[MD] Free Will (causation and the problem of induction)

[Steven Peterson]

Matt, all,


> Matt said:
> Oh.  I guess I don't think causation implies certainty.  You might say
> that in my set-up of how stuff works, I incorporate "the uncertainty
> of life" at a different level.  A causal relationship itself doesn't imply
> certainty, because certainty only comes up for persons attempting to
> adjudicate questions of causality.  "Hey Bob, did Sally cause Steve's
> death?"  "Oh, yeah, I'm certain of it because I saw her do it!"  The
> causal relationship itself doesn't establish certainty, but rather the
> certainty of a causal relationship is established by something else
> (e.g., observational evidence).
>
> Matt:
> The idea of a "causal chain," I want to say, does not--by itself--give
> you certainty (and because you need something else, say
> observational evidence, that's why it does not by itself imply it).  In
> saying the relation is "law-like," I take that to mean that if P obtains,
> then if "if P, then Q" is true/obtains, then Q necessarily obtains.  It's
> law-like, or mechanistic in that way.  _However_, because I also
> take the status of "P obtains" and "'if P, then Q' is true/obtains" to be
> _challengable_ (another way of saying that this is where I place the
> _adjudication_ of certainty), the law-like nature of a causal relation
> does not seem to me to deny freedom.  All a "causal relation" charts,
> as I define it, is _responsibility_.  And responsibility is a necessary
> precondition of assigning moral responsibility (so it seems to me), so
> that's why I said the thing about causal chains being necessary for
> moral reasoning and also saw what Dennett was awkwardly saying
> by supposing that moral reasoning requires one to be a determinist
> (because, I take it, he can't mean what you mean by determinist).
...One's _predictive_
> capabilities based on the concept of causal _laws_ is, I take it, a
> separate issue (that concept being derivative from the general
> notion of a causal relation).

Steve:
I think whether the issue with regard to causation or determinism
comes up as problematic is whether one thinks of causation as an
epistemological issue (certainty/uncertainty) or as somehow
ontological/metaphysical (things actually follow laws that can be
spelled out or are otherwise written into the fabric of the cosmos).
When the "law-like" issue comes up it is because someone is thinking
of causation as a universal obligation rather than a causal law being
merely descriptive and therefore innocuous as far as stealing our
humanity in some metaphysical way. In the MOQ, causality is an
intellectual pattern concerned with predicting and controlling our
world. It has epistemological rather than ontological standing. How
could getting better at predicting and controlling the world make us
less human? But if causality is thought to be a metaphysical reality
then we may worry about really being nothing but meat puppets.

While on the topic of causation, does the MOQ have anything
interesting to say about Hume's (or whoever's) problem of induction?
(How can we know that the past is any guide to the future? In the past
it has been, but to use that as justification for expecting it to be
in the future is begging the question.)

Best,
Steve