Thursday, August 23, 2007

An Impossible Distinction

Can we distinguish between direct action by the ultimate manager and indirect action of the ultimate manager mediated by multiple actions of humans who believe in the U.M.?

How can this obvious distinction be maintained when the multiple actions of humans are the result of earlier "natural" processes? Even more tricky would be something like global warming that results naturally from certain events caused by humans.

So, natural events versus intervened events are hard to tell apart.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Actions involving believing agents

Events whose causal explanation requires essentially a reference to a believing agent where the belief is part of the causal chain are not natural events in the same way that earthquakes or supernovas are natural events.

The key element here is that there is an essential causal role for human belief and action. Once these are introduced, the naturalness diminishes. Will it even be possible to divide the world up into two categories, natural events and human-caused events?