 'fact' that they are used
for billiards - or even that they are balls.
David Hume (an avid billiards
player) commented that what we see is a 'sequence
of events' not any actual 'push' or 'force.'
Hume's perspective highlights
his genius as he strives to bring about an
ultimate correctability of our most deep-seated
convictions about the nature of the way we
perceive cause and effect.
However Hume's analysis
and contribution is not one of a new theory
of causality but an intertheoretic modification
of the old model which retains the unnecessary
and cumbersome paraphernalia of abstraction.
Though David Hume is my hero I reject his
idea that we see a 'series of events' when
we observe the striking balls.
In real life we do not see
the actual push as the two balls collide
-we think we see the two objects touch, but
although we think we see a collision or an
impact what we really see is two touching,
colliding or impacting billiard balls. Touch,
collision, impaction do not exist - action
does not exist and cannot be found anywhere
in the cosmos - only acting or causing causal
objects objects exist.
There is a view held within
folk psychology that there exists a classifiable
mental property that is not reducible to
anything physical. This mental dimension
hosts a separate mental ‘substance’ called
a non-physical ‘mind’ or ‘soul.’ There is
also a view held within the philosophy of
causality and ‘free will’ that objects such
as billiard balls host a separate ontological
‘property' or ‘potential’ - a non-physical
abstraction known as - ‘causation’.
‘Change' does not exist
- only that which changes exists. 'Cause'
or ‘causality’ does not exist - only that
which causes exists. 'Effect' does not exist
- only that which is affected exists. 'Collision'
does not exist - only that which collides
exists.
This reification of of
causal eventities into reificational events
is nothing new and indeed, in the day to
day world of ordinary life non-physical 'events'
can be described and talked about as if they
actually existed rather than the causal objects
themselves.
Thus 'The Garden Party at Saint Peter's Church'
is referred to as if it really existed, when
in fact what existed was the material causal
structure called Saint Peter's, the greensward that surrounds it complete
with beds of flowers, the hired marquees,
the trestle tables, the glasses, bottles,
plates and spoons and all the other manner
of causal paraphernalia considered necessary
in order that the 'event' could qualify for
the reified designatum 'Garden Party,' not
forgetting the causal objects known as the
priest and the attendees of course.
Some traditionalists might point out
that
their unquestioning faith in abstractional
causation is not a defect but precisely
its
strength, and that because faith is
trusting
and constant, such beliefs have served
mankind
well for thousangs of years. New scientific
ontological categories that have emerged
are themselves derivative of the more
originary
and more phenomenologically adequate
categories
that have served mankind for millennia.
Eliminative
Determinism is the first antitheoretical
rather than intertheoretical doctrine
which
bucks that historical trend.
'States' do not exist - they are anthropocentric attributions
and fairytales we use to describe that which
we do not understand. States can express the existence of a state of
stillness or one of action and neither stillness
nor action exist. Only causal objects that
we perceive of as being 'still' or 'active'
exist. 'Being' and 'existence' do not exist - only that which is what it
is, and that which exists in the way that
it exists, exists.
In human interaction
the modal or causal shift into a passive
or objective existential configuration as
expressed in language bestows subjective
torpidly, submissive fecklessness upon person's
existential modality. Languages have equipped
themselves to accommodate many glaring existential
human conflicts. In formal writing. For the
author 'passivity' is condemned in the interests
of 'forceful writing and objectivity, ' but
the reason for this instinctive distaste
is little understood.
Some feminists see it
as a manifestation of a desire for male domination.
'Josephine was beaten by the policeman"
and: 'The policeman beat Josephine"
The implications of toggling the linguistic modal switch are suddenly thrown into clear focus, for
the modal switch transfers the narrative
and experiential point of view from Josephine
to that of the policeman. In other words
from the point of view of an emphatic 'masculine'
narrative. The story is then carried along
by the unfolding of fresh energetic and 'vigorously
expatiated' events. The passivity often shown
by the more sensitive male and female writers
and poets is often condemned as 'passive,'
and as demonstrating inactiveness, inertia
and submissiveness, and as concentrating
too much on the 'feelings' of the main protagonist
or hero and heroines of the story, rather
than in 'the job at hand.'
‘The modal switch’ [we will call it
a ‘causal
switch’ also takes place when we describe
in natural language in a certain skewed
way
an ‘event’ we encounter in our normal
lives.
Consider the Following
An old lady wearing a hearing-aid is
just
moving her trolley from the aisle to
the
checkout in Walmart when a young man
rushes
up and knocks her and her trolley over
bruising
the woman's arm rather badly at the
same
time.
