metonymy4u

one could very well then ask: what do you propose to put in place of cause and effect? a metaphor of correlation? a metaphor of systemic selection of adaptive variations (contingency dependent shaping)? does this not just dress up cause and effect in different clothing? well perhaps it does. from a god’s eye view it’s indeed possible that talking about “systems” instead of “causes” amounts to the “same thing.” problem is, i don’t have a god’s eye view and for me to invent new metaphors i seem bound to use some of the language of old metaphors. kant’s effort to synthesize the dialectic of rationalism vs. empiricism required him to use the language of both, and i suspect he used a bit more of the former than the latter due to the context in which he matured and lived his entire life. metaphors don’t seem to change overnight—neither do neural connections. we know that to change a system requires energy. the universe left “on its own” seems to favor entropy. randomness. the question for me is: how can we act in such a way that “the system” develops novel characteristics, and do these take us in the direction we want to go?