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I am not sure actually that gravity "causes" things to fall to the earth. Gravity is the "name" with give to an entity in a mathematical model that somehow fit
by alok-g 12y ago
I am not sure actually that gravity "causes" things to fall to the earth. Gravity is the "name" with give to an entity in a mathematical model that somehow fits the observations of things falling very well. What is the "cause" as to why things fall down, AFAIK, that question is still ultimately unanswerable beyond what would be just semantics. Having found the model though, it would be now correct to say that if someone brings a meteor to the field of the earth (cause), the meteor will fall down (effect), as far as the model is correct.
I am not yet seeing how your second example is relevant to figuring how to establish causation.
- javert 12y ago> AFAIK, that question is still ultimately unanswerable beyond what would be just semantics. Out of my range of expertise but I think this could be said about all knowledge. For instance, about elementary particles, You can always say, "What if there is one lower level that we can't detect?" And the right take-away is not: "Therefore, we never know the cause of anything." The right take-away is that "causation" has to take into account contextuality. You can make lots of X causes Y statements that are valid, as long as you specify the context. The second example is relevant because it's another illustration that knowledge is contextual. Though it's not about causation. The connection is that I'm trying to use the contextuality of knowledge to defend causation. So I was giving a "pure" example of the contextuality of knowledge that doesn't also involve the complexity of causation.