Paul Davies - What is Causation?
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In a 'billiard-ball world' of Newtonian science, causation was obvious-things had to touch each other in space and a cause always had to precede an effect. But quantum mechanics destroys such notions. What then is causation? Moreover, must causes always be physical? Is 'mental causation' a coherent concept? What about 'top-down causation'?
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Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Paul Davies is my favorite scientist, he always has something thought provoking to say that makes me realize that in the bigger picture we understand very little
I think I love you.
Paul Davies: "..the truth is we don't know how to incorporate mental processes into our scientific descriptions...." "..we're struggling to come up with a way to identify what gives rise to consciousness..." "...what we think of as our "will" is part of those mental processes already, so we have trouble identifying the beginning of that causal chain." (in Biology)..you are coupling all levels of scale and structure, and you simply cannot give a consistent description of what's going on from the bottom level alone." Straight talk on causation, I love it!
i want an example of something we cannot give a consistent description of from a bottom up reductionist point of view but we can with a top down... thats not just an argument to ignorance
@@robertsaget9697, Davies gives the example of weightlessness causing the genes in bacteria to change phenotype expressions.
@@earthjustice01
I agree he asserts that but i dont follow. what is unexplained or inconsistent about that from a bottom up description? What becomes consistent with a top down?
@@robertsaget9697 In one sense I agree with you. on an atomic or even quantum level the curvature of spacetime might determine how and when genes express their phenotypes. But if we are talking about the feedback loops that happen in living systems, then what he is saying makes more sense, because the causality seems to be circular and we can't identify a bottom, a starting point.
@@earthjustice01
ok so you seem to now be saying that you don't see anything inconsistent about a reductionist view of phenotype expression. But you move onto a completely different example of feedback loops having no starting point. But that has noting to do with this claim that a bottom up reductionist view is inconsistent for some things.
I'm partial to holist and top down causation but I'm rather upset that when push comes to shove examples of such things (or problems with reductionism) seem to be back by nothing but empty promises that evaporate upon examination.
Causation is correlation with explanation. If A is always followed by B, and you can say why, that's causation. 🙂
The thrown stone not causing the window to break at the level of individual atoms makes no sense, because "break" isn't a term applicable to individual atoms.
A good conversation!!!!
I believe what Paul is referring to with top down/bottom up is forward time and backward time. I think both forms of time were created at Big Bang and indicate that the universe must have a finite existence in time, otherwise I don't see how Backward Time would kick in. If Forward Time were infinite, then Backward Time would have no starting point. Paul is a very good speaker and on the right track.
I really like listening Prof. Davies, he appears to me not only a brilliant scientist but also an English gentleman
Prof. Davies is Australian, not English.
@@danzigvssartre Pretty much the same I guess 😂
@@danzigvssartre Paul was born on 22 April 1946, and was brought up in Finchley, London. He was for a while resident in Australia, but he is an Englishman.
Paul Davies is indeed a gentleman and a scholar. Like Lisa Randall, he never comes across dogmatic often qualifying his position on a topic.
