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Cyan comments on Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism - Less Wrong
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Focusing on names, and on the contingency of the names we give things, or whether we even notice them for long enough to give them a name, is a great way to shrug off "metaphysical" problems like this.
P.J. Eby, are you really saying there's no such thing as cause and effect? That the smashing of the glass on the floor has nothing to do with the dropping of it the moment before?
Judea Pearl's perspective on this question is that causality is best viewed as an intervention originating from outside the system in question, and not as a mode of behavior within that system. In this view, causality is related to counterfactual queries we might ask about the system, e.g., if an intervention had forced situation X, would Y have occurred? Because the intervening agent always stands outside the system, causality is always relative to where we draw the boundary around the system, and thus is not a property of reality.