It's Systemic, Stupid

Tonight, we're going to talk about my arch-nemesis, David Hume. Yeah, I know he's been dead for a couple centuries. Doesn't matter. You don't have to be alive to be my arch-nemesis! I'm very open-minded.

'sides, if he were alive, I'd probably poke him in the eye with a hot french fry. Such is the fate that awaits my enemies!

So Hume was a jackass and started this big ruckus about how causality isn't actually a thing, it's just "conjunction," which basically means that while event A comes before event B, in such a way that we perceive A to cause B, it doesn't. It just happens that, every time so far that we've observed A, we then observe B. The human mind draws a correlation that isn't really there.

Obviously, I call shenanigans... which, I think, is starting to become a theme of this blog, funnily enough. I apparently enjoy calling shenanigans.

So anyway. Hume's most infamous example is that of two billiard balls, one of which strikes another. Kinetic energy, physics, all that jazz comes into play, but you cannot point to anything contained within ball A - or even ball B, or anything at all, really - that is the causality. It's just not there. There is no thing in A that makes it a causal thing.

Which is, admittedly, an interesting observation. But I don't like where Hume takes it - that causality isn't real - because that just seems bonkers.

I have tried several times, over the past few years, to debunk this particular interpretation of the world. Only one of my professors has ever given me anything close to a satisfactory answer, and that relied on the PSR - the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Which basically said that we've gathered enough empirical evidence for causality to say that causality is a thing.

Hume's response to that, of course, is that that's bogus - we can't base belief in causality on causality! It's circular logic. Which is a position I totally agree with. You cannot rely on the PSR to find causality for you. You've got to do it another way.

The answer, I believe, is twofold: one part relies on metaphysics, and the other on changing our perception of what it means for a thing to be causal.

Metaphysics, per Kant, is defined as synthetic a priori. Synthetic, because the predicate is not contained in the subject; a priori, because you don't need empirical evidence to prove that the statement is true. Metaphysics is a problematic thing in philosophy-land, because there are cogent arguments that it's not even a thing that exists. Building our story of causality off of such shaky foundations isn't very cool, but I'm down with metaphysics, so long as we're not talking noumenal worlds and whatnot.

Stuff like math is in the domain of metaphysics. 5 + 7 = 12; twelve is not in the subject, and you don't need to have seen the solution to know what it is (that is, if I threw a math problem at you that you hadn't solved before, you could solve it, because of the principles of mathematics; the subject doesn't contain the predicate). Of course, one could argue that mathematics is just a bunch of tautologies in pretty packaging (and thus analytic, not synthetic)... but I digress.

So anyway. Metaphysics is one angle, because metaphysical statements are meaningful statements (not tautologous) and don't require empirical evidence. If we can make a definition of causality that is metaphysical, we've solved our problem.

But Hume raises a good point, in that objects themselves don't have causal power. I'm down with that, but we need to explain how causality can arise, then, if not from objects.

Thus we bring forth one of the most powerful concepts ever devised: systems.

Any statement regarding causality will only make sense in regards to a given system. For instance, in the real world, crashing two hydrogen atoms together releases a boatload of energy and produces a helium atom. Fusion is a causal process.

Systems have two primary components: objects that dwell within them, and rules that govern how those objects behave and interact. We do not, for instance, crash two hydrogen atoms together and get a banana. We get a helium atom and a bucket of energy. The universe - the system this event is happening in - has rules for what happens when you perform a particular action.

The best analogy I can conceive of is that of a massive program. The universe is this monstrous construct, filled to the brim with objects of ridiculous variety and capability. The interactions of those objects are governed by a series of relatively simple rules, given the complexity available to the objects in-system. The universe is "aware" of the states of each object within it; it can - and does - track all of this information seamlessly and flawlessly.

Causality is part of the ruleset the universe works with. It is as much a facet of our existence as gravity or electromagnetism. Just as the universe ensures that the gravity rule is applied to all relevant objects and their interactions, so, too, does it ensure that causality is applied.

Because, really, all causality is, is this: okay, event A happened. What happens next? The universe draws information from the objects involved in the event, performs whatever calculations need performing, then sends this information back, and the objects are modified accordingly.

If you were able to be aware of all the factors involved in a given event, aware of all the variables, and aware of the precise ways in which those variables and factors influenced the end result, you would be able to perfectly predict the outcome, with no need for knowing what it would actually be. Chaos theory and uncertainty principle and such aside, if you had omniscence regarding all factors in an event, you would know - without a shadow of a doubt - what the outcome would be.

Why? Because all causality is is the application of the universe's rules to a situation. If a billiard ball strikes another, the other must move, due to transfer of energy, kinetics, gravity, etc etc, all those wonderful billions of various factors - both huge and tiny - that play into it. The universe says so. And if you understood all of the factors involved, you can predict with absolute perfect certainty what the next link in the causal chain will look like.

With causality, it's not enough to just look at one object, or even two, or three. You have to understand the system this event is happening in, understand all the variables involved, understand that the universe isn't just a backdrop, but an active participant in everything that occurs.

One day, I am going to for-serious prove this, rather than just rant and rave about how wrong Hume is, and it'll be awesome.