Thank you for the show. Now like always this is just my opinion. I think you hit it out of the park with this one. Because it is about causation, this cause and effect. This positive and negative and the dynamics of happening in this cycle of back and forth within these electromagnetic fields. We're really describing the approximately the same thing, but giving it a different name whether we call causation because causation has to have an effect, or whether on a smaller scale a charge between a positive and negative. But not all of causation or the effect necessarily happening all at the same time because force can be applied. It is Newton's third law; we do have a simultaneously reaction for every reaction, but it is parts of a reaction that don't necessarily happen, or appear at the same time, because there is force and it can affect what appears to be seen, for instance, the measuring of consciousness, force, can effect the reaction, the same for the action. There is spooky action at a distance, but there would have to be spooky reaction at a distance. There are so many parts from A to Be and those all in between. There are so many "quote" speeds with which things happen and they are not all physical, those which can be seen, like from A to Be. The changing of states of all matter which happen at frequency. And they happen in these electromagnetic fields of the universe, the electromagnetic fields of the solar system, the body human. The speed of light is another frequency of happening, but a different speed. The speed of sound, which is a type of light, but has a different frequency of happening. These electromagnetic fields can come in any flavor of force, in any size and the gravity of any situation is one. The Schumann's resonance of frequently, of frequency of life for many. The changing of a photon of light from Wave to Particle. And it, can precede other happening because of a speed and not be so seen, so understood. In other words called Retro Causality. That part of Spooky action at a distance before necessarily seen as in the thought of getting the hand to move. And that we can't necessarily see all these things happening in these electromagnetic fields of the earth, and the sun, and our solar system, the universe. Such as the changing of states of matter which can precede other states of happening because of speed and not be seen in this spectrum of Causation, cause and effect, Newton's third law motion, all really being one and the same, but given different definitions of where they appear in space. But they are all the steps to manifest. Because it is all these steps to get to the matter we see. Like the making of Hydrogen. Like the making of oxygen from hydrogen or the making of water or the process of making water which must to happen in reverse too. Frequency happens in a back and forth. Frequency is cyclical and can even be called something quite differently at a different time, like history repeats. Cause and effect happens in a back and forth with the use of force, energy, thought, and light. If a photon of light goes from wave to particle then it happens in reverse too. This process of back and forth, happens with all waves the parts of the physical we see. And these waves entangle and become particles, the particles become the atoms, parts of the physical we see. But then too this happens in reverse too because of the cycling of these electromagnetic fields. But we know that because of speed, frequency that many states of happening can precede other states of be like neutrinos, they can go right through other states of happening, not only because of there state of wave, but because of frequency, speed. And what you have on Earth as of anywhere is all the states of happening.
But we know it is happening at different speeds in these electromagnetic fields. The different states of what really matters.
Um sentimento( feeling) que excita a mente na constituicao de seu simbolo escrito para uma linguagem propria do processo cujo final voce pode dizer "eu estou aqui nesse mundo e posso dizer, no direito, sim ou não ao seu argumento.
O fato de vc levantar a mão,no contexro consciente é a resposta de um movto mental. Mas são independentes que trabalham juntos.
Just as memories are brought from past into present, are minds bringing thoughts from the present to the future to anticipate actions? What might enable mind to bring thoughts from present into the future?
Mr Davies understands metaphysics very well.
He also understands Biology very well even though not a ‘Biologist’. He commands the complete overview better than any I’ve witnessed in this entire series of CTT professional interviews.
Paul Davies clearly explains our limited understanding of life.
Some people can't even see the obvious part of life that is right before them. I had one guy say that life was no different than anything else in the universe and had to follow the same laws. He couldn't see that life is actively using the laws to their own purpose while all the rest of the dead stuff was just reacting to whatever happened. Same laws, different outcomes.
Matter exists imperceptibly as incomplete information until choices made by living beings add information and thereby manifest a particular object.
Could causation lead to time which in turn leads to an effect, with classic observers seeing patterns of cause to effect, but not seeing time bringing the cause to the effect? Maybe there is a time chain between each cause and effect that is not observed classically?
"How can thought move matter" astonishing!!
That stuck with me as well. Ive watched thousands of CTT videos but that simple line probably hit me the hardest
the fact that we don't "see" and "understand/decrypt" the electrical/chemical impulses from which thoughts emerge as a configuration of signals doesn't change the fact that they're physical matter themselves, so it's just matter moving matter in the end
@Luigi - And so there is no thought process involved?! Is that all, then? Just matter moving matter?
@@nikotsiopinis9909 sure there's thoughts, who said otherwise? Just saying they're a configuration of electrical/chemical impulses in brains, in the same way that poetry is a configuration of ink stains on paper...
@Luigi - R u really saying that thoughts are nothing more than electrochemical impulses in the brain's cortex as much as poetry is ink scribbles on paper?
To bring a memory forward in time, does that memory have to go backward in space?
On an individual cellular level, as the speaker suggests we look... does an exploded cell ever self assemble and then put off metabolic nutrients in reverse and then shrink, and then fuse with another cell into one, undergo reverse mitosis, then release more atp and shrink again?
