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Can you always interpose an intermediate effect into any causal chain? Question
Consider the following claim:
In any causal relationship X -> Y, it is always possible to find an intermediate effect A such that X -> A -> Y.
This is a claim about nature, not our currently available scientific theory about it. So for example even if current physics claims a neutron decays directly into a proton, my claim would imply that the neutron decays into some third particle, which is unknown to science and undetected by the experiments done thus far, and this particle decays into a proton. It would also imply an infinite regress with yet more particles decaying into each other. Note, I am talking of "effects" - so the intermediates need not be particles, but could be some other phenomena that is beyond our current understanding, but is able to mediate causality.
This reminds me of Zeno's paradox about dichotomy, where to walk across the room you must first walk half way across, but first half of that, etc. Except we are inserting intermediate links into a causal chain, instead of walking.
Are there any rigorous arguments that try to demonstrate this claim is true or false? I'm sure it's tempting to provide an original answer, but I am mostly curious about published literature.
1 answer
Charles Darwin more or less spent his whole life proving this theory to be true and it's essentially what On the Origin of Species is all about. So if you are looking for rigorous arguments in published literature, with plenty of examples, this book is surely it.
In order to for his theory of natural selection to be correct, a number of sub-species must have been proven to exist. Supposedly the rich animal life at the Galápagos Islands inspired Darwin with such, as more different species showed a potential for different races and sub-species.
I'm not sure if he made any argument about an infinite amount of sub-species though, because in practice there couldn't have been more than there were individuals. But every individual in the evolution chain, say from bacteria up to human, were probably ever-so-slightly different (and we can prove this with the discovery of DNA).
From a philosophical angle, natural selection could perhaps be applied to a great deal of many other things outside biology. When one thinks of it, it is probably a natural law far broader than just evolution theory.
For example: what is it about a certain radioactive atom in a group of atoms of the same element, that causes it to decay sooner than the others? Are the atoms different from the start (inheritance) or are they differently influenced by their surroundings (environment) etc.
We can apply natural selection to anything constantly in change: civilizations, fashion, technology etc etc.
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