Chapter 9: The Theory of Causal Significance

[hypnagogue]

Good questions, Tychic. I believe 'event ontology' is primarily meant as a contrast to 'substance ontology'; that is, event ontologies disavow the notion of substance, or of a reified object/thing that has properties but is not identical to those properties. However, I haven't seen an extended treatment focusing on these terms myself, and couldn't scare up a good source on google, so my understanding has mostly been gleaned from contextual clues. To address your questions:

What is more primitive, properties or events? Rosenberg calls his ontology an event ontology: what is the structure of an event?

From pg. 170:

The resulting ontology is an event ontology in which the actualization of an individual is the fundamental natural event and in which individuals may be internally linked into processes. Individuals themselves are pure property complexes (i.e., there are no enduring substances).

From this it follows that properties are more primitive / fundamental than events, since events are just operations of causal constraint upon properties.

It seems that there is at least one agent in all events except of the level-zero events (for example: each event is a kind of trope)?

Be careful with your wording. It appears you're equating the words "agent" and "individual." That might be fine in normal discourse, but the word "individual" has a special meaning in this framework. An agent is some sort of cognitive system, but not all natural individuals are cognitive systems.

Also, note that "level-zero events" is an oxymoron in the context of this theory. The most basic kind of event is the actualization of a natural individual, and individuals cannot be actualized at level-zero, by definition.

What does it mean to speak about events without (or independent of) temporal structure?

This is a difficult issue to wrap one's head around. But I don't think this is so much an issue of events being independent of temportal structure, as it is one of precedence. Do events occur in a fundamental background of temporal structure, or is temporal structure actually constructued from the relationships of events themselves? Rosenberg opts for the latter. This would be an interesting topic to revisit in more detail for chapter 10.

What individuates events? The causal role?

Natural individuals are individuated by means of their receptive structures; distinct instances of receptivity delineate distinct natural individuals. Events are the actualization of such individuals (i.e., the process of their becoming determinate). So events are individuated because they are operations on individuated sets of properties.

Does someone know an author or an essay that is an introduction in event ontology as Rosenberg proposes? I remember that he thinks that his ontology is not extraordinary.

I can't find a reference that deals with event ontology specifically, but this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on events might be helpful.

 

[antfm]

Sorry, but I'am in a kind of vicious circle here:

Do events occur in a fundamental background of temporal structure, or is temporal structure actually constructued from the relationships of events themselves? Rosenberg opts for the latter.

Could we consider space and time as efective properties, or they appear as a construction in the operating of events?

 

[hypnagogue]

Could we consider space and time as efective properties, or they appear as a construction in the operating of events?

I don't know if there's anything logically prohibiting one from thinking of space and time as kinds of effective properties, but that's not the route Rosenberg takes. He prefers to think of space and time as emerging from the structure of causal relations that obtain among individuals. Again, this is covered in chapter 10, so we should abstain from going into too much detail in this thread. I hope to have a thread for chapter 10 up some time today or, at worst, tomorrow.

 

[antfm]

Thanks, Hypnagogue. That helps.
I recall that already Schopenhauer reduced the complicated ontology of Kant categories to just these three: space, time and causality. In this way, I think, Rosenberg goes an important step further, "reducing" it all to a mesh of causal structure, anything else emerging from that. I think it'll very interesting to read the development of his theory in next chapters.

 

[Tournesol]

It is clear from physics, as far as I can tell, especially in work on M-theory, that time and space are not fundamental.

MACROSCOPIC time and space.

If this is so then phenomena having spacetime related properties are not fundamental either. If so then causally significant properties must adhere to something that is transcendent.

Huh ? If causally significant properties adhere to S+T, that just makes them one step less fundamental. What do you mean by transcedent ?

This would have to be something inconceivable, like a wavicle, since we cannot observe of infer it, thus making the situation seem paradoxical.

W/P duality is conceivable and inferrable.

How can causal properties exist in the abscence of anything to be properties of? It looks like a paradox. But this paradox is more apparent than real. It is caused by a misconception of time and space, the same misconception that causes motion to appear paradoxical.

Properties are properties of individuals, which are space-time loci, which are
bundles of relations. IMO

We tend to forget, as we conceive of photons traveling through time and space along their probable pathways in the two-slits experiment, that when we are not observing a photon it is not just in every place at once with some finite probability, it is also in every time at once with some finite probability.