Do cell wall proteins get eaten by cell machinery and then unraveled and inserted into a ribosome, producing a molecular "printout" of RNA which then gets transported over to DNA and is then matched to a gene and then disassembled?
Yeah, no. That makes no sense.
Is thinking about the future to anticipate a later present action a form of backward causality?
very good
Whatever is an impelling force that maintains and manifest phenomena represents causation.
Descartes diz que a ligacao entre o movto mental de um processo e seu correspondente processo celebral e cientifico é realizado pela pineal, o centro de gravidade dos processos celebrais.
To be meaningful in looking into the cause and effect I suppose one should restrict to 1 individual independent even at one time. We may observe the flying broken glass caused by a macro explosion even but what we did not observe the sequence and how many micro evens involved that lead to end result. Similarly the case of light emitting and the absorbing should be looked as 2 separate events if to one to have a true insight.
I think causation Begins with our memories and ends at our expectations which creates a very narrow window in this universe Which then implies that causation and effect are simply localized deceptions of meaning . In building an atomic bomb for instance , If the result turns out exactly as planned, that may be The same thing as the goal ( explosion) being the cause and the planner being the effect. I think with reality being complete, it’s impossible to have cause-and-effect because there’s no room left to move things Around
Since space-time measures causation, does causation bring time and space together?
If time and space are 270 degree segments then added the overlap is causation at 90 degrees, if divided down the middle the butterfly shows. This says "can't get back to symmetry" and "I'm the real cause".
If you read the first premise of the Kalam you should get the hiccups now 😊
Panpsychism does seem like the best solution to the mind-body problem.
What would be different in a rock with consciousness? Only life can be conscious since it is an experience, and you need an experiencer to have experience.
@@caricue We'll ALWAYS have biased view of rocks because even though the human body typically has a full life cycle of bones (calcium). Our consciousness is not directly shared with our skeleton even though we are composed of mostly rocks (carbon). The nerve fibers (Carbon) are inseparable from bones (Calcium) and all our organs and tissue require somatic cells that are composed mostly of carbon rock and hydrogen (protein).
Do these minerals and bones have experience? I rightly can't say because it's so alien to my own experience of consciousness.
Does carbon have consciousness? I guess it depends on how much you have and in what way it's organized from my perspective. I realize my bias and survival instinct would probably be better served if I didn't think of myself as a complicated rock even though that's what life is.
The real problem with consciousness is that's it's unobservable. That's why it is impossible to explain with mathematics. There's nothing to count! It's an inferred property since the only way we know we are conscious is because we can ask each other.
We can't talk to rocks at this time to confirm. Unless the rock you're talking to is a complicated assortment of rocks. 🤔
@@josedanielherrera7115 The first thing they teach you in Biology 101 is that life is just chemistry. It is nothing special and you are never allowed to even question this article of faith unless you want the career killing accusation of mysticism applied to you in big bright letters. This has been the way for over 100 years, and yet, somehow, supposed "scientists" can openly propose actual mysticism in the form of Panpsychism and be taken seriously. I don't believe there is some magical Vital Force animating matter, but it is easy to see, if you care to look, that science has no idea what is really going on in a living organism. What Biology has learned is breathtaking and impossibly intricate, and yet, they have barely scratched the surface, so talking about a phenomena that can only be found in a living organism as if it can just float around in dead matter is kind of outrageous. IMHO
@@caricue The assumption it can only be found in complicated carbon is outrageous.
I don't assume there's some mystical vital force, that's spiritualism. You're confused.
@@josedanielherrera7115 You didn't seem to get my point exactly. This format is quite limited. It isn't an assumption that consciousness is only found in living beings, it is an observation. I don't consider us "complicated carbon" so I definitely wouldn't make that particular assumption in any case. On this planet, all life is carbon based, so there isn't any other kind of life to include, but the point is that life is what is a mystery, not consciousness, and if you accept this, then panpsychism becomes unnecessary.
