Skip to main content
12 events
when toggle format what by license comment
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:53 comment added n.r. My opinion is that we don't need a law of causality to make everyday causal statements (nothing would change for us anyway), but it may necessary for some physicists to presuppose or believe, however blindly, that the law of causality holds in order to see any point in doing science, and eventually to discover or suggest an empirical causal law about this or that natural phenomenon. Without somewhat blindly believing in some law of causality or other, nature is just unintelligible mess. A law of causality is a lighthouse. The classical reading for the latter views is Kant's First Critique.
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:39 comment added user6917 btw, don't call yourself lazy, you're not, i am just boring. peace
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:39 comment added n.r. Ask yourself: suppose it's false that all events have causes. Can I still tell my brother, say, that it was the wind, not the dog, that toppled his vase of flowers? Yes? No? Why? Why not?
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:37 comment added user6917 but "whether we need a law of causality to make causal statements," is exactly my question. i don't know the answer. also thanks, for your insight,
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:36 comment added n.r. Sorry, I'm too lazy for that. I'm here to talk about philosophy with people, definitely not after reputation points. I would even suggest that we set aside the Tractatus, and focus on what really matters, such as whether physics presupposes any law of causality, what a law of causality looks like, whether we need a law of causality at all to make causal statements, whether we need empirial causal laws at all to make empirical causal statements, what causation is, and so on. These are more pressing issues than what Wittgenstein really thought about it when he wrote the Tractatus.
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:24 comment added user6917 hmm cheers. reference for the last statement would be amazing and easily warrant me accepting your answer :)
Jan 28, 2017 at 3:22 comment added n.r. Without a law of causality, we can make causal statements all the same. First, it may be false that all events have causes, but true that some events have causes. Second, for Wittgenstein (if I get him right), it is a philosophy of causation that is nonsense, not causal statements. Scientific and everyday causal statements (exposure to sunlight causes sunburn; wind toppled this flower vase) are okay for him.
Jan 28, 2017 at 0:06 comment added user6917 "I don't see how this conclusion would follow." i thought a law of causality would be a definition of causation, so that without one talking about causation would be senseless. guess i was wrong?
Jan 27, 2017 at 19:34 history edited n.r. CC BY-SA 3.0
deleted 8 characters in body
Jan 27, 2017 at 19:29 history edited n.r. CC BY-SA 3.0
deleted 8 characters in body
Jan 27, 2017 at 19:19 history edited n.r. CC BY-SA 3.0
added 114 characters in body
Jan 27, 2017 at 19:14 history answered n.r. CC BY-SA 3.0