He continues running towards the exit
and
disapears from sight. Later, when,
helped
by one of the store assistants, the
woman
has recovered and is nursing her arm.
The
young man returns.
'You idiot!' she screams...'you caused this,' she shows him a large purple bruise on her
arm...'and you have smashed all my eggs and three
bottles of bourbon!"
‘It was YOUR fault you deaf old fool,' replies the panting man, 'I shouted for people to get out of the way
- I saw a parked station-wagon in the
car-park
was on fire and I was rushing out to
help.
I am an off-duty fireman.’
What caused the broken
eggs
and bottles and bruising to the woman's
arm?
Was it caused because the old woman
bought the eggs and bottles that day?
Was it caused because she was in the centre
of the aisle when the man ran by? Was it
caused because the young man knocked the
woman and her trolley over? Was it caused
because the old station - wagon owner
parked in the car-park?
Was it caused because the mechanic failed
to check the fault during a service?
Was it caused because the young man
joined the fire - service
not the navy?
Was it caused because the woman's daughter
asked her mother to shop for her?
Was it caused because the daily
delivery
- driver delivered the
eggs to Walmart?
Was it caused by the chickens who hatched
from eggs and then layed the eggs?
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Humans attribute anthropocentric notions
of: 'blame, cause, fault, initiation, responsibility’
to inanimate objects where none exists. There
is no 'causality' in the cosmos. To cause
or to change is to exist. All objects are
causing, changing, existing objects. No causal
object = no existing object. No changing
object = no existing object.
Just how far down the ladder
of causal objectivity we can clamber into
the quantum world of causal eventities below
remains to be discovered by our scientists,
but however many newly discovered ontological
levels we microscopically plunge, it will
make no difference at all to the eliminative
determinist vision.
From the countless grains of
sugar that dissolve ten times a day amongst
the tea-leaves of the British, to the discarded
hairs of my body that float down and make
landfall on my bedroom carpet. From the millions
of tons of molten nastiness that is spewed
out by the sun every few seconds, to the
causal rubbings and chafings of trillions
of tree-leaves and insect legs that grace
the forests of our world - causal objectivity
is total, universal and ubiquitous in every
corner of the cosmos. Why do we human billiard
players, tucked away in a small room, on
a small planet, in a small universe, dependent
on a small star single out the ‘collision’
of some tiny specks of matter tiny speck
of matter which we call the ‘billiard balls’
set upon on the green baize before us as
causal singularities, when the whole of the
cosmos is a moiling mass of unconcerned interaction
and change?
The answer is of course
that we humans DO have our human centred
concerns, and the concerns of the billiard
players centre upon the causal process by
which they believe they are responsible for
causing the balls to move, collide, and drop
into the appropriate pockets of the billiard
table. The fact that when they cue the ball
they are merely ephemeral, agential causal
objects occupying some minor, medial position
in vast, reticular deterministic system of
biramous catenulate chains of cosmic determination
doesn’t occur to them – and to be honest
– why should it? The fact that THEY think
they are responsible for winning the frames
and winning the pint of beer or the silver
cup is good enough for them and good enough
for most folks. For the scientist however
things appear differently. We may wonder
why it is that most people find it difficult
to understand that 'causality' does not exist?
Perhaps as T. S. Eliot said: ‘Humankind cannot stand very much reality.’
[9] Eliot 1935 p. 172
For some it may be beyond
what they can bear to accept the harsh reality
that: ‘that which exists’ is the totality
of the physical cosmos and it exists in a
causally uncaring, imperative modality, which
works itself out through the medium of a
concatenation of causal objects - in a way
that is completely disinterested, totally
oblivious, incognisant and unaware of our
lilliputian human concerns and petty attempts
to attribute meaning to or causal responsibility
to the catenulate phenomena we briefly experience
in our short existence?
REFERENCES:
[1] Churchland. Patricia. Neurophilosophy, 2000. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
[2] www. mountainmanagement. biz/glossary.
Htm
[3] en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Energy
[4] Mellendorf. Ken. Physics Instructor.
Illinois Central College. Aug 22, 2002
[5] en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Fundamental_quantity
[6] Dudinstev. Vladimir. 'Not by Bread Alone.' Hutchinson London 1957. See: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/florry038.htm
for plot details.
[7][Hume. David. 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Section 7, part 2. 3]
[8] Sansom. Richard. 'Elemental Predomination.' 2006. Yahoo A. I. T. discussion list.http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/gary_cosmos.htm
[9] Eliot. T. S. ‘Burnt Norton’ Four Quartets. 1969. P. 172. Faber & Faber, London
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