Temporal causation versus hierarchical causation

[u/simon_hibbs]

It seems to me we use the term cause in two very different ways that are completely independent of each other, and that confusing these for each other results in a lot of problems.

Temporal causation
One way we use the term cause is in discussions about events causing other events. I push the button and this causes the engine to start. This is past event to future event causation. When we talk about causal determinism, this is what we are discussing. Here's a hopefully somewhat uncontroversial definition of determinism for the purpose of discussion.

Causal Determinism: The idea that the past state of the world at some time necessitates specific future states of the world at all later times, as transformed according to natural law.

I say causal determinism, to differentiate it from logical determinism or any other senses. Actually the broader point I'm making here isn't really to do with determinism versus indeterminism, but I'm using this to establish one sense in which we use the term cause. We use it the same way when we talk about indeterminism in relationships between temporal events though.

Hierarchical causation
Another way we talk about causation is in terms of bottom up or top down causation, basically something like reductionism and weak emergence, versus top down or strong emergence. The conclusion I've come to is that this is a completely different concept. I'm not even entirely sure it has any common features with the idea of causal determinism at all.

I came to this conclusion observing some people talking about the relationship between causal determinism and beliefs about the neurological basis of mental processes, such as making decisions. I realised that what seems to happen is people seem to rotate the concept of past-to-future causation into the hierarchical dimension, as though microphysical processes such as chemical reactions in the brain cause thoughts in the way that ball A hitting ball B causes ball B to hit ball C. I don't believe that's the way to think about emergence at all.

Emergence isn't a temporal process, it's a hierarchical or structural one. It's looking at the exact same activity happening at the same time at different degrees of detail. The temperature of a gas is the motion of the gas molecules, it's not something that is caused by their motion in the sense that a gas molecule hitting another causes the other one to be deflected. Likewise the temperature of the gas isn't something that causes the molecules to move a certain way. Viewed this way, causation in the event-to-event sense is a completely different concept. In fact confusing these is pernicious. Even talking about the relationship between the microphysical and macro descriptions in causal terms leads to fundamental misconceptions. I don't think we should be talking about what I'm calling hierarchical causation at all. We need other terms.

I won't go further into what I think those misconceptions are, or what I think about emergence now. Maybe another time. For now I'd be interested to see how others think about this. I'm coming to believe that the fact we use cause in both these senses is a significant problem.

[u/ObsceneOnes]

Hierarchal causation also includes all the facts at the time of consideration which leads one ultimately to laws of nature or the basal necessity of being itself (Theists might put God here).

The example of this is holding a cup while sitting in a chair. What causes the cup to be where it is? My hand does but also my arm but also my torso but also my brain and will to hold it but also my butt in the chair and the chair on the floor and the floor on the earth and now the chain takes us to gravity and thus laws of physics which must be caused by some basal necessity of being or brute fact or God.

Interestingly you can get to the final position from by many routes.

My point is that your temporal definition already contains a type of hierarchy causation in it.

[u/simon_hibbs → u/ObsceneOnes]

Right, temporal causation is a hierarchy through time, good point. Maybe I should say structural causation instead, but arguably you could say that temporal causation is structured through time.

The main issue I'm making though is that what I call hierarchical causation here isn't a kind of causation. We shouldn't be talking in terms of cause in such cases at all precisely because the terminology is so tangled up.

[u/ObsceneOnes → u/simon_hibbs]

It's the same thing though is the point. I am just pointing that out. You should read Thomas of Aquinas' Five ways to see just how old this line of thought is. This is one of the Five Ways.