Existential Causation

[Halc]

Perhaps one would rather just have animal instinct and enjoy eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating. What are the alternatives, I wonder?

How about doing something that makes the world a better place?

But that would involve the Will.

Well, so do eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating, and drawing breath. Just because animals do them doesn't mean that there's no will involved.
I'm not sure how you're using the term 'will' here if you think otherwise.

And you said most people don't worry about those kinds of things?

Your comment was "Our fixed need to know everything relative to self-consciousness". Since most people don't spend hours a week on a philosophy forum, yes, I'd say most people have given very little thought as to how self-consciousness works. It simply isn't a concern that affects their ability to go on with their lives, or to perhaps will to make the world a better place.

You know, qualitative properties of self-consciousness

Since you brought up yet another new term, I'd like to know what you think non-self consciousness would be. What does the 'self-' prefix meant to convey here?

[heracleitos]

I think that the notion of causality may even be too difficult to model in a complex system.

It probably makes more sense to evaluate if a particular state of the system is provable, i.e. predictable, from its theory, given the previous state of the system.

Pinpointing what exactly in the previous state did the trick, i.e. its cause, may not necessarily be possible. The next state may be the result of the entire previous state as a whole.

Therefore, I think that the notion of causality needs to be replaced by the notion of provability.

In for example, weather prediction systems, we do not use the notion of causality. There is no particular cause for changes in the weather. It is rather that a particular weather situation is likely to follow from a previous one.

[3017Metaphysician]

Perhaps one would rather just have animal instinct and enjoy eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating. What are the alternatives, I wonder?

How about doing something that makes the world a better place?

But that would involve the Will.

Well, so do eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating, and drawing breath. Just because animals do them doesn't mean that there's no will involved.
I'm not sure how you're using the term 'will' here if you think otherwise.

Let's see Halc...you told me earlier that most people don't worry about their "Will" as such, yet your desires are to make the "world a better place". ( Of course, not many would take exception to that idea.) But if you are denying the Will, what causes one to make the world a better place?

And you said most people don't worry about those kinds of things?

Your comment was "Our fixed need to know everything relative to self-consciousness". Since most people don't spend hours a week on a philosophy forum, yes, I'd say most people have given very little thought as to how self-consciousness works. It simply isn't a concern that affects their ability to go on with their lives, or to perhaps will to make the world a better place.

If you read the quote in context, self-consciousness, self-awareness and the like all correspond with one's Will to be and incite action. In this instance, the willing act or choice of making the world a better place. You point seems to be, if we are to make the world a better place, why should we bother? What's causing us to care? Is it their instinct?

You know, qualitative properties of self-consciousness

Since you brought up yet another new term, I'd like to know what you think non-self consciousness would be. What does the 'self-' prefix meant to convey here?

Sure. Basic self-awareness involves one's Will to be. As an example, existentially, the Will is that which can cause one to choose whether to live or die. But to your question, non-self-consciousness could mean several things. It could mean Fruedian unconsciousness (he likened it to the subconsciousness), or the opposite of our qualitative properties of the Will, or even a thing that has instinct which causes such behavior. Remember, emergent properties of instinct typically relate to birds flocking, swarming, or otherwise behaving in an instinctive way. You know, a biologically coded set of complex instructions where something behaves innately or instinctively... .

[Halc]

But that would involve the Will.

Well, so do eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating, and drawing breath.

But if you are denying the Will ...

What makes you think I deny the will? If I did, I wouldn't have suggested that eating and such involve it. Try to actually read my comments.

If you read the quote in context, self-consciousness, self-awareness and the like all correspond with one's Will to be and incite action.

What do you mean by 'correspond' here? The words don't all mean the same thing, so you probably don't mean that they do. They are all somewhat related, so it isn't much of an assertion to suggest that. I suspect you mean something else by this correspondence.

You point seems to be, if we are to make the world a better place, why should we bother?

If you read what I posted, that wasn't my point. It was simply a reply to one of your questions, an example of a goal that isn't just eating and pooping.

