Final cause is epistemologically primary, but efficient cause is metaphysically primary

-6 hankx7787 25 October 2012 06:02AM

(or, while final cause can be best for your map, efficient cause is the primary out in the territory)

Describing a phenomenon in terms of final cause is often the most useful and effective way to explain the given phenomenon for one's purposes. For example if you want to know why a plane flies or why a computer program operates the way it does, it's because it was designed that way. A squirrel climbs trees because it wants to eat nuts, it wants to eat nuts because it wants to live, it wants to live and reproduce because evolution designed it that way. Evolution designs organisms a certain way because it wants to maximize genetic fitness. A person acts a certain way because they desire the expected outcome.

It's virtually never a good answer to explain a plane's behavior in terms of the atomic and subatomic interactions which ultimately account for all the efficient causes behind the plane's behavior (except possibly in extremely advanced military fighter or space shuttle research laboratories or something).

However, in every case of final cause we observe, science at some point over the last two and a half millennia has found corresponding efficient causes. And, more importantly than finding that these efficient causes correspond with final causes, science has found that the efficient causes are *primary*. Without legs, the squirrel won't climb a tree, no matter how much it wants the nuts. If you take away the necessary brain function, the free will disappears. Without reproducing species and the rest of evolutionary mechanics discovered by science, evolution won't go on evolving things.

But, I would not go on to say that final cause, freewill, experience, and so on are illusory and "all that exists is efficient cause". When someone describes behavior in terms of final causes, or describes experience or free will, in the terms and meanings they are using, all of those things certainly do exist. You could no more deny final cause than to deny efficient cause - because ultimately, the final causes we observe and talk about, we have found they DO have corresponding efficient causes.

It's just important to remember that while the final cause is often epistemologically primary, so to speak, the efficient cause is metaphysically primary.

(this is just another way of trying to help dissolve the general classes of reductionism, freewill/determinism, and qualia issues - most often these are the result of metaphysics/epistemology confusions, or in LessWrong parlance, map/territory confusions.

the advantage of thinking of it this way is to try to see a more general relation between final cause and efficient cause that applies not just to mysterious brains and minds, but to much less mysterious events like squirrels legs climbing trees. when you have a clear idea of why reductionism/compatibilism is obvious in non-mysterious contexts, it's much easier to see that it applies just as well even in the mysterious contexts).

Comments (7)
Comment author: wedrifid 16 September 2012 06:07:18AM 6 points [-]

Yeah, exactly. It sounds like he's denying experience exists or saying that it's illusory, which would be stupid. Experience is an epistemological first principle; it's axiomatic.

Why would I make 'experience' a first principle or an axiom? That sounds utterly impractical and inefficient.

Comment author: hankx7787 23 October 2012 11:44:07PM *  -2 points [-]

Upon reflection I think you are right in one tangential respect - characterizing experience as "axiomatic" was a poor choice of words. For a good rationalist nothing is axiomatic, i.e. with the right data you could convince me that 2+2=3 or that A is not-A.

Nevertheless, the existence and validity of your experience as such (not to confuse this with your interpretation or memory of your experience or anything else), is an incredibly fundamental truth that has been confirmed repeatedly and never disconfirmed across a vast scope of contexts (all of them actually) and is relied upon by all other knowledge. So saying that making experience a first principle or axiom is "impractical and inefficient" is rather bizarre, unless you're talking about something completely different than I am.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 09 October 2012 07:22:52AM *  6 points [-]

Now it should be said of course that one group is actually right

I think this ignores the whole concept of probability.

If one group says tomorrow it will rain, and another group says it will not, of course tomorrow one group will be right and one group will be wrong, but that would be not enough to mark one of those groups irrational today. Even according to best knowledge available, the probabilities of raining and not raining could possibly be 50:50. Then if tomorrow one group is proved right, and another is proved wrong, it would not mean one of them was more rational than the other.

Even if we are not talking about a future event, but about a present or past event, we still have imperfect information, so we are still within the realm of probability. It is still sometimes possible to rationally derive different conclusions.

The problem is that to get perfect opinion about something, one would need not only perfect reasoning, but also perfect information about pretty much everything (or at least a perfect knowledge that those parts of information you don't have are guaranteed to have no influence over the topic you are thinking about). Even if for the sake of discussion we assume that Ayn Rand (or anyone trying to model her) had perfect reasoning, she still could not have perfect information, which is why all her conclusions were necessarily probabilistic. So unless the probability is like over 99%, it is pretty legitimate to disagree rationally.

Comment author: hankx7787 10 October 2012 06:51:01PM *  1 point [-]

You entirely missed the point of my including that statement.

