These are just things that happen in the physical universe, If we have a device capable of scanning objects and capturing the configuration and behaviour of their fundamental particles at a given point in time, we have a means of capturing cause and effect mid-flow.
If your objection is just that we can’t ever build such a machine, you probably should have said so earlier. If your objection is that cause and effect is something other than the behaviour of physical objects, then please describe it.
It’s a philosophical problem widely accepted to be unsolved or heavily disputed.
Coming to a conclusion here was unlikely. Heck, I must have been involved in at least 3 threads like this on the SD alone.
I just got involved here because both sides seemed to be misrepresenting the other side as requiring souls. I just wanted to wear the “Actually…it’s not that simple” t-shirt.
Note that what’s triggered this particular tangent was just me saying that the two objects have a different causal history. You can’t bring yourself to explicitly dispute it, and are now just throwing out whatever you can.
But, I don’t see how you can really dispute this.
Note that we’re not even talking about two objects having identical events happen to them. We’re talking about two objects have entirely different kinds of events happen to them, but that result in the objects having the same intrinsic qualities (but different extrinsic qualities).
Call that whatever you want, but it clearly isn’t the same causal history.
Except you did say “capturing causes”.
And, you’re still throwing out irrelevant retorts against my point that the two entities have different causal histories without having stated whether you agree with it or not.
Or, if you prefer, here is my definition of cause and effect, which you may wish to criticise…
Preamble: the universe is made of stuff that does things. There are no golden threads of metaphysical causality or 'this’ness.
Cause: stuff acting upon other stuff
Effect: stuff being acted upon by other stuff.
Thus, if you can discern all of the properties of a collection of stuff, including its activity, you can capture causes in progress, and if you can perfectly reconstruct that collection of stuff, including restoration of its activity in perfect detail, effect follows cause (albeit with the process of capture and restoration adding some intervening but invisible (to the system) links in the process.
This has been my position for the entirety of the thread. Please do not call this a diversion or retreat.
I didn’t criticize it, I just pointed out that it was your own definition of Causality, and I have to reason to agree with it. You’re now tacitly admitting that you are rolling your own.
As for what I actually agree with, basically the usual definition e.g.
I pointed out that the two entities had a different causal history. You have been attacking this point but still will not say whether you think the causal histories are the same or not. I don’t care whether you call that a diversion or not, I just wish you’d get back to the point.
Also I don’t think even your custom causality rescues your point, because with the transporter we are not replicating causes. We are replicating effects if anything.
I didn’t say you did - I said you may wish to - after several requests for you to define it were ignored, I thought it might help to start somewhere.
As above. I defined it mostly out of frustration. I’m interested in a real world definition, since we’re talking about real world things.
OK, maybe this will help: I don’t believe ‘causal history’ is a thing. Cause is a thing, effect is a thing, history is history - once a cause has happened, only the effect remains.
This too turns out to be disingenuous - I don’t see anything in your linked definition of causality that conflicts with my (admittedly highly simplified) description of it. If there is a conflict, feel free to point it out.
An interesting real-world parallel to this is the tunneling effect. An electron is in a well with high sides – say it’s inside a coffee cup. It can’t climb over the sides. But every now and then, it gets through the wall and is observed outside the cup. This actually does happen in the real world.
One model is the “probability” approach. An electron doesn’t have a fixed position, but a big probability cloud of where it might be. Well, by the laws of chance, sometimes it happens to “be” outside the cup. It didn’t go “through” the wall of the cup, it simply was outside when it was observed.
Another is the virtual particle pair annihilation approach. A virtual pair of particles, an electron and a positron, came into existence. The positron mutually annihilated the original electron, and the virtual electron stabilized in existence. The annihilation took place inside the cup, but the remaining electron popped into existence outside the cup. There it remains and is observed.
In the first case, the common-sense claim is “it’s the same electron.” In the second case, the common-sense claim is “it’s now a different electron.” The trouble is that there is no possible experiment or test that can tell which of the two cases is fact. We can never observe virtual particle events.
(The second model is the basis of Hawking radiation – which is observed in real life. Not around black holes, but near the nuclei of heavy atoms. Empty space “decays” into particles very close to, say, a Uranium nucleus.)
Is it “the same electron?” You might as well ask “did the electron go through one or both slits” in the two-slit experiment. There isn’t an answer; there is no test anyone can perform to determine it.
There’s no conflict there’s just all the extra stuff you’ve added*
And the extra stuff is where the disagreement actually lies.
And again, let’s be clear: even in your model, no-one is talking about copying causes. We’re talking about getting another object to be as qualitatively close to me as possible.
** Thus, if you can discern all of the properties of a collection of stuff, including its activity, you can capture causes in progress, and if you can perfectly reconstruct that collection of stuff, including restoration of its activity in perfect detail, effect follows cause (albeit with the process of capture and restoration adding some intervening but invisible (to the system) links in the process.*
Let me try to summarize where I think the dispute is here.
Imagine we have a snapshot of time. And there are two entities in this universe that happen to be identical.
We can ask the question; what would be the difference if entity A was in position B and entity B was in position A? And the answer is: there is no difference.
I think this is a key argument behind “teleported person is you”.
What I’m saying is, I think the idea of a snapshot doesn’t work in reality.
The idea of a single “now” has been thrown out since relativity. The universe does need to “know” or “care” how entity A arrived at position A and entity B arrived at position B because it includes all frames of reference including frames where A and B have not arrived at their respective positions yet.
And, conversely, there’s no reason to think the universe “knows” when two objects are sufficiently similar (so we can talk about one object being a continuation of another).
Interesting summary. I, personally (and predictably) don’t believe the universe cares – and in some cases even knows – how a particle got to where it is.
In my opinion, you seem to be saying that a particle somehow “knows” whether it arrived by a straight path or a curved path. That the trajectory is somehow imprinted upon the particle. This is why some of us have wondered if you are somehow speaking of “souls” or other non-material attributes. As far as my understanding of physics goes, the particle has no memory of what path it took, and there is no meaningful experiment, observation, or test that can tell you whether it arrived from the east or from the west.
So…you’ve nicely summed up the heart (soul?) of the disagreement…but we do still disagree!
No, I’m saying it makes a difference to the universe how a particle got to there. Because again the universe is the set of all reference frames.
The fact that in a given reference frame we cannot tell the difference is irrelevant: no-one has claimed that everything is knowable, let alone knowable from one reference frame.
Also, again, in the transporter situation we are talking about two objects in two locations. There, the difference the difference between the paths is obvious and visible.
The ‘extra stuff’ you describe is not part of my potted definition of cause and effect - it’s just a description of what a transporter would have to do to reconstruct a working replica of the source object - it’s not just about the atoms and their relative placement - it’s about their behaviours too.
The given reference frame is the one in which our viewpoint resides.
I can see how you get to the view that the universe somehow cares about the history of particles, because from the point of view of all reference frames, yes, some thing that have happened are yet to happen (except that some of these reference frames are by definition not open to one another, therefore the notion of the universe managing them as a whole sounds like it would require a privileged reference frame).
But from the point of view of us, as human meat machines inhabiting (if necessary) our own local reference frame, how can it matter? We, as thinking entities, are not the superposition of many different reference frames - how could that be, without violating causality? I just ate a bacon roll - if part of me inhabited a reference frame where that had not yet happened, I could change my mind and eat a sausage bagel. Spacetime is a continuum - we are not.