Cause and Effect

[McCulloch]

the effect can't be greater than the cause

Is this true for all attributes? How far can this concept be generalized?

[Jayhawker Soule]

the effect can't be greater than the cause

Is this true for all attributes? How far can this concept be generalized?

Define greater.

[Goat]

the effect can't be greater than the cause

Is this true for all attributes? How far can this concept be generalized?

Is it true at all? How can this claim be verified?

I know, we can put two little pieces of radioactive material togather, a very minor cause, and see an atomic explosion, a much greater effect. That falsifies that claim

[McCulloch]

These machines we are typing on collectively networked together, have greater computing speed and power than the combined speed and computing power of the humans who created them.

A word conveys greater meaning than the individual letters that make it up. A sentence conveys greater meaning than the individual words that make it up.

[Defender of Truth]

I know, we can put two little pieces of radioactive material togather, a very minor cause, and see an atomic explosion, a much greater effect. That falsifies that claim

It's not simply the radioactive material producing the effect of the explosion. If we simply put them together in nothing, nothing would happen, but because of how the universe works, energy rapidly emits from the atom as its nucleus changes, and that's the explosion. The cause of the explosion is not the radioactive material, but the radioactive material along with what it rapidly releases (energy particles and waves) , and it's enough for the nuclear explosion.

These machines we are typing on collectively networked together, have greater computing speed and power than the combined speed and computing power of the humans who created them.

I'm not familiar with how the computers are networked together, so this is a more difficult example to deal with.

However, it seems to me like most of the examples are having something like this "Humans are the cause, the result is a thick, heavy, stronger than human machine called a construction truck!".

I think this may be a misunderstanding of the cause. Humans used materials that are strong, heavy, and thick, to make the thick, heavy, stronger than human machine called a construction truck. They didn't take themselves and make the truck.


For those of you who believe that the effect can be greater than the cause, would you say that the difference in favor of the effect came from nothing? If not, where did it come from?

[Defender of Truth]

A word conveys greater meaning than the individual letters that make it up. A sentence conveys greater meaning than the individual words that make it up.

Actually I would say that humans put the meanings to the sounds and drawings we call words and letters. For instance, when you see a letter in Japanese, you have no idea what it means or is. When you see a word in Japanese, it's the same. The meaning comes from us, not the word. Humans put meanings to sounds, pictures, etc.

[Defender of Truth]

I know, we can put two little pieces of radioactive material togather, a very minor cause, and see an atomic explosion, a much greater effect. That falsifies that claim

I thought about this for about an hour before replying in my other post. However, after replying, I looked up to see what physicists have to say. I discovered that Matthew Grivich disagrees with your above statement.

His argument is that what an atom bomb does is convert energy from mass into kinetic, light, and heat energy, using Einstein's relation E = mc2, where E is the energy that gets released, m is the mass that gets transformed, and c is the speed of light. No energy gets created or destroyed, only changed.

This is essentially what I was trying to say in my post, yet as you can see, I'm not as learned in the area as he is, so he can explain it better.

Matthew Grivich received a B.S. in Physics from Santa Clara University, and a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Santa Cruz. Around the time he was completing my Physics masters, he switched to a Neuroscience project, so his Ph.D. is as much in Neuroscience as it is in Physics. His thesis topic was classification of the retinal ganglion cell types of the guinea pig retina. He is currently working as a Bioinformatics Specialist at the Salk institute, in La Jolla, California. At present, his job primarily consists of software development for neurobiological applications in the visual system.

So what do you think about the argument? Would you still argue that a nuclear reaction falsifies the claim? If so, how do you counter Doctor Grivich's argument?



As it turns out, this is really the same objection as objection 1. What an atom bomb does is convert energy from mass into kinetic, light, and heat energy, using Einstein's relation E = mc2, where E is the energy that gets released, m is the mass that gets transformed, and c is the speed of light. No energy gets created or destroyed, only changed

[Furrowed Brow]

I think Defender and Goat both have a point. A little lump of mass and a big explosion of energy are equivalent, yet on some view the “effect� is massive and far more devastating that a relatively harmless bit of matter. The change of state is everything...especially if at Hiroshoma or Nagasaki. I am presently thinking this kind of shows that talk of “cause n’ effect� is not objective. It is relative to some subjective position. If one does not think big explosions are significantly different to a little bit of matter then the cause and effect are equal. If one does not like loud bangs or death then the effect is greater than the cause. In which case “cause n effect� is an interpretation of events.....maybe

[Miles]

as Jayhawker Soule said in post #2, "Define greater," an essential no one bothered to do. Until this very basic requirement is addressed it's pointless to go any further. So I guess it's up to McMulloch to tell us what he had in mind when asking his question.

But . . . . . . . taking a blind stab at the question, I'd say it's true for all cases. (Don't know how it would apply to attributes.)

[The Mad Haranguer]

the effect can't be greater than the cause

Is this true for all attributes? How far can this concept be generalized?

A better way to put the question might be "can an effect be entirely absent in its cause?"