From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 20:57:38 MST
Well, I heard from John Clark, and he has mellowed since the
old days when he defiantly proclaimed "A causes B means
exactly nothing more than A always comes before B". But
since I was so thoroughly trounced by him (back in the old
days) when I tried to argue against that, I will now defend
it. Maybe I will lose again.
gts writes
> Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
>
> > That is obviously not true. If A-> B and C-> B, then either C or A...
>
> We're not discussing truth tables here.
I agree.
> My statement was about causality. I believe it is true for all
> conventional purposes, though it does seem to break down at the
> quantum level, as sceir pointed out.
For the record, gts's statement was (pant, pant)
If event A causes event B then event A
certainly does occur before event B in
time, unless and until someone proves
that faster than light communications
are possible.
> After hearing from Lee in email, I think that he actually opened this
> thread to discuss something completely different.
No, I heard from yet *another* sometime participant to these
chats who wanted to know more about the claim that "A causes
B means exactly---nothing more, nothing less---that A always
comes before B". But list shyness is becoming endemic.
> He's curious about the fact that A can always come
> before B but not be the cause of B. [That was in
> the old days---I now have a counter-argument.] In
> those terms A can be a *necessary condition* for B,
> such that A always occurs before B but yet does not
> cause B.
Well, then I (now) would say that if A *always* comes
before B, what right to we have to say that A is not
the cause of B? ("Always" is a powerful adverb.)
> For example one cannot see the stars unless one first has eyes to see,
> but having eyes to see does not cause one to see the stars. Eyesight is
> a necessary condition but not a cause.
We are talking about events, events of some type or other.
The claim was about events of type A always preceding
events of type B in time. Not conditions.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:14 MST