On Fri, 22 Apr 2011, John Smith wrote: > --- On Wed, 4/20/11, Kerim Aydin <[email protected]> wrote: > > In this case, the phrase "This statement causes" is not > > true, as it is the person posting the statement to a forum that would > > cause it, not the statement itself - if the statement were written on > > a scrap of paper in Bangkok, Thailand it would cause nothing. This > > falsity is sufficient to nullify such an attempt. > > > > I strongly disagree with your reasoning here. The statement on a scrap of > paper in Thailand is a different statement than the one I posted.
You're correct that I was sloppy in explaining my reasoning here. One way to tease out what I was trying to get at might be to use the Aristotelian causality model: under these terms, the statement is the efficient cause operating under the rules (the formal cause) in an email system/forum (the material cause) as directed by a particular person (the final cause). Typically, we take the ego "I" of the individual as specifying a unique final cause; this final cause has an existence independent of Agora while the others are Agora (i.e. context) specific - see CFJ 1895. By using the Thailand example I was attempting (rather poorly) to illustrate that the statement in question was confusing the efficient cause with the final cause in such a way that made it nonsense and FALSE: by taking it out of context (in Thailand) the efficient cause cannot function on its own as a final cause (a person) might be able to do. Your objection that different "copies" of an efficient cause might have different effects depending on contexts (within the nest of causalities) is a correct but trivial objection, in that it doesn't impact the underlying reasoning of the argument that depended on this causal confusion. -G.