My point about Vitalism was in reference to the original sin of Biology, it had nothing to do with you. In fact, none of this has anything to do with you. My battle is with the field of Biology and its dogmatic insistence that life is totally understood ever since someone made Urea in the laboratory.
In this world everything has at least one cause and produces at least one effect that becomes the cause of something else. Here even love has at least one cause.
Why not just go all the way like a true determinist, and say, everything that is happening in one moment causes everything that will happen in the next moment. You've already dipped your toe into sophistry and metaphysics, just dive in already.
@@caricue Free will is a very effective cause.
Cause and Effect VS Effect and Cause.
"I" (the subject of knowledge) am always bigger than everything you can demonstrate on to me, "I" am like invisible. That's the difficulty with self recognition, that it is exactly about the (in principal) invisible. Life, the subject of knowledge, can never appear in science. Science is its tool for self intervention for reason of self transformation and realization.
One thing for sure, causation is not one in the same with reaction. That's a certainty.
What is caucasian?
Uma celula sozinha tem um significado diferente quando dentro do seu meio.
I'm a scientist, but I have to say one thing..
God is the causation of all that is glorious and good!
Somebody has to say it..
Possibly true. At least by philosophical means.
Bad, an element of a event is not the relation among one and the other.
So interesting to that we have actually believed that we are fundamentally physical beings and now are trying to fit consciousness into the physical experience. This is almost comical. I’m very intelligent wonderful well-meaning people falling into the trap
Reality is that amazing blue shirt he is wearing.
Causal is only relevant in human perception of time, size and mass. When you go to the very large or very small (from the perspective of human) causation doesn’t make sense.
Causation barely makes sense at the human level, and most people are really talking about control, which is a totally human construct.
@@caricue Good point, if it doesn’t exist at the fundamental of physical, its unlikely it happens at the Goldilocks region called humanity.
WOW… 2:00-3:00…
Portanto um evento mecanico não justifica e não pode ser usado na construcao do argumento.
The clou is that we already know everything, the rest what we don't know is only something like "technics" 😉
What is causation? Paul Davis just grew a mustache like his idol Albert Einstein. At some point he did not like his mustache no more so he got rid of it.
Law of Karma in Religion.
Law of Physics in Science.
Law of Cause and Effect in layman's term.
Nothing can come from nothing.
Nothing can never become something.
Also, Everything has goals and purposes.
What is the goal of a rock?
@@aaron2709 pebbles.
@@10002One A random outcome is not a goal.
Why is anything moving in a first place, the short answer would be, because it's impossible to stand still. There you have it, causation is a natural effect of physical actions, emerging from the property of constant motion.
Nothing is a solid geometric body, so stuff can't touch each other, it's all a play of fields and vibrations. Including gravity, if we accept the idea gravity waves are real and mass emerges form Higgs particles. Space-time should be treated somehow special, since we don't know much about how dimensionality is formed.
There's that problem called relativity, it's not clear if relativity is the same as causality, since we don't understand quantum gravity. Is the world causal or relativistic, there might be no such thing on the bottom level of reality.
Then we have this problem of the edges, reality is not infinite in all directions, matter, space and time ends at some level. This mean there must be physical causes without any physical feedback.
Why do we hear the sound, everything is submerged in an atmospheric gas fluid, made from molecules of air. When some surface begins to vibrate very fast, this motion is transferred to molecules and tinny fields are carrying momentum around. It's incredible how fast molecules reacts, suspended in the air by their nuclear forces. Sound vibrations can have many effects, living creatures can perceive vibrations as noise, disturbance of some sort, but it can also transfer property of information. Music can preserve and induce human emotions, sound can be coded into meaningful symbols.
So causality doesn't end with physical actions, or they don't always dissolve in a physical noise, symbols can be preserved over time, can spread influence over any reasonable distances. It's like something can escape our physical dimension simply because we share the same ideological mind field. But what is an ideology, how can stuff coded as an information cause any physical influences, beyond it's physical reach?
