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Friday::Sep 13, 2024

What Does Physics Cause?

W

hat would it mean for "the laws of physics" to be the cause of something happening? Presumably, excluding a direct act of God, the laws of physics are not routinely being broken. But are they, properly speaking, causing things?

This question takes on a more pointed meaning when we ask whether "the laws of physics" and some set of starting conditions can cause something to happen to the exclusion of other causes. That is, does physics being a part of the cause of some event preclude other kinds of causes?

I'm still stuck on free will, I think about it all the time, so humor me. This is a subject that rarely gets anything coherent said about it. The typical anti-free will position is that since the laws of physics are enacted at every moment upon every level of the physical structure of human beings, therefore the actions of human beings are not caused by free will. I question whether this proposal even makes sense.

Cigarettes cause cancer. But the laws of physics are acting at every moment on every part of the cigarette-plus-smoker system. Therefore, the laws of physics are the cause of the cancer -- there is no room for the cigarettes to be the cause.

Can you see the absurdity here? When we talk about causes, we are really talking about links between forms, forms like cigarettes and cancer. The material that is subject to the laws of the physics is the medium through which these forms interact. The medium is, strictly speaking, no more the cause of the final effect than the telephone itself is the cause of the pizza place making my pizza.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about form soon. We modern people have been trying to make a coherent metaphysic without appeal to form for a while now; heads up, it can't be done.