Causastion

Everyone believes in causation. We look for causes and we find them. And it doesn’t always matter if we find all of them. For most important events, we find a search for all cases tiresome and unnecessary. It is unnecessary, of course.

But when we philosophize, when we examine a moral code, when we take a long hard look at science, when we try to understand life as a whole, we assume that our notion of causation is approximately correct for everything, for the universe on every scale. Which may not be entirely correct. We can abstract systems from particulars because all those particulars are observable. Abstracting beyond systems leads straight to God.

But is it the right God? Cannot a god allow for randomness, or a causative scheme that we can never know?

Causation doesn’t prove God. It defines God for many. Presumably a god that wishes to be defined.

This is why mystics stop talking. They are looking for the real god.

Yes, to us it would appear as random until it reaches our realm of perception and no, we can’t out think God.

Gods, prayers, animal sacrifices, etc. Was part of our dispare. Long ago we had less, but we still had big needs and big problems.

Now instead of praying, i can have a surgen remove a big stomach tumor.
God in christian terms is very inconsistent and unpredictable.
But if you had basically nothing, God would be something, and thus you may feel a bit of fulfillment from that god figure.

Meanwhile, medicine and science has done more for me than a god.
It would be nice to have a good god, really, but atheists just aren’t seeing it.
I don’t see it either, even though i wish it was.

People caused and saved my life.
No direct God stuff at all.

Most humans in history were poor and science-less.
They had ideas on the origin of life, and the nature of reality.
But without science they were bound to fail.

The world in which we live is an expression of human nature, not an expression of pure truth.
People who want pure truth seem to be kinda crazy to me.
Cause is considered a law of truth, not a law of human perception, by most.

I have experienced miracles

A right God? An all powerful God could reconcile the ideas of One God and many Gods. (I do not intend to imply what can and would be done, only what is conceivable given omnipotence)

A God that wishes to be defined? The definition of God from others has both served me gotten in my way (obstructed, for lack of a better word).

I will dare to say that when it comes to God, I think people are unwittingly committed to their innocence (How they learned of God).

I hoped this was a serious topic on the nature of causality.

Alan Watts put forth the idea that future events can cause past events.

One way is to say “The bark of the tree/dog…” The present meaning of “bark” is caused by a future event.

Another example is babies (future) are the cause of sex (present). Groceries (future) are the cause of you now starting to get into your car.

You guys can have fun tearing his arguments to shreds. I just thought it was an interesting idea to consider.

It must be frustrating to be so helpless.

Serendipper

Could you really say that in this case? The present meaning of bark would be caused by an event happening in the NOW. For instance, the dog barks because the thief takes the woman’s purse. It’s almost simultaneous. Hmmm… lol Isn’t it as simple as cause and effect?

But isn’t that putting too much meaning on things? One can just as easily say that the sex or its purpose is the cause of the baby.
The same with the groceries.

It all just depends on how someone looks at it. Saying that future events cause present events is almost like saying we have no free will and no conscious thought of Now…that the future which hasn’t happened yet is more powerful and influential than what we do in the here and now. That’s not to say that the having of babies in the future is not a powerful reason to have sex in the Here and Now.

But which came first? Maybe this is getting a bit convoluted. lol But it is interesting.

I suppose that it is possible to see it in those two different ways. Maybe it’s more about actually being able to look at something in two different ways, looking a little more deeply.

The future event of Christmas may cause the present event of a person buying a present.

Groundbreaking.

It isn’t the future event, but the current belief in the event.

I just spent the past hour combing through videos to find where he said that and all I can find is this:

Start at 10:00

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9eVb0qCPA4[/youtube]

And then some text from here beingsakin.wordpress.com/tag/alan-watts/page/2/

[i]Now another interesting thing about this is that I can show you how the present changes the past. Let’s take for example the order of words. Now words are strung out in a line just like we think events in time are strung out in a line and I can change a past word by a future word. If I say (taking a line from the poet Thomas Hood), “They went and told the sexton, and the sexton tolled the bell.” You don’t know what the first told means until you get the sexton; you don’t know what the second tolled means until you get to the word bell. And so the later event changes the meaning of the former. Or you can say for example, “The bark of the tree,” and the word bark has a certain meaning. Then I say, “The bark of the dog,” and the later word has changed the meaning of the former one.

