You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Thu Apr 11 09:08:09 PDT 2002



> > I didn't say that determinism (that every event has a cause), was true.
>I
> > said that physics and chemistry are determinsitic if we ignore quantum
> > effects,w hich we do at the level of the weather.
>
>Which means our models yield only approximate answers, but we'd never be
>able to tell the difference.

Rights, See How the Laws of Physics Lie, Nancy Cartwright. I writer about this in my diss too . . .


>There is a sense in
>which
> > any event might be said to be caused at least in part by everything in
>its
> > backward facing light cone.
>
>Which sense? Perhaps any given event is contingent upon everything that
>preceded it, but why think that's the case?

I didn't say that. Anyway, what's in your light cone is causally connectable to you, it;s everything that could reach you with a ray of light. So either it did reach you, and thus had soime causal interaction, or it wasa moing the circumstances in which what did reach you reached you. ANyway, enough physics and metaphysics here, go bug Larry Sklar, that's what you're paying him for. He's smarter than we are anyway. Tell him I said he's still wrong about everything, but I like his Locke lectures anyway.


>jks

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