Thoughts on causation

[Magical Realist]

A cause has to come before its effect, or else there is no causation. However, to exist before another event is to be at a different time than that event. Event A occurs at 3:00. Event B occurs at 3:05. How then does event A cause event B? Agency is distributed over the 5 seconds between the two events. The metaphor is a mechanistic one---of a transmitted force thru time and space between Event A and Event B. But not exactly, for Event B does not preexist the reception of the force from Event A. It is created BY Event A. Transmission of force assumes simultaneity of Event A with Event B. Such is not the case. So in what sense does Event A CAUSE Event B, if it is prior to Event B, and transmits no force to it across time and space? We may assume temporal adjacency here. Of a point where Event A meets or makes contact with Event B. But again this assumes a simultaneity between Event A and Event B. It assumes Event B already exists, and that Event A continues to exist after it has occurred. Such is not the case. How does causation leap the temporal gap between discrete moments in time? How does a past event exert influence on a future event, separated as they are by one contemporaneous now?

[C C]

Causality also has problems in the context of eternalism. For instance, if the worldline of _x_ person could be neatly extracted from the block-universe (all the connecting worldlines of boson and fermion particles severed from that bodily sequence or 4D "worm"), then that individual would arguably still be experiencing the same built-in perceptions through the course of its life. The information relationships formerly intertwining into its nervous system from the external world are thus revealed to not so much be the literal causes or outer origin of the sensory experiences, but just part of the internal structure that came with the existence of such an extra-dimensionally extended person. Vaguely similar to Leibniz's isolated, windowless monads each containing a phenomenal continuum of a bodily existence in an environment (should they correspond to living organisms), except that a human worldline alienated from the others did beforehand have cosmetic "windows" allowing influences of the other entities in (but at merely face value).

Presentism, OTOH, with its "time is a process" style, really does need a global "now" which concerns "this" whole state of the cosmos being treated as the cause of the next state which replaces and annihilates it. If each of the local components of the universe truly, individually participated in being the causes of other local components according to their own distinct "present", rather than being synchronized into a global "now", then some parts would be existing relationally prior to or later than others. Unraveling the whole premise of presentism that there's no past or future apart from the evidence in each fleetingly real moment of their having been former nows via environmental records and personal memories.

[Magical Realist]

Interesting that determinism, at least of the eternalist kind, seems to preclude the idea of causation. The entire thing moves forward, like a river carrying everything in it along with it. One log follows another log. Did the first log cause the movement of the second log? No..there is no static acausal context out of which discrete causes can be plucked and attributed to moments in time. The whole universe moves forward, each thing set upon its own predetermined worldline. Nothing causes anything, because time itself is causing everything to happen always at once. Nothing touches anything else, and that is the nature of a cognitive construct.

[Yazata]

A cause has to come before its effect, or else there is no causation.

Maybe. I tend to speculate that causation can hypothetically propagate in both temporal directions: past -> future (conventional causality) and future-> past (retro-causality). The reason why we don't observe retro-causation in which future events cause past events might be some local physical conditions of this particular universe that we find ourselves in. (Something to do with the 'big-bang' perhaps.)

However, to exist before another event is to be at a different time than that event. Event A occurs at 3:00. Event B occurs at 3:05. How then does event A cause event B? Agency is distributed over the 5 seconds between the two events. The metaphor is a mechanistic one---of a transmitted force thru time and space between Event A and Event B. But not exactly, for Event B does not preexist the reception of the force from Event A. It is created BY Event A.

Doesn't that depend on precisely what we are talking about when we speak of different "events"? What are these events? How do we identify and describe them? To use your mechanical picture, imagine a billiard ball in motion striking one at rest. After it is struck, the second ball is observed to be in motion too. So what precisely are the events A and B here?

At first we observe the first ball in motion and the second ball sitting on the table at rest. Then the first ball strikes the first and for a short period of time (milliseconds perhaps) they are in physical contact. The first ball decelerates and the second ball accelerates. Then the second ball separates from the first and they are no longer in contact, the accelerations/decelerations cease and they move apart

Transmission of force assumes simultaneity of Event A with Event B.

There was a short period of time when the two balls were in physical contact.

Such is not the case. So in what sense does Event A CAUSE Event B, if it is prior to Event B, and transmits no force to it across time and space?

I don't see any reason to think that force wasn't transmitted from the first ball to the second during the short period of time they were in contact.

[Magical Realist]

A cause has to come before its effect, or else there is no causation.

Maybe. I tend to speculate that causation can hypothetically propagate in both temporal directions: past -> future (conventional causality) and future-> past (retro-causality). The reason why we don't observe retro-causation in which future events cause past events might be some local physical conditions of this particular universe that we find ourselves in. (Something to do with the 'big-bang' perhaps.)

However, to exist before another event is to be at a different time than that event. Event A occurs at 3:00. Event B occurs at 3:05. How then does event A cause event B? Agency is distributed over the 5 seconds between the two events. The metaphor is a mechanistic one---of a transmitted force thru time and space between Event A and Event B. But not exactly, for Event B does not preexist the reception of the force from Event A. It is created BY Event A.

Doesn't that depend on precisely what we are talking about when we speak of different "events"? What are these events? How do we identify and describe them? To use your mechanical picture, imagine a billiard ball in motion striking one at rest. After it is struck, the second ball is observed to be in motion too. So what precisely are the events A and B here?

At first we observe the first ball in motion and the second ball sitting on the table at rest. Then the first ball strikes the first and for a short period of time (milliseconds perhaps) they are in physical contact. The first ball decelerates and the second ball accelerates. Then the second ball separates from the first and they are no longer in contact, the accelerations/decelerations cease and they move apart

Transmission of force assumes simultaneity of Event A with Event B.

There was a short period of time when the two balls were in physical contact.

Such is not the case. So in what sense does Event A CAUSE Event B, if it is prior to Event B, and transmits no force to it across time and space?

I don't see any reason to think that force wasn't transmitted from the first ball to the second during the short period of time they were in contact.

The event of ball A moving is said to cause the event of ball B moving. But these events occur at different times. Only after ball A moving is over does ball B moving occur. How can there be causation across discrete moments of time? Ball A moving would somehow have to coexist with ball B moving for it to cause it. IOW, to transmit force across spacetime to ball B. But the events remain sequential in time. The only possible point at which a transmission of force might be conceived is when ball A is not moving and ball B is not moving. This would be the moment of contact between the balls, after the event of ball A moving is over and before the event of ball B moving has started. A freezeframe of pure abstract force existing in spacetime without connection to any events whatsoever. Causation becomes the generalization of mechanical force transmitted between events that don't exist yet and don't exist anymore. A fiction of vectoral continuity that miraculously jumps the gap between past and future.

[elte]

Snip
There was a short period of time when the two balls were in physical contact.

The balls are elastic bodies and because of that they compress during the time they are in contact.  That gives time for gentle enough kinetic energy transfer, or otherwise, one thing that could alternately happen if they weren't elastic is they might shatter upon impact.