Causastion

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.

:banana-explosion: :banana-explosion: :banana-explosion:

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.

People believe and put faith in the ideal that a person, or animal, or thing, or object causes something, an event, a chain of events, to happen. A pebble rolls down a cliff and causes an avalanche. But what caused the pebble to loosen and roll?

People quickly become lost in infinite chains of causes/event. These are called “causal chains” or “vibrations of string theory, energy”. Things cause other things. Events cause other events. When people become lost, or refuse to keep searching, for original causes, then they believe that “things happen randomly” or without cause, which is false. Rather it’s more obvious that human reasoning and intellect is limited.

Just because you cannot see nor pinpoint the cause of something, of an event, of human interaction, does not mean there was no cause. It’s more sensible and logical that some causes slip under the radar of human perception and consciousness.

In other words, despite the top 1% of human intellect, the best of humanity, the best philosophies of all time, many causes and chains still go unnoticed. The human intellect keeps progressing, and making some discoveries, revealing some chains previously unknown, however, there is always something smaller, more distant, to become aware of.

Perhaps something happend, in the year 1527 AD, that led to your current circumstance today. You’re not aware of it. Your ancestors and ancestry is lost in time. But your great-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather made a decision. He chose this, instead of that. And that is why you are, as you are today. Because the cause has been lost/forgotten in time. Lost to you, to humanity, to history, to records, but not lost in existence.

Existence is greater than human knowledge and reason. There are infinite casual-chains. And so, despite the best efforts of humanity, cannot know everything omnisciently. Instead humans can search and discover, with great effort, a small aspect of the questions and mysteries that dominate right now. Some issues, or questions, are more pressing than others. Thus people search for the causation of particular interests.

Causality, and Existence, is like a great universal maze, without beginning nor end, yet humans are still stuck within, never free, but always trapped and enslaved to paths, turns, twists, loops, circles, and few gain the skill and memory to properly traverse the maze of life. But, some answers can become known. You become familiar with a small sub-section of the maze. What you call “privacy”, your “home”, your limited knowledge of existence. People cling to a few corners of the Great Maze.

The banana is just fine, pleasure to see you again is all mine! That goes for everyone here, as well. I’ll hopefully pop in more often, I need to stop treating this like the town I grew up in. You go there every now and then just to not really think of it for some timee.

I think that a key difference for the purposes of this discussion is that continuance and direct causation can be known even without language. That said, I don’t know that any notion of, “First cause,” could be achieved without language. From a practical standpoint, “First Cause,” shouldn’t even matter as it does not change the situation at hand. Direct Cause does.

Imagine existence without language: You would see people grow older and die, then you would yourself notice that you are growing older. You would understand that your life is a continuance without even needing the word. In that sense, I consider the notion of continuance to be naturally-occurring in even the most primal sense.

Also, causation is a concept not a physical anything. That being the case, nothing can be, “Made,” of causation.

Which is why the Chinese refer to the Abramic religions as “ligament” (holding the mindless masses and muscle to the bone of Man).

Precisely … Urwright. :sunglasses:

Just because you cannot see nor pinpoint God does not mean that there is no God. It’s more “sensible” and “logical” that God slips under the radar of human perception and consciousness.

Rather than believing blindly, without evidence, in the existence of causes (and magical entities such as God) it’s better to ground your beliefs in reality, which is to say, in your prior observations.
Otherwise, you can never be proven wrong. You are right no matter what you say. You are right because you say you are right.

If your prior observations suggest that some event does not have a cause then it’s only natural to conclude that it has no cause.
It does not matter that it’s possible that you’re wrong.
Because it’s possible that you’re wrong about EVERYTHING.
And it does not matter that you WANT there to be a cause.
What we want to be the case is not necessarily what is the case.

There is no evidence that God exists.
But if we keep searching for it we will find it one day.
It’s important to be an optimist.
Don’t be a pessimist.
You need to keep the hope.
Just keep searching and one day you’ll find it.
And noone can prove you wrong.
Because no matter how much evidence there is against the idea that God exists there is still more evidence to be found in the future.
So it’s still possible that God exists.