To answer this, I need to answer another question: What would the universe look like if it did not have the structure of causal models? If I know that then I can know whether or not that universe looks different than ours.
So we’re talking about a universe where there is no A --> B causal connections. Where you can’t accurately say something like “When I eat, it causes me to be less hungry,” or even say anything, since “saying” something requires some sort of causal ability: the ability to push air in intensional patterns.
And that universe… really doesn’t look like ours. I might want to talk about a universe where there are correlations but not causations, but then how do I explain the correlations? Are they just brute facts? That seems unlikely. But even in that event, I would expect rules to break down in chaotic ways: one day, food wouldn’t make me feel nourished. And it wouldn’t be because I ate the wrong foods or something like that, it’d just be because the correlation broke down. And that really doesn’t look like our universe either. I may be wet because it was raining, but I don’t get wet merely because some ‘correlation’ between ’sunny_day” and “not_wet” broke down.
So we’re talking about a universe where there is no A --> B causal connections.
Actually we aren’t. We are talking about an universe where there are effects that happen without cause. That doesn’t mean that effects that have causes aren’t allowed.
To answer this, I need to answer another question: What would the universe look like if it did not have the structure of causal models? If I know that then I can know whether or not that universe looks different than ours.
So we’re talking about a universe where there is no A --> B causal connections. Where you can’t accurately say something like “When I eat, it causes me to be less hungry,” or even say anything, since “saying” something requires some sort of causal ability: the ability to push air in intensional patterns.
And that universe… really doesn’t look like ours. I might want to talk about a universe where there are correlations but not causations, but then how do I explain the correlations? Are they just brute facts? That seems unlikely. But even in that event, I would expect rules to break down in chaotic ways: one day, food wouldn’t make me feel nourished. And it wouldn’t be because I ate the wrong foods or something like that, it’d just be because the correlation broke down. And that really doesn’t look like our universe either. I may be wet because it was raining, but I don’t get wet merely because some ‘correlation’ between ’sunny_day” and “not_wet” broke down.
Actually we aren’t. We are talking about an universe where there are effects that happen without cause. That doesn’t mean that effects that have causes aren’t allowed.
Hm. That is conceptually possible, I suppose. Although I can’t really imagine how that sort of demarcation criteria would work.