Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Causes: whether something is a physical cause of something depends on the separation of two objects or processes that are to be identified as cause and effect, as well as the transmission of energy. Whether this relationship comes about is therefore contingent. From a linguistic point of view, the relationship between cause and effect is a necessary relation since the concept of the cause is applied only to something which has an effect. See also de re, de dicto, necessity, contingency, causality, effect._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Marvin Minsky on Causes - Dictionary of Arguments
I 128 Cause/causation/Minsky: a causal explanation must be brief. Unless an explanation is compact, we cannot use it as a prediction. >Explanation/Minsky, >Explanations, >Causal explanation, >Causality, >Complexity, >Simplicity. Dependence/”everything depends on everything”: There can't be any causes in a world in which everything that happens depends more or less equally upon everything else that happens. To know the cause of a phenomenon is to know, at least in principle, how to change or control some aspects of some entities without affecting all the rest. The most useful kinds of causes our minds can discern are predictable relationships between the actions we can take and the changes we can sense. >Prediction, >Cognition, >Knowledge, >World/Thinking, >Reality._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |
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