NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/talk/philosop/misc/2375

Text File | 1992-11-10 | 1.8 KB | 43 lines

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!aun.uninett.no!nuug!nntp.uio.no!smaug!solan
From: [e-mail] (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Subject: 2-way Causality
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Organization: University of Oslo, Norway
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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 12:33:08 GMT
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Me:
|> >Don4t you assume that Causality goes in only one
|> >time-direction when you make your argument? It
|> >might fail if Causality was 2-way, you know.
|> >

D. Spurret:
|> Huh?  I'd need you to be a lot more clear about what you mean by `2-way'
|> causality before I could respond with any clarity of my own.  Do you mean
|> something like that there are _two_ sets of initial (or one `initial' and
|> one `final') conditions, one at the beginning of time and one at the end,
|> and that they interpenetrate the temporal space between them?  How is being
|> pulled towards some future state significantly different from being pushed
|> out of a present one?  Do you mean that prediction becomes impossible? (ie.
|> that we cannot know the future unless we know it already?)

I do not mean the universe begins or ends, but you have otherwise
got the picture pretty right. You raise the proper sceptical argument
against 2-way causation, that "how should we know the direction of
time?", but this can easily be fixed by letting the one causality-
direction be the (by far) dominating one.

And yes, it would make prediction become impossible to some extent,
unless, of course, you utilize the whole thing, and send mesages
back in time.


Regards,
Solan