30
votes
Accepted
What do you call the fallacy of thinking that some action A will guarantee some outcome B, when in reality B depends on multiple other conditions?
What do you call the fallacy of thinking that if A statistically causes B, then A implies B?
For the original title quoted above, the closest is probably correlation implies causation, deducing a ...
- 42.5k
22
votes
Accepted
Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent?
Memorably, Feynman in his Lectures on Physics states:
It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is.
Energy, the Subtle Concept. The discovery of Feynman’s ...
- 3,684
20
votes
Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent?
There are a number of quantities that physics has found to be conserved.
"Conserved" means that if you take a situation, and you measure what is in it, then something happens in it (where ...
- 594
15
votes
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
Mainly because we have no idea how mind and matter are supposed to interact
Causation is understood by many in a way that makes that problematic. This post gives a perfectly neutral definition which ...
- 13.5k
12
votes
What fallacy infers motivation from mere description?
The issue in the example seems to be that the word "dominate" is used in two different senses. When this is done in an argument (it is not clear that this is so here) the fallacy is called ...
- 42.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
The key difference between matter-matter interactions and mind-matter interactions is that we have been able to discover governing relationships (eg Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, General Relativity ...
- 13.5k
11
votes
What would reality be like without causality?
Conceivably, there is another way for a universe to be ordered rather being random and chaotic with invoking casuality: teleology.
In a teleological universe things would do the things they do because ...
- 398
9
votes
How do modern dualists explain the mind-body interaction?
Believe it or not, but the biggest challenge to dualism does not come from neuroscience or physiology, and in fact is shared with materialism, it is the threat of epiphenomenlism. Whether mental is ...
- 42.5k
9
votes
What would reality be like without causality?
I think this question cuts much deeper than most are giving it credit for. It is quite similar to free will versus determinism.
Consider a simple universe consisting of a single snake and a sequence ...
- 612
8
votes
Accepted
Is it a logical flaw to blame someone for an event if they were simply its causal factor?
This is well-known in ethics, but not as a flaw of argumentation, rather as the problem of causal resposibility. The problem is thorny because drawing the line depends on resolving highly ...
- 42.5k
8
votes
Do non physical causes exist?
To quote a cliche, the jury is still out on the question of the nature of the mind. There seems to be no doubt that thought and contemplation are somehow associated with physical processes in the ...
- 13.5k
7
votes
Accepted
Is the delayed choice quantum eraser a refutation of principle of causality? How does contemporary philosophy make sense of it?
One of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics is the principle of superposition. Its most simple application reads: If two paths exist to move from state A to state B, then the transition ...
- 24.5k
7
votes
Accepted
If we imagine a world that functions without causality, how absurd could it be?
If the world were without causality then it need not change in any way. It might fortuitously behave exactly as it does now. This is certainly a logical possibility.
If the world were without ...
- 35.4k
6
votes
What fallacy infers motivation from mere description?
My interpretation is that the original statements are not necessarily fallacious, but rather a question of the semantics carried by the word "dominate." To dominate can mean colloquially that one ...
- 161
6
votes
Does a biconditional necessarily imply a causal relationship?
No. If and only if [time passes] then [Uranium238 decays]. Time does not cause the decay, but it can't happen unless time passes.
Another example is quantum entanglement. Given two entangled photons ...
- 356
6
votes
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
Not everyone has an "inner monologue" or ability to vividly imagine things: this is known as aphantasia. At an imaginary-angled diagonal from that, there are also people who are pain-...
- 12.1k
6
votes
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
So there's this supposedly an 'interaction' problem for substance dualism, that isn't there for physicalism or idealism. I've never understood this.
So as Hume pointed out, we see event a followed by ...
- 23k
6
votes
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
I agree, the interaction problem is not unique to mind/body questions. For example, the original materialism posited everything was atoms colliding. However, now we know nothing collides, all ...
- 1,573
5
votes
Is the delayed choice quantum eraser a refutation of principle of causality? How does contemporary philosophy make sense of it?
Delayed choices undermines past to future causality only if one assumes that the initial state of a system must directly determine measurement results, and that wave functions represent our ignorance ...
- 5,830
5
votes
Sketch of a proof for real free will?
I have read many contemporary philosophers and the mainstream view seems to be that real free will is an illusion in the sense that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon which is only set on top of ...
- 1,574
5
votes
Is causality a type of necessary and sufficient condition?
Simply put, causality would imply that the cause is a sufficient condition for the effect.
That A caused B would only mean that A is a sufficient condition for B -- not that A is a necessary ...
- 24.6k
5
votes
What do you call the fallacy of thinking that some action A will guarantee some outcome B, when in reality B depends on multiple other conditions?
The patient has confused necessary and sufficient conditions. Brushing one's teeth is necessary for good dental health, but is not sufficient to guarantee that outcome.
- 59
5
votes
What's wrong with this reconstruction of Nagarjuna?
In his book The Fundalmental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Malamadhyamakakarika, Jay L. Garfield writes for his translation and commentary on this verse:
The essence of entities
Is ...
- 3,621
5
votes
Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent?
In a nuclear explosion, we might say, "matter is converted into energy." But you can't exactly see energy or hold a piece of energy in your hand. It's not "glowy stuff" (as often ...
- 11.1k
5
votes
Accepted
What is this idea of causality being articulated?
The answer to this question is straightforward. Any metaphysical view of causation that imputes causal powers from the abstract domain of human thought to the physical world is known as mental ...
- 23k
5
votes
Why is mind interacting with matter any more problematic than matter interacting with matter?
Mind is software, the brain hardware. Back in 1973, when I used to write drivers for hardware on an HP2100 minicomputer, we had hardware instructions that wrote to devices and read from them (I/O ...
- 455
4
votes
How do modern dualists explain the mind-body interaction?
According to my observation it is rather seldom that dualists actually explain the interaction of the mind and body. Often they restrict themselves to criticizing the monist position, hereby calling ...
- 24.5k
4
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between correlation and causation?
What is the difference between correlation and causation?
Correlation is a descriptive relationship, all it says is: here are a bunch of measurements of two (or more variables) and there is a ...
- 27.1k
4
votes
When trying to identify causality, do we assume "nearness" between cause and effect?
First, we need to distinguish between the proximate and mediate causes, because we would call throwing a ball to be the (mediate) cause of a broken window even though the throwing hand never came into ...
- 42.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible