The A Priori Case for the Paranormal? [companion discussion thread]

I would agree that for most of modern daily life, cause-effect relations can be treated as "brute fact" just as in video games one can fight aliens, cast spells, and so on without considering the computer science/engineering that underlies the games.

But I am not sure cause-effect is completely outside our own minds/spirits. Synchronicity & PK being the most obvious examples, but even our ability to measure the world with our mathematics suggests we have at the very least a way to grasp the world's intelligibility due to the our own intellectual ability as a species.

My main point here would be that if causality cannot really be explained in physicalist terms, there is no point in a skeptic bringing up "causal closure of the physical" to rule out Psi or Survival. That it seems we agree on.

It occurs to me that cause and effect may be even more fundamental to our reality than I have thought. Looking at a simplified example of physical cause and effect such as a struck billiard ball rolling across the table and impacting another ball, the micro events taking place at that collision are analogous to purely logical algorithms. These fundamental logical principles are things like "when one object physically contacts another object, something happens to the struck object. It would be absolutely illogical for absolutely nothing to occur to the struck billiard ball. It would be something - energy or momentum - spontaneously transforming into nothingness.

But if cause and effect is for example ultimately a mental phenomenon because it is the arbitrary conscious choice and actualization of individual outcomes by a vastly superior being, then the null outcome of a physical collision would be just as possible as the known and consistent transfer of momentum according to physical laws, and this superior being could overcome logic itself, a seeming impossibility.

Looking at it that way, cause and effect is a principle as fundamental to reality as the mathematical truisms like 2 + 2 = 4. A reality where 2 + 2 = 5 is seemingly impossible even for the postulated extremely superior spiritual being. This chain of reasoning would seemingly rule out cause and effect actually being a mental phenomenon even at extraordinarily transcendental levels of mind and spirit. Cause and effect would be a fundamental principle of absolutely all possible realities and superior beings.

It occurs to me that cause and effect may be even more fundamental to our reality than I have thought. Looking at a simplified example of physical cause and effect such as a struck billiard ball rolling across the table and impacting another ball, the micro events taking place at that collision are analogous to purely logical algorithms. These fundamental logical principles are things like "when one object physically contacts another object, something happens to the struck object. It would be absolutely illogical for absolutely nothing to occur to the struck billiard ball. It would be something - energy or momentum - spontaneously transforming into nothingness.

But if cause and effect is for example ultimately a mental phenomenon because it is the arbitrary conscious choice and actualization of individual outcomes by a vastly superior being, then the null outcome of a physical collision would be just as possible as the known and consistent transfer of momentum according to physical laws, and this superior being could overcome logic itself, a seeming impossibility.

Looking at it that way, cause and effect is a principle as fundamental to reality as the mathematical truisms like 2 + 2 = 4. A reality where 2 + 2 = 5 is seemingly impossible even for the postulated extremely superior spiritual being. This chain of reasoning would seemingly rule out cause and effect actually being a mental phenomenon even at extraordinarily transcendental levels of mind and spirit. Cause and effect would be a fundamental principle of absolutely all possible realities and superior beings.

We only know of energy from observing causation, and since energy cannot tell us whether this reality is a simulation it doesn’t seem logical necessary.

Even if something *must* happen, from QM we can see that what that exact state is might only be known stochastically. In fact, it isn’t clear why there must be a probability distribution at all.

As such, I don’t think the argument that effects are logically necessitated to be correct. But even if they are, the exact effect would still be mysterious and require an explanation.

We only know of energy from observing causation, and since energy cannot tell us whether this reality is a simulation it doesn’t seem logical necessary.

Even if something *must* happen, from QM we can see that what that exact state is might only be known stochastically. In fact, it isn’t clear why there must be a probability distribution at all.

As such, I don’t think the argument that effects are logically necessitated to be correct. But even if they are, the exact effect would still be mysterious and require an explanation.

You make a good point about the hypothesis that the world may be a virtual reality simulation - if this is really the case then in our apparently physical world literally anything including irrational and illogical and mathematically impossible outcomes (like 2 + 2 = 5) could be programmed into the simulation. But then it seems that conscious human beings must be the outside users of or participators in the simulation due to all the strong arguments for consciousness not being computable, and the question would then still remain whether cause and effect in conscious thought and reasoning and even awareness may still be a fundamental feature of reality and not arbitrary and mental.

You make a good point about the hypothesis that the world may be a virtual reality simulation - if this is really the case then in our apparently physical world literally anything including irrational and illogical and mathematically impossible outcomes (like 2 + 2 = 5) could be programmed into the simulation. But then it seems that conscious human beings must be the outside users of or participators in the simulation due to all the strong arguments for consciousness not being computable, and the question would then still remain whether cause and effect in conscious thought and reasoning and even awareness may still be a fundamental feature of reality and not arbitrary and mental.

Ah to be clear I would agree with your Design hypothesis, insofar as I think some teleology would have to be present to explain the order and rationality present in our reality. So it would not be arbitrary and mental, anymore than the mental process of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is arbitrary.

Given the "Unreasonable Effectiveness" - as per the physicist Wigner - of Maths (which, held up by proofs, rest on the mental phenomena of Reason) to describe this reality, I would even suspect some kind of Ur-Mind (God? gods?) is the mental source of these causal relations rather than a lesser mind.

Of course this reality could just be a simulation, but the fact this is a live possibility for certain physicists - and physicist Bernard Haisch even thinks its an Idealist simulation - shows the concept of physical causation for our reality is quite a mystery.