What is the 'self-' prefix (in self-consciousness) meant to convey here?

non-self-consciousness could mean several things. It could mean ...

You don't know how you're using it? Then unless you're just quoting somebody, you're admitting that you don't know what you're talking about.

[3017Metaphysician]

I think that the notion of causality may even be too difficult to model in a complex system.

It probably makes more sense to evaluate if a particular state of the system is provable, i.e. predictable, from its theory, given the previous state of the system.

Pinpointing what exactly in the previous state did the trick, i.e. its cause, may not necessarily be possible. The next state may be the result of the entire previous state as a whole.

Therefore, I think that the notion of causality needs to be replaced by the notion of provability.

In for example, weather prediction systems, we do not use the notion of causality. There is no particular cause for changes in the weather. It is rather that a particular weather situation is likely to follow from a previous one.

You may be referring to the distinctions between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Although deductive reasoning is the most secure form of reasoning (the so-called laws of the universe) it indeed has its limitations.

With respect to predictive systems, causality is related to determinism. As many would argue determinism carries the implication that the state of the world at one moment suffices to fix its state at a later moment. And because that later state fixes subsequent states, the conclusion is drawn that everything whichever happens in the future of the universe is completely determined by its present state.

One question would be that if the world is strictly deterministic, then all events are locked into a matrix of cause and effect. And that corresponds with the idea that all information needed to construct the past and future states of the world are folded into its present state. Of course quantum uncertainty ala Heisenberg changed all that... .

The universe really is indeterministic at its most basic level.

[3017Metaphysician]

But that would involve the Will.

Well, so do eating, sleeping, pooping, and procreating, and drawing breath.

But if you are denying the Will ...

What makes you think I deny the will? If I did, I wouldn't have suggested that eating and such involve it. Try to actually read my comments.

If you read the quote in context, self-consciousness, self-awareness and the like all correspond with one's Will to be and incite action.

What do you mean by 'correspond' here? The words don't all mean the same thing, so you probably don't mean that they do. They are all somewhat related, so it isn't much of an assertion to suggest that. I suspect you mean something else by this correspondence.

You point seems to be, if we are to make the world a better place, why should we bother?

If you read what I posted, that wasn't my point. It was simply a reply to one of your questions, an example of a goal that isn't just eating and pooping.

What is the 'self-' prefix (in self-consciousness) meant to convey here?

non-self-consciousness could mean several things. It could mean ...

You don't know how you're using it? Then unless you're just quoting somebody, you're admitting that you don't know what you're talking about.

Halc!

Not following you there. How is the need for eating, sleeping, pooping, the same as what causes one to make 'the world a better place' in which to live?

[Halc]

How is the need for eating, sleeping, pooping, the same as what causes one to make 'the world a better place' in which to live?

They're just different things which I might desire to do. Each serves a goal of sorts, but not the same goal.
I sense hunger, so I want to eat. Maybe I want to make a political point resulting in a will to not eat, such as Gandhi did.
Love to see him attempt the poop strike.

Sorry, I don't understand your confusion. Are those things not all things one might desire/choose to do, at a time of ones' choosing? How would any of them not be an act of will? It isn't specific to a human or even biology.

[heracleitos]

The universe really is indeterministic at its most basic level.

The theory of the universe does not even need to be indeterministic to be unpredictable.

To be incomplete is more than enough.

Godelian incompleteness alone already guarantees that the universe will be replete with facts that cannot be predicted.

Even the relatively simple world of natural numbers is already unpredictable, and filled with truths that are unprovable, while it is completely deterministic, as constructed from its perfectly known axioms.

[3017Metaphysician]

The universe really is indeterministic at its most basic level.

The theory of the universe does not even need to be indeterministic to be unpredictable.

To be incomplete is more than enough.

Godelian incompleteness alone already guarantees that the universe will be replete with facts that cannot be predicted.

Even the relatively simple world of natural numbers is already unpredictable, and filled with truths that are unprovable, while it is completely deterministic, as constructed from its perfectly known axioms.

Indeed. A strange mix of determinacy and indeterminacy, chance and choice, being and becoming. Process philosophy speaks to much of that... .