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Causality

asked 7 years ago

Does the rabbi know of any recommended literature on causality (or has the rabbi written about it) that discusses the question: What, if any, is the justification for assuming that causality is a transitive relation?

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מיכי Staff answered 7 years ago

What does transitive relation mean in this context? Do you mean to ask: If A is the cause of B and B is the cause of C, then A is the cause of C? It’s just a question of definition: is indirect causation (through an intermediary) a cause or not?

א' replied 7 years ago

Okay, thanks (I just saw philosophical discussions on the subject and was wondering the same as you because I thought it was a question of definition, but I'll read about it)
And one more thing: The rabbi wrote in the Freedom Sciences that “Yom's empiricist view led him to the conclusion that it (=causality) is a temporal and logical relation only”
This is a bit unclear to me. Yom identifies three elements in the concept of cause: 1. Forward in time. 2. Proximity in space 3. There is a necessary connection between them (between cause and effect).
1 and 2 are about experience (correlations), but for 3, which is the same logical element, Yom has difficulty finding an explanation. He writes:

“After I discovered or assumed that both relations of proximity and continuity are essential to causes and effects, it becomes clear to me that I am stuck, and that I am unable to advance by observing a single case of cause and effect even one step further… All we find is that one of the bodies approaches the other, and that its movement precedes that of the other, but without a noticeable time gap.” (Tractate 1.G.B.)

The component that the Rabbi calls logical, or is described logically, is a connection that Yum calls a “necessary connection” but in the sense that it is *not logical* and cannot be described logically – because it is supposed to be a relationship of dependence between empirical objects (not a “relation of ideas”). If this connection could be described logically, the problem would disappear.

That is, if I understood the Rabbi well, then Yum apparently does not have a physical connection because he does not even list it as one of the components of the causal relationship, but regarding the apparent logical component, it is section 3 in Yum and he casts doubt on it, so it is not clear to me where the assertion that Yum accepts this component comes from?

I would like to know if I understood the rabbi's words correctly regarding the physical component (meaning that Yom disbelieves in it because he did not count it as one of the components, because he counted the logical component as 3 and casts doubt on it..)

Thank you!

מיכי Staff replied 7 years ago

You understood perfectly. Indeed, Yom ignores the question of causation. In any case, it is clear that the logical connection is also questionable for him. This is essentially the problem of induction. Who said that if there was a connection between the events, then there will be in the future.
But if you look at two specific events, a kick and a ball that flies, you can say that there is a temporal (one after the other) and logical (if one then the other) connection between them. The generalization to every kick and every ball (that causes are reasons why the balls fly) is problematic because of the problem of induction. Therefore, when he talks about logic in his context, it is more related to the question of induction and not causality. Causality in its pure form talks about a specific case and not about a general law. And here there is logic and time but no causation.

א' replied 7 years ago

I don't really understand the conclusion of the rabbi's words. How can one talk about logic only in the context of induction and not in the context of causality? After all, it seems that one depends on the other. After all, in what sense is there a logical component if it speaks of a specific case and not a general one. If it does not generalize, then in what sense can one say that kicking a ball is a sufficient condition for the ball to fly? (Because the logical meaning of this sentence is general)
I didn't really understand you..
Thank you-

מיכי Staff replied 7 years ago

Even in a specific pair of events, you can talk about event A being a cause of B, or the cause of B, or a logical condition for B. The generalization to all events of the same type is an additional step and is not logically necessary. For example, if our world did not operate according to fixed natural laws (at every even hour, kicking a ball would make it bounce, etc.), then the causal relationship would be singular.
I don't know why a day was chosen, but it is clear that we can also talk about this in relation to a specific case.

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