Neither is true. WF's can be non-zero at every point, but they don't have to be. In a TSE , an unobserved photon will have 0 amplitude at points of destructive interference.

 

[hypnagogue]

I hope to have a thread for chapter 10 up some time today or, at worst, tomorrow.

Actually, it looks like I won't be able to get a summary up until Sunday or Monday. In the meantime, discussion on chapter 10 can begin in the posted thread.

 

[Tychic]

Events and Event Individuation

Thank you, Hypnagogue, for your help. After reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on events I think that Rosenberg takes up the idea of an event as a property exemplification. There are

… theories that construe events as property exemplifications, i.e., exemplifications of properties by objects at times [Kim 1966, Martin 1969, Goldman 1970, Taylor 1985]. On such theories, events are individual entities.

He would perhaps modify this theses and think of property exemplifications
- not necessarily at times (because effective properties and causation can be prior to time) but
- by individuals (objects can be misunderstood) – but not in the case of level-one events (it was an error in my last posting to talk about level-zero events) and
- by causal laws of higher levels of nature

About the individuating of events you write:

Natural individuals are individuated by means of their receptive structures; distinct instances of receptivity delineate distinct natural individuals. Events are the actualization of such individuals (i.e., the process of their becoming determinate). So events are individuated because they are operations on individuated sets of properties.

I think that is not enough for individuation. There could be individuals that cannot be discerned by their receptive binding which is an intrinsic property. Could it be the case that the causal web which is responsible for space and time (see chapter 10) will do the rest of the work of individuation?

 

[hypnagogue]

Thank you, Hypnagogue, for your help. After reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on events I think that Rosenberg takes up the idea of an event as a property exemplification.

I haven't read that entire SEP entry on events myself, but the snippet you posted doesn't seem to quite capture the spirit of Rosenberg's proposal. He defines events as property/individual actualization, not property exemplification. The former is defined in terms of relations of causal significance, while the latter need not be. On a more coarse grained level of analysis, I can see how the two concepts could be construed as similar. But Rosenberg's defintion of events as property or individual actualization is tied intimately to the particular novel theory he develops, so I think it's best to regard this as a new construal of events altogether. (Although comparing and contrasting this account of events with others could be a useful exercise.)

He would perhaps modify this theses and think of property exemplifications
- not necessarily at times (because effective properties and causation can be prior to time) but
- by individuals (objects can be misunderstood) – but not in the case of level-one events (it was an error in my last posting to talk about level-zero events) and
- by causal laws of higher levels of nature

Complete level-one individuals count as property actualizations. (I'm not sure if they'd count as property emplifications for technical reasons, but we shouldn't be concerning ourselves with that anyway.) Did you mean level-zero individuals?

I think that is not enough for individuation. There could be individuals that cannot be discerned by their receptive binding which is an intrinsic property.

What do you mean when you say "cannot be discerned"? On an epistemic level, you might be right; if anything like Rosenberg's theory of causation is true, it might be impossible in at least some cases to discern the character of a thing's receptive structure.

But that's a problem of epistemology. On a metaphysical level, I don't see any dilemma, and it's the metaphysics that is relevant here.

Could it be the case that the causal web which is responsible for space and time (see chapter 10) will do the rest of the work of individuation?

That causal web is the same one that does the work of individuation in this theory. Rosenberg envisions the world's receptive structure both as doing the work of individuation and as underlying the structure of spacetime.

 

[Tychic]

Concerning intrinsically indiscernible entities you, Hynagogue, write

What do you mean when you say "cannot be discerned"? On an epistemic level, you might be right; if anything like Rosenberg's theory of causation is true, it might be impossible in at least some cases to discern the character of a thing's receptive structure.

But that's a problem of epistemology. On a metaphysical level, I don't see any dilemma, and it's the metaphysics that is relevant here.

I understand your solution like this: There is no metaphysical problem to discern qualitative identical individuals because qualitative identical bundles of properties either are indeterminate and exist in the possibility space or are determinate and distinguishable via causal relations.

A world with two qualitative identical spheres as supposed by Max Black would be reconstructed by Rosenberg as a world with only one individual that corresponds to the usual concept of a sphere. The difference between two spheres exists only if the two spheres are bounded in a causal web. This example suggests that something is wrong with bundle theories of individuals.
Perhaps the concrete things have some ontological autonomy and are more than a bundle of effective and receptive properties. The bundle of concrete properties is introduced as the hit of the ingression/actualisation in chapter 10.

