I continue to be confused about whether/when you're allowed to draw causal arrows from mathematical to physical facts.
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Replying to @MemberOfSpecies
@MemberOfSpecies I would have thought you can’t ever take a mathematical thing to be a cause… what would be an example?1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@Meaningness "The fact that 5*5=25 and the fact that the room is 5x5 meters, together, cause the room to be 25 square meters."2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @MemberOfSpecies
@MemberOfSpecies Oh… weird… “Cause” seems an exceptionally vague and problematic notion, but fwiw on the whole I’d say that isn’t causal.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@Meaningness I guess I'm trying to figure out whether there's a principled reason for saying such things aren't causal.2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @MemberOfSpecies
@MemberOfSpecies Main intuition of “cause” is counterfactuals, and there isn’t a possible world in which 5x5!=252 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness
@Meaningness "If 5x5 had been 26, this 5x5 room would have been 26 square meters" doesn't make zero sense to me.3 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
@MemberOfSpecies so if you are looking for a principle to exclude mathematical causes, there’s one. Pearl works in this framework also.
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