Causation
is an area of thought about which there has been much discussion in
philosophy. It has been sliced up into
different sets of categories for different philosophical approaches. I am interested in causation, because the way
we implicitly approach it today determines a lot about the way we view humans
and the way we treat them. So, for our
purposes, a new set of categories will be presented here hopefully to shed some
new light on human interaction in modern technological society.
Something
is a defined discrete cause when a causal agent neatly impacts the recipient of
the effects. When a bunch of kids are
playing baseball in someone’s backyard, and one of the boys accidentally throws
a ball through a neighbor’s window, that is an example of defined discrete
causation. The kid who threw the ball is
the causal agent of the broken window.
The neighbor is the recipient of the effect. He is the one who has to deal with the broken
glass and with replacing the window. The
causal action is one way. That is, there
is no reciprocal causal action going from recipient to agent that overlaps with
the initial causal action. The neighbor
may come outside and scold the kid for being careless, and the neighbor may
even try to collect damages from the kid’s father. But these would be two separate processes
that occur after the kid threw the ball through the window. We are dealing with distinct processes, each
of which leaves its own distinct impact on someone. And within this causal process itself, one
person is definitely the agent, and one is definitely the recipient. And, within this causal process, only the
agent is a maker of imprints. He makes
an imprint on the recipient of the causal action, but he also makes an imprint
on himself. Such an imprint, even from
an embarrassing action like breaking a neighbor’s window, helps the boy to feel
alive. It becomes a part of the
narrative of his life.
A
defined discrete cause is what is usually thought of when experimental
scientists are looking at the human field of experience. The idea that most of what happens in the human
field of experience is determined by defined discrete causes is appealing,
because it means that human actions can be more easily controlled and
manipulated. And by extension, if the
human field of experience can be reconfigured such that most of the human
actions in society are defined discrete cause actions, then humans themselves
become more susceptible to control and manipulation.
A
flowing blendable continual cause is much more difficult to control and
manipulate. In this causal situation, an
agent triggers a response in a recipient or recipients, before he, the agent,
is finished completing his causal action.
The response of the recipient impinges on the agent in such a way that
it shifts the direction or quality of the agent’s action. Which, in turn, can affect the direction and
quality of the recipient’s response and so on until both the agent’s action and
the recipient’s response are completed.
This action and response system accounts for most of the social encounters
that people have in everyday life. It
also accounts for many automobile accidents, which is why it is often so difficult
to ascribe the degree of blame of each of the parties involved. In situations like this, the lawyer of each
party will try to make the accident appear to be a defined discrete cause
accident caused by the other party.
In
flowing blendable continual cause actions, both persons are in truth agents and
both are recipients. Each person is
making an imprint or imprints and each person is receiving an imprint or
imprints. There is a blurriness, an
imprecision to a flowing blendable continual cause action system, because both
the agent and the recipient are initiating flowing, blendable, continual
actions that tend to intermingle with and blur into each other. At the same time, this kind of action is the
foundation both of strong bonded relationships between individual humans as
well as sustained conflict relationships.
Without these flowing blendable continual cause action systems, there
would be no friendship, no romance, no family, no community, no society. There would also be no disputes, no feuds, no
rivals, no enemies. In short, there would be no meaningful life narratives.
Finally
there is an infinite continuous vacuum cause which is when a causal agent
ceases to impact in anyway on a recipient with whom he was previously
interacting, and this leaves the recipient in a social vacuum with regard to
this causal agent. Indirectly, the
causal agent does make an imprint on the recipient by not making an
imprint. It is a generic imprint of
numbness that ultimately affects the agent as well as the recipient. As people increasingly start to unconsciously
configure their life activities in terms of defined discrete causal actions,
they lose the capacity for the bondedness with others that comes in the
interactions stemming from more flowing blendable continual cause action
systems. In general, connecting with
others for defined discrete purposes like taking a course at college, working
at a job or having casual sex is simply not enough to allow a person to sustain
bonded relationships with others, and people start to slide away into
psychological vacuum states, withdrawing from others into numbness. Defined discrete cause activities create
relationships that are contingent and instrumental and these are ultimately
very fragile relationships that, when they are a person’s almost exclusive
connection to the social world, lead to a feeling of emptiness. And when this is primarily the kind of
connection people have to offer one another, people contribute to leaving each
other in a psychological vacuum, even when they are not purposely sliding away
from and ceasing their connection with each other.
A
world of increasing defined discrete cause behavior is certainly one that
reinforces the ideas of many social scientists today. But it is not so much that their ideas and
beliefs are true for human nature in general.
And yet social scientists today frequently assume that the behavior of
human beings living in modern technological society is somehow true for all
human beings throughout human history and in all human societies including
preliterate and more traditional ones.
Except for cultural anthropologists, they do frequently seem to operate
on the assumption that the results they come up with in their experiments and
observations are true for humans regardless of period or place. And if defined discrete cause behavior is
assumed to be the universal dominant behavior, then it gives these social
scientists the right to break down behavior into its component parts: into the
causal behavior of human agents and the distinct response behavior of human
recipients. And then, clearly
understanding these defined discrete human interactions that they have helped
to configure, social scientists can control and manipulate human behavior, in
schools, in work and in large social institutions like community groups, clubs
and churches. And people in marketing
and advertising can control and manipulate people in terms of the purchases
they make.
This
belief that all human behavior can be found to be fundamentally defined
discrete behavior ultimately stems from
the mirroring and modeling created by modern complex machines, computers, and,
of course, robots. And this is because
the behavior of these modern advanced machines is primarily defined discrete
cause behavior. Yes, some modern
machines are created for complex interactions with people. But however complex
the interactive behavior, modern machines still operate on the basis of defined
discrete shifts in responding to humans and to external world situations rather
than more flowing blendable continual shifts.
However small it may be, there is always a period of time separating one
shifted piece of behavior from another when dealing with machines.
Seeing
human behavior from the perspective of defined discrete cause actions is just
one more way to understand how modern humans have been influenced by an
increasingly complex and pervasive modern technology. Yes, understanding defined discrete causation
has helped us to solve many important problems that have faced humanity in the
external world. But not everything
operates primarily on the basis of defined discrete causation. Including the human mind and human
relationships.
(c) 2016 Laurence Mesirow
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