For what follows, it will be important to avoid identifying an individual’s nature with the hit, which is simply the tip of its ingression
The nature of an occurrent individual should be thought of as spread or stretched along the length of its ingression. Equivalently, ingressions should be thought of as schematic ways of explicitly drawing out components in the nature of an individual, where these components have various degrees of context independence. In this way, natures are taken to be complex entities containing indefinite, context-independent components, as well as definite, actual states with a complete context. The indefinite elements contain the individual’s potentials. As we move up an ingression, away from the hit, we traverse an expanding well of potential and a decreasing weight of context. As we move down an ingression, toward the hit, we traverse a shrinking well of potential and an increasing weight of context.

If the hit is more primitive as the nature of the individual because it is concrete, the solution that there is only one sphere in the Black scenario does not work. Is it necessary for Rosenberg to deny a concrete two sphere world or does he have other possibilities?

 

[ThoughtExperiment]

Sorry for digging up this thread. I've tried to follow along with this discussion but have some questions regarding "effective" versus "receptive" properties.

Consider for a moment a simple solenoid actuated switch which has 2 circuits, 1) a main switch which is either connected or disconnected and 2) a solenoid controlled by an electromagnet which actuates the main switch. Note that both of these two circuits has 2 connection points, so there are 4 connection points altogether. My question is, "Can we make the following observation?"

- The main switch is unaffected by the flow of electricity through it, therefore the main switch has no receptive properties with respect to the electricity through it and electricity has no effective properties on this main switch.

- The solenoid is affected by the flow of electricity through it, therefore the main switch has receptive properties with respect to electricity through the solenoid and electricity has effective properties on the solenoid.

Or have I mistaken the definitions Gregg is trying to make here?

 

[hypnagogue]

Sorry for digging up this thread. I've tried to follow along with this discussion but have some questions regarding "effective" versus "receptive" properties.

No problem. Please feel free to jump in and comment or question wherever you'd like.

Consider for a moment a simple solenoid actuated switch which has 2 circuits, 1) a main switch which is either connected or disconnected and 2) a solenoid controlled by an electromagnet which actuates the main switch. Note that both of these two circuits has 2 connection points, so there are 4 connection points altogether. My question is, "Can we make the following observation?"

- The main switch is unaffected by the flow of electricity through it, therefore the main switch has no receptive properties with respect to the electricity through it and electricity has no effective properties on this main switch.

- The solenoid is affected by the flow of electricity through it, therefore the main switch has receptive properties with respect to electricity through the solenoid and electricity has effective properties on the solenoid.

I don't know if one could immediately draw those conclusions. If you haven't yet, you should read the summary for chapter 10, which discusses the causal theory in more detail and with more rigor. In particular, the distinction made there between immediate and mediate causal interactions could come into play here. From this discussion in chapter 10, it follows that observing that two systems or sets of properties are causally responsive to each other is not sufficient grounds to conclude that they share a receptive connection by which they place immediate causal constraints on each other.

The question of ascertaining what receptive connections actually exist in nature looms large for Rosenberg's framework. They are not the sort of things that can be directly empirically observed. At best, their existence could be deduced from observation of patterns of interaction between effective properties, given proper theoretical considerations. Even then, it's not immediately clear how we could go about making such deductions with confidence.

Rosenberg offers more theoretical support for his notion of receptivity in chapter 13, and goes on to suggest some general physical conditions that might be empirically indicative of a receptivity's existence in chapter 14. The discussion in chapter 14 suggests a few types of physical systems whose components or properties might be directly bound together by a receptive connection. These are either fundamental physical entities (like a fundamental particle), or systems whose states are sensitive to a kind of global constraint structure (like quantum coherent systems, or rich feedback systems such as the thalamocortical circuit in the human brain), or certain kinds of temporal processes. (I'll save the details here for the summary of chapter 14.) If we go by these criteria, your solenoid would not seem to be the kind of system whose gross behavior would be governed by a global constraint structure supported by an instance of receptivity. More likely, the only natural individuals involved would be the fundamental physical entities comprising the solenoid and their immediate, local interactions over time. In effect, the causal story would probably wind up looking very similar to the usual reductive physical accounts one would expect.