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commonlaw comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong
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Mainstream status:
The introduction to causality is intended to be bog-standard. All departures from mainstream academia are errors and should be flagged accordingly.
I can't particularly recall hearing anyone suggest that a universe is a connected fabric of causes and effects in the Pearlian sense of causality. Since Special Relativity there have been many suggestions that a universe is a connected fabric of 'events', or points in spacetime.
I can't particularly recall reading that you can only meaningfully talk about things you can find by tracing causal links (this theory will be developed further in upcoming posts).
When you make this claim about the universe's ontology, it isn't clear whether you mean the is of identity or predication. Are you saying that the things constituting the universe are parts of a connected fabric of causes and effects or that the universe is reducible to causes and effects. The first claim is a standard part of conventional materialism (Pearl's recent contributions notwithstanding). The second claim is one that's set out in Alexander Bird's recent book Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and Properties.
This is a somewhat radical program in that it proposes reducing structural properties to dispositional. Are you or aren't you proposing that (for example) squareness can be reduced to cause and effect.
Quote? SEP link? As mentioned, I've seen "fabric of events" in SR discussion, no one actually saying "fabric of cause and effect", certainly no Pearl.