This is where we should start talking about life, what does he mean by bacteria in space, so we have this life being very, tinny and large lumps of organic cellular structures everywhere over the surface of our planet. So we have those colossal and chaotic cosmic physical events, causing tiny living processes that do not react to physical forces as a normal matter. Humans are driven by self-induced thoughts, emerging from living dreams and imagination, often caused by nothing at all. There are places where causality and physics breaks, but still preserve observable and meaningful forces. But we already know this is true, the universe can do magic under certain conditions, when things are very small and lasts only for a brief moment.
I came home late from bowling--the Ex Wife refused sexual relations--"causality"
Smart.
Our psychological causality is EGO!!!
No ato real é criado sua imagem em funcao do mundo real e o sua simetria o mundo iamagem.
Creation is not causation. Something out of nothing is not something out of something else. Life is not matter.
Hume dismissed causation as nothing other than constant conjunction, a relationship in time: sequentiation; rather than a necessary connection, a relationship of matter in space, such as a rope between two objects.
For human beings there are two kinds of causation the something out of something else which is Hume's necessary connection. A genealogical causation leading to a first cause or several first causes.
The other causation is contingent connection: constant, or perceived constant, conjunction. This is the causation of the scientist and his "initial conditions". This is the theoretical causation configured by relativity theory, quantum theory and others. Although it has evidentiary confirmation the evidence is always combined (constantly conjoined) with certain apparatus and procedure.
Both causations leads to a creator because both causes is something out of something else. The creator in constant conjunction is the observer or experimental designer. The creator in necessary connection is Nature, genes and the viral or non-viral connections between them: things in themselves and their relationships.
Creation: something out of nothing, is just that creation. Strangely no creator necessary. Or, if any, none perceivable by the senses or the mind: consciousness or self-consciousness.
🌴😎💯
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear-George Orwell.
Philosophy must find a way out of dicotomy. It is important subject to go on and on. Something is not nothing.
Causation are undertermined in fundament phisch biology. Conscienceness Not show up how picture phiscs . Therefore Paul are explaining what he dont know.
Consciousness is the ability of existence to know that it exists !!!! If existence cannot come from non existence , existence has always been here. Eternal existence !!!!!!!!! There must consciousness for existence to exist . There is no GOD, just eternal conscious existence. This is who created our life and our universe !!!!!!! We, you and I are only vehicles that consciousness drives around in. Consciousness does not come from us , it is all around us !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The tree spoke: I am the eternal life!
And yes, for that Life, transforming and realizing itself, we are something like "living building bricks", and everybody has to work for that goal, even if you don't want that. "God" is the Life ("I am the life!"), God is that unassailable and invisible "subject of knowlege". And "God" also means the point in far future where life will have fully realized itself ("I am what I will be!"). "God" is the point in far far future, explained with Max Planck, where religion and science will meet - at their common goal! ✌️
Doesn't even Causation need a beginning? The newest concept of A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING opens the door for God's entrance also. But let's keep guessing and postulating.
Science can only recognize a sector or spectrum of causality (functions), not the full causality, explained with Kant, science is a shortened, shadowed or dimmed thinking.
God was bored and lonely one day so he gave himself the gift of infinite personality disorder.
That's essentially open individualism
If "God" is what evolves, means the life that once will have fully realized itself, then it would possibly want everything again, like Nietzsches "eternal return of the same".
The phrase from Tesla " if you like to know the secret......"you have take it scientific mind....but, are others kinds of " mind" you never considered and usually you kill impiusly , or in bad mood guided from.... don't want to know....
Um movto não é materia.
Determinism
These academics are going to look so foolish in the near future when truth comes and they realize they weren’t even close.
Karma
It all starts with god? 😛
Darwinism says evolution is purposeless and so why should there be causation?
Purposelessness followers, generally scientist extremists,explain climate change is purposeless- is it?
But science has nothing to do with the truth, nothing to do with the sense, nothing to do with the reason, can never answer one metaphysical question (question about the whole), science is not self recognition, can not see the real living (subject of knowledge can never appear in science), science is not full thinking (its a shortened, dimmed, shadowed thinking), science is not even world explanation, it is self intervention for reason of self transformation and realization! 😉