Is Cause and Effect Determined?

Cause and Effect

Take a look at a TV interview - say a news interview with the interviewer and the guest. They talk and discuss things. Questions get asked and answered. They bounce off each other and dive deeper into the subject of the interview.

How can this situation be determined? Yet it must be.

A determined interaction cannot be a logical interaction because it is determined by laws of physics. It does not unfold due to the “logical reasoning” of the participants.

Yet something is going on - as if individual minds are conversing according to their own free will, exploring and creating their own meanings.

Forgetting the content of the conversation, you have two people engaged in communication. That is exchanging information back and forth using sound waves and visual body language. Information is transmitted from each person and received by the other person, and processed, then responded to. This could be seen as deterministic because each message is received and processed, triggering an automatic response given the receiver’s state of mind and body at the time.

But what about the influence that each person has on the other as they share their views, concerns and arguments or disagreements. This appears to suggest the conversation could go anywhere, and that what person 1 was about to say is suddenly influenced by what person 2 just said.

But this doesn't defeat determinism, this is determinism. It still is determinism

There is always only one result, one thing that occurs in each moment, and it is always determined by something, actually by everything. The events in this moment are caused by the events in the last moment and they cause the events in the next moment. There is only one thing happening. (The wave function of the universe)

My thoughts, or yours, about the difficulty of accepting determinism and the vacillating between beliefs seems to be the very opposite of determinism. But it’s not. It too is determined. Those thoughts and feelings of uncertainty, confusion, doubt and certainty are also totally determined.  They come from a vast unfolding of determined mental events as well as actions, experiences, genetics, evolution of planets, galaxies and the universe. Every event is determined as it unfolds.

So in our interview at each moment of exchange between the interviewer and the guest there is a determined result. And the next question or response is triggered by the last interaction.

The guest is primed with the past discussion and their own memory and knowledge and a new unanticipated question by the interviewer will trigger the next new response. It is a response determined by the state of every molecule of the guest at the time.

It’s as if you were typing into your computer and it searched or calculated and responded with an exact, determined response. Except you realise you are the other computer receiving the information, searching and responding with your own next exact determined response. Your  interaction with the computer is determined by its state and your state, which were also determined since the beginning of time.

And it’s  not just your interaction with the computer, it’s your interaction with everything, the entire universe.

You, the computer, the interviewer and the guest are all part of one thing unfolding. All unfolding as they must because all matter in the universe is determined. One thing happening - the quantum wave function.

Everything Causing Everything

On hearing the Noisy Minor bird warning call - probably due to a hawk’s presence, Instead of viewing it as: “ the noisy minor sees the hawk and decides to warn its companions by shrieking”.

It can also (or more correctly),  be seen as the hawk’s presence as causing the warning call in the noisy minor.

No decision is needed here, only the determined unfolding of events. A finger pushes a button. A hawk triggers a warning call. The output is caused by the input. This can be in a bird call or human conversation, or in a striking snake, or a mathematical solution.

So how does that apply to say, me? Well. you could say that everything causes me to respond. External, internal, body, mind. They all cause me to respond (act). There really is no such thing as response, only action. Or you could say response is action. And action is response.

Everything causes me to act, and those causes are caused by everything. It’s one thing happening:  a universal flow.

Unbroken Causal Chain

Everything  is cause and effect and thus all is determined by what came before.

You, at this present moment, are the effect of previous causes and hence those previous causes determine what you do now, and what you do next.

You are a continuous effect and not in any way a cause of things. Your mind thinks it is a cause of things, but those thoughts are caused by previous events. Your mind thinks your body causes things, but that thought, along with all body actions, are also caused by previous events.

You, your body and all the universe is an unbroken causal chain that has, and  needs, no extra input from anywhere, to be like it is.

Sensible Choice-Not

There is nowhere in human interaction for sensible choice. Only for no choice. Any interaction that looks like it could go in any direction, can only go where it’s determined.

The outcome was decided before the interaction began. And before that. And before that.

Only the Flow

You can’t really do anything with a belief in determinism. The you that believes it, is determined, as is any thing that you would do. 

There appears to be a cause and effect chain of events, and there is, but each cause is determined by previous causes and each effect becomes the next cause. In the continuum of time, cause and effect are the same thing. You can’t pick out a single cause or effect because each is both. Every event is both a cause and an effect. 

So really, there is no cause and effect - only the flow!

Downward Causation

Given the physics there is no process that could allow top down causation. Such as a mind thinking a thought spontaneously, and that thought causing action in the world. 

There really is no “top” for the top down causation to occur. Any thought is caused by previous physical events. Mind is brain, and thought consists of electro-chemical events. Thought is the result of physical processes, not the cause of them.

Thought does not suddenly appear out of nowhere and boss the world around. Thought has a cause and that thought has a cause and so on all the way back to the beginning of things.

The feeling of freedom to think anything and to possess free will are powerful illusions that also have causes. These causes are rooted in evolution and natural selection and to do with increasing survival and reproduction.

Bottom Up

The evolution of the universe can only have happened by bottom up causation, because there is nothing else. Maybe some random events as well, which appear randomly, but then immediately join the causal chain as bottom up causes. Downward causation is not a thing. It is an idea thought up by bottom up causation. 

Even though human minds and bodies do things that appear to be autonomous and volitional, that is an illusion.

Bottom up causes are still making the whole thing happen every moment. Even when I decide to build a house and get a hammer and a saw, and go about doing it, that process is flowing from the beginning of time. It feels like my choices and actions are doing it, but I am not the cause of the house being built. I am the effect of the universe, which leads to a house being built, by a human that was built.

Down is Also Up

Can downward causation be a reality? Can my mind/thinking cause me to act and cause changes in the world? Or does the world cause my thinking (determinism) which is part of bottom up causation?

Does the universe create autonomous agents which then sever connections with universal cause and effect and independently exert forces and changes in the world?

Not likely! “Autonomous agents” are still the result of particle determinism and any effects they would cause in the world (if they existed) would be caused by determinism acting through them according to the laws of nature. 

There are no downward causing agents, only upward causation operating through various formations of determined particles - e.g. humans or viruses.

The Natural Unfolding

There is an idea of downward causation that describes something created in the macro world, like a personal will, that can affect or change, the environment, itself, and others.

But the personal will, or “I” or “me” had to come from somewhere. It is as material as the rest of the mind/brain and was created by an upward train of events, or causation. Its make up dictates how it will act and so the whole behaviour of the personal will is the result of previous states of the brain and the environment.

There is only upward causation, if that’s what you want to call it. You could also call it the natural unfolding of the universe in time.

Everything Causes You

You never actually cause anything. You are an effect. Everything causes you and what you do, and then what you do may be a stepping stone to the next effect.

But you don’t do anything yourself for that to happen, and it happens frequently. In every moment.

Nothing to Do

The fact is there’s nothing to do. It’s being done, every second. It’s being done before you think about it, because that thought is also being done.

Anything you do, is done by the universe, already. It’s already done, before you know it. Then knowing it is already done before you know it.

Life unfolds, then you come later.