causality

let me add another view of causality to the discussion.

in my opinion, the most essential distinction is between two types of
causality: one type in which the cause determines the effect totally, and
one type in which it does not, the former being only a subset of the latter
- it is the case when there is no freedom of choice. this is an ontological
distinction, that is on the level of reality, and not an epistemic one,
that is on the level of whether we human observers are capable of listing
all relevant causal constraints in a given causal relationship. the first
type of causality is referred to as mechanical or mechanistic, the second
as non-mechanical or non-mechanistic.

this distinction is decisive because self-organization and the generation
of information (both is emergence of something new within an evolutionary
system) can only occur if there is no one-to-one causal relationship, no
bijective mapping between causes and effects.

according to qualitative differences between real-world systems, we may
open up a variety of different causal relationships, all based on the weak
determinism. we may come to the conclusion that in the course of evolution
there is an increase in the freedom of choice and we may even include
teleology as a special case of causality, namely in systems that are
setting goals by themselves.

wolfgang hofkirchner

institute of design and technology assessment
department of computer science
vienna university of technology

moellwaldplatz 5
a-1040 vienna
austria

FON & FAX *431-504-11-86-33
FAX *431-504-11-88
E-MAIL hofi@igw.tuwien.ac.at
URL http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/
Received on Mon Mar 01 10:28:05 1999