And so, in this way, when we write history we find that writing history is really an art. The historian keeps putting a fresh interpretation on past events and in that sense he is changing it. He is changing their meaning just like we were changing the meaning of a former word by a later word by saying, “They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.”

In this way you can experience a curious liberation from what the Hindus and the Buddhists call karma. The word karma in Sanskrit actually means doing, action. Karma comes from the root kri which simply means to do. When something happens to me, an accident or an illness, a Buddhist or a Hindu will say, “Well, it was your karma.” In other words, you had done something in the past and you reap the unfortunate consequence in a later time. Now that’s not the real meaning of karma. Karma does not mean cause and effect. It simply means doing. In other words, you are doing what is happening to you. And that, of course, depends upon how you define the word you. For example, consider breathing; am I doing it or is it happening to me? I am growing my hair; am I doing it or is it happening to me? You can look at it either way. I am being sick, or I am being destroyed in an accident – if I define myself as the whole field of events, the organism-environment field which is the real me, then all the things that happen to me may be called my doing. And that is the real sense of karma.[/i]

I’ll keep looking and when I find the video about the babies and bark of the dog/tree, I’ll post it here.

Alan is pretty sharp. If you don’t know who he is, check him out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

lol
But that is true, yes?

Like i said, I think that quote is more about being able to see something in more than one way ~~ or at least about thinking out of the usual box. That was redundant, wasn’t it?
Don’t we humans often prefer to see things ONLY in one way?
Didn’t Freddie say something to the effect of looking at something from all different angles ~~ up and down, sideways, inside and out? I as paraphrasing, of course.

I am sure that this is the way in which you normally look at things being the philosopher which you are. Me, usually not, so it is a good thing when something makes us think more and differently.

A good friend of mine in here once told me that it is a good thing to be able to hold two totally dissimilar thoughts in one’s mind at the same time and examine them. I agree as I am sure you do.

I already heard that one. But I hear too many errors in thought from Watts; He got the “one-hand” koan incorrectly, his “Bark of the dog” causation example is misguided, … Sorry to say, but I’m not impressed with him.

I would think that, “Continuation,” would be more appropriate for some people of Religion than, “Causation.” That’s not true of all of them, of course, but in the view of some we are just turning pages in a book that has already been written.

Maybe not even a religious imperative, I suppose it could also be, “Continuation,” depending on one’s view of time.

I recall that you always hated this dancing banana.
But hello there. It is so good to see you (in a manner of speaking) in here.

I thought that you might have gone to some parallel universe or something.

Welcome back for as long as you are staying, Pav.

There is a slight distinction in the two. A continuance doesn’t imply cause, it merely infers that there probably is cause.

The simple fact is that “causation”, in a sense, is the make of the physical universe. If the universe was not made of causation, time would not exist and you would not be here to discuss it. Time, causality, change, physicality, affectance (affect-upon-affect) are all virtually the same thing and the very fundamental make of you and your universe. Everything else in the physical universe is merely the emergent aberrance.

What causes something else, except, the “Prime Mover”?

If you can’t tell me what/who causes something, then you can’t really say much about causation at all.

Are you speaking about God here? Or energy?

Wouldn’t that depend on what you’re speaking about?

The word and use of “cause” has two distinct meanings; cause as in “why or what led to what” and cause as is “the reason, justification, or logic”. People rarely distinguish those very different meanings.

The “Prime Mover” is the second of the kind of causes. The “Prime Mover” is the Fundamental Principle (the Logic behind the event). The Prime Mover has never been a physical causation, else would, by definition be a physical entity. The Prime Mover was never a physical entity, but rather a “divine”/“ideal”/“conceptual” entity.

So the actual Prime Mover “causes” in the sense that the Prime Mover is the REASON that the universe exists, the Logic behind the actuality.