My intention was merely to stress that I'm not merely trying to say something like, "nobody can every really know what the right answer is, so we should all just get along," or any such related overly "open-minded" or "tolerationist" nonsense like that.

My point was to say that such differences are perfectly fine and meaningful to fight about philosophically, but that you shouldn't use one's position on whatever derivative philosophical issues as the basis for community membership.

Comment author: Peterdjones 08 October 2012 09:00:46PM *  1 point [-]

I think this is intrinsic in any community of thinkers who are focused on optimality/rationality/etc in general, because inevitably people will feel differently on a given issue, and then everyone goes around blaming the other group that they aren't really rational or optimal, etc.

That is at least "inevitable" in groups that habitually mistake feelings for something objective.

That being said, identifying optimal, mainstream positions of a given philosophy is absolutely good for the philosophy per se.

Good grief, how can you do that when there is no agreement about what optimal means?

Comment author: hankx7787 08 October 2012 10:15:53PM *  1 point [-]

That is at least "inevitable" in groups that habitually mistake feelings for something objective.

People inevitably feel differently on given issues in any group. Blaming the other side for not really being objective/rational/etc happens no more in Objectivism than any other group.

Let me add that there is no inherent propensity in Objectivism to substitute one's feelings for objective evaluations; if that's what you think, you're misunderstanding something. For example, Ayn Rand had an entire branch of her philosophy talking about art, music, and "aesthetics" in general. Her opinion on music wasn't purely based on her trying to pass off her personal feelings for an objective judgment, but rather was indeed a derivative position of her philosophical system. And there's nothing wrong with trying to identify objectively best or optimal music or other things, that's actually perfectly fine to do in philosophy - but if you're going to use differences as a basis for building a community, you're going to produce a horrible mess with schisms and splinter groups galore, which unfortunately hit the Objectivist community pretty badly. Hence: "firewall optimal philosophy from optimal community"

Good grief, how can you do that when there is no agreement about what optimal means?

Well each person does it for themselves. Naturally the creators and leaders in the philosophy set the mainstream (er, sort of by definition)...

Comment author: hankx7787 08 October 2012 08:56:52PM *  4 points [-]

Coming from a hard-core Objectivist, the Objectivist community is unfortunately rife with all sorts of so-called "schisms". I think this is intrinsic in any community of thinkers who are focused on objectivity/optimality/rationality/etc in general, because inevitably people will feel differently on a given issue, and then everyone goes around blaming the other group that they aren't really objective or rational or optimal, etc.

This leads to me having to qualify a statement about some issue X with something like this:

As a result of pretty much universal confusion, here is a list of things I am not saying in this post:

I am not saying everyone who does not agree with X should or should not be "purged from Objectivism".
I am not saying people with varying views on different issues should or should not be called "objectivists".
I am not saying this group should or should not be limited to only "real objectivists".

Now it should be said of course that one group is actually right - but schisms are very unhealthy for any community, or any social group in general. The success of a social group per se is based very much on all-inclusiveness. That being said, identifying optimal, mainstream positions of a given philosophy is absolutely good for the philosophy per se.

So I would add something like: "firewall optimal philosophy from optimal community"

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 27 September 2012 09:33:38AM 2 points [-]

Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?

Submitting...

Comment author: hankx7787 28 September 2012 02:39:14PM 2 points [-]

Of course this question is universally (snerk) misunderstood as "objective" = "universal", which are not actually synonymous.

Comment author: Randaly 22 September 2012 09:02:53AM 1 point [-]

See e.g. here, in particular:

Barrett, L. et al., eds. 2002. Human Evolutionary Psychology. Princeton University Press.

Buss, D. 2005. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Wiley.

There are also pages for Intro and Auxiliary reading; I've also heard an old one, Tooby and Cosmides' The Adapted Mind, recommended.

Comment author: hankx7787 22 September 2012 01:56:35PM 0 points [-]

Ah, thanks. I can't navigate my way around the new SIAI site...

Comment author: hankx7787 21 September 2012 11:42:56PM 0 points [-]

the usual SI recommendations on the field

What are these?

Comment author: hankx7787 19 September 2012 10:45:25AM 0 points [-]

No question just a comment: I took their AI class and dropped it in short order. Norvig and Thrun are seriously fucking awful teachers. The guy who did the machine learning class was quite good, however.

Comment author: Raemon 14 September 2012 09:58:45PM 0 points [-]

Worth noting that my dad also thought it was pretty awesome (lending credence to that "how many times has your mind been blown and to what extent" metric of awesomeness, rather than "how old were you."

Comment author: hankx7787 14 September 2012 10:01:09PM 1 point [-]

One of the day's lucky 10,